Observability trends in Brazil: insights from our localized survey

Organizations in Brazil are eager to adopt some of the latest observability trends and technologies as they look to keep their software running as smoothly as possible, according to analysis of a micro survey recently conducted by Grafana Labs.

Observability is an evolving space, and this is the first time Grafana Labs has run a Brazilian version of our annual Observability Survey. It’s part of our efforts to better understand how organizations there are adopting observability and to share that information with the growing Grafana community within the region and abroad.

In this blog post, we’ll share the highlights from the survey results, including:

• How Brazilian organizations are juggling so many tools and data sources
• The varying degrees of maturity in the market and how that’s pushing companies to adopt new techniques
• The importance of cost, ease of use, and AI in selecting observability tools, as well as the relevance of observability at the highest levels of Brazilian companies

Continue reading to learn more about observability in Brazil, and check out our interactive Grafana dashboard where you can analyze visualizations of statistics from our global Observability Survey, which includes many of the topics we’ll discuss here and more.

Brazilian organizations juggle lots of observability tools and data sources 

Businesses rely on observability tools and data sources such as metrics, logs, and traces to get deeper insights into the behavior of their systems. And as those systems scale and grow in complexity, it can often translate to teams using lots of tools and data to get a more holistic view.

And that’s what we’re seeing in Brazil, where the overwhelming majority of organizations (96%) use multiple observability technologies to help keep their systems running properly—and nearly a quarter of organizations (24%) are juggling six or more. 

In addition, 89% of survey respondents say they’re unifying multiple data sources in Grafana (7% have just one, and 4% don’t have any data sources configured in Grafana). Brazilian organizations are most likely to have two to three data sources configured, but some are pulling in far more than that, with one in 10 organizations pulling in data from more than 20 data sources, and 5% using an astonishing 100-plus.

SaaS vs. self-managed, and the role of open standards

So how are these companies handling all that data? The majority (56%) “mostly” or “only” manage their own observability stacks, which can present some real challenges when you have to wrangle disparate tools and data sources and maintain the underlying infrastructure. That’s on par with the rest of the world (58%), but there are some interesting differences when it comes to the use of SaaS.

As you can see in the chart above, Brazilians are more likely to split their setup between SaaS and self-managed, while the rest of the world is more inclined to lean more toward SaaS. Organizations turn to SaaS to offload management of the underlying platform to an observability vendor like Grafana Labs so they can focus instead on improving the health and resilience of their systems. The rest of the world is increasingly moving to SaaS, according to our global 2025 Observability Survey, so it will be interesting to see if Brazil follows the same pattern in the years to come.

Another key driver of observability adoption is the use of open source software and open standards to facilitate the movement and unification of multiple data types. It’s no surprise to see Brazilian organizations prioritize open standards in their own workflows. In total, 60% are “mostly” or “only” using open source licensing, and an additional 21% are equally split between OSS and commercial licenses. And the majority are using Prometheus (71%) and OpenTelemetry (61%) in some capacity (in both cases, this includes respondents who said they were “investigating,” “building a POC,” “using in production,” using extensively," or “using exclusively”). 

Prometheus and OpenTelemetry are both key to maintaining open standards in observability that help teams centralize and standardize their telemetry. Prometheus is the more established of the two, so it makes sense that it has more adoption. As we track changes in the Brazilian market going forward, it will be interesting to see if OpenTelemetry, which is quickly becoming another de facto standard in the observability space, will eventually catch up with Prometheus. 

Brazilian teams are at different levels of observability maturity

The maturity of the Brazilian observability market is a bit of a mixed bag. For example, despite the large number of tools and data sources in use—as well as the commitment to open source and self-managed setups—Brazilian organizations aren’t as likely to use what we at Grafana Labs consider the most mature approach to observability. 

We tend to favor a systematic, centralized approach that can get ahead of problems and incorporate observability at every stage of the software lifecycle. In addition, observability needs to be able to scale so best practices are spread across the organization. 

Survey respondents in Brazil who said they are using centralized observability have seen between 15% and 40% savings in their observability costs. Or, as one platform team member from a small Brazilian software and technology company put it, centralized observability provides “greater agility in identifying and resolving problems or preventing them, freeing up hours that would otherwise be spent remediating and/or resolving them.” 

