Zero trust and AI driving observability interest

Observability tools are a strong area where the channel can gain growth next year, with the technology gathering increased customer focus. The idea of providing insights into infrastructure vulnerabilities also has the benefit of being a play that can be delivered by resellers with both networking and security backgrounds.

Jon Kane, senior director of EMEA channel alliances at Gigamon, said that observability had often been pitched as a networking product, but more users were understanding the security angle and that shift was driving growth.

“Many other vendors out there will say that they do observability, but let’s be clear – observing is one thing and doing something about it [is another],” he said. “What we’re doing is taking all of that network information and doing something with it. Seeing everything is crucial.”

Kane said that the traditional split with networking and security, with their own buying leads, was an issue that needed to be tackled to boost observability sales.

“You have a networking department, a networking division and a security division – look at each partner. A lot of the larger partners have a networking division and security, so you’ve got two distinct teams even within an end user that don’t necessarily communicate that often and have a [separate] set of network tools and a set of security tools. What we’re doing is trying to bring the two of them together,” he said.

Kane said that with customers looking for zero trust and expecting partners to help them minimise risks, the pressure is on to increase visibility across the entire network.

“With observability, you’re seeing everything, and adding all of that information to make those [security] tools far more rich and – more importantly – able to take context into account,” he said.

He added that customers do not want to be swamped by alerts, so it’s important to increase security in a way that is manageable: “If you’re taking somebody that logs into a particular device, and they’re going via a VPN, for example, you’re looking at a very specific amount of traffic that’s going through it.

“But if you then take into account other information – whether it’s web traffic, or what they’re searching for, or logging on to another security app – you add that context to it and you can make a far more informed decision, rather than something stopping from something from happening.”

Kane said that 2025 is going to be a strong year for observability, driven by increased interest in zero trust and the impact of AI.

“You cannot have zero trust, or an idea that you want to achieve zero trust, if you can’t see everything,” he said, adding that the increased use of AI by criminals to sidestep security defences is another factor driving the need for greater infrastructure visibility.

“We do a survey every year and interview every customer. AI is, without a doubt [something they are talking about]. Nearly 50% ... this year said they’ve seen an increase AI attacks, and over 80% said that they believe AI will amplify the ransomware threat going into 2025.”