As you can see from the chart above, the “Centralized observability (support)” approach most closely aligns with that ethos, but there’s a delta of 10 percentage points between Brazil and the rest of the world when it comes to adoption. 

Brazilian organizations favor FinOps and SLOs

And yet, respondents to our Brazilian survey are showing much more interest in emerging techniques that have the potential to be integral to a holistic approach to observability.

When you look at the comparison above, you’ll see that Brazilian organizations are much more likely to use SLOs in some capacity (“investigating,” “POC,” “in production,” “using extensively,” “using exclusively”) than the rest of the world (93% vs. 73%). The same goes for FinOps (85% vs. 55%).

We see SLOs as an important framework for defining and achieving reliability goals. When we asked about the most important outcome these organizations hope to achieve, the most common response was reducing mean time to resolution (44%), followed by better accountability (22%) and reduction in alert noise (21%). 

Meanwhile, FinOps is an emerging area that can help you better understand and manage your cost controls. We’re keen on the potential of FinOps here at Grafana Labs, as we recently adopted the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS), a community-driven, open standard for cloud billing data, and we were encouraged to see the increased focus on FinOps in Brazil.

Challenges (and solutions) pave the way forward

Ultimately, all those tools and techniques are only really useful if they actually help you overcome the obstacles that prevent distributed modern systems from operating smoothly. Next, let’s look at how this is playing out in Brazil.

For starters, complexity (41%) is their biggest concern about observability, which makes sense considering the number of tools and data sources they’re managing, as well as the reliance on self-managed stacks. Complexity was also the most cited concern for the rest of the world (39%), so it appears to be a near universal problem in the observability space today.

However, the Brazilian market is much more likely to cite “convincing management of the value” as a top concern compared to the rest of the world (34% vs. 23%), even though they’re less likely to be concerned about internal adoption (18% vs. 24%). This could explain why they’re more likely to adopt SLOs and FinOps, since they’re able to provide quantifiable evidence of the benefits of proper observability practices. 

However, “CTO/C-suite” was the most frequently cited response (36%) when we asked about the highest level at which observability is considered business-critical, which is actually higher than the rest of the world (33%). 

Other concerns point to a lack of maturity compared to the global market. Lack of process (25%) and culture (23%) were the most common challenges compared to the rest of the world, pointing to a need for more maturity—and SLOs. They’re also far less likely to cite alert fatigue as the biggest obstacle (21% vs 33%)

Brazilian companies are prioritizing cost and ease of use in observability

So how are teams tackling these challenges? Cost (77%) and ease of use (64%) are the biggest priorities when selecting a new technology. The rest of the world also cited those as their top two priorities, though at a slightly lower rate overall (74% and 57%, respectively). Here we can also see the continued importance of open tools and standards, with the next two highest criteria being interoperability (45%) and being based on OSS (40%). 

Where the Brazilian market diverges the most from the rest of the world is in the importance of AI/ML criteria, with 27% citing it as a priority, compared to just 19% of the rest of the world. And when we asked how they’d like to see it implemented in observability, 64% said they would put  training-based alerts on their “AI/ML wishlist.” This was the most common response, followed by faster, more automated root cause analysis (49%).

As we’ve all seen, the AI market is very dynamic right now, so we’ll be following these trends closely over the next year.

About the survey 

This survey was conducted at ObservabilityCON on the Road in São Paulo late last year. (And we’re headed back again this year! Learn more about our Nov. 4 event in São Paulo.) In total, 1,287 people participated across a range of demographics:

• Role: Respondents worked in more than a dozen different roles, from individual contributors up to executives. The most commonly cited roles were SRE (28%) and platform team (20%).
• Industry: Participants came from 17 different industries, with software and technology (33%) representing the largest share, followed by media and entertainment (28%).
• Size: Companies of all sizes were represented in the survey, with the most common ones being those with more than 5,000 employees (35%).

Our third annual Observability Survey, which contained many of the same questions, was conducted globally and featured responses from 1,255 industry practitioners. To learn more, check out the main report, as well as the interactive dashboard and our in-depth analysis of the survey findings.