You may have heard the term “network observability” regarding solutions that offer a deep and contextual view into the network. You’ve likely heard other terms, such as ‘network visibility,’ “network visualization” and of course “network monitoring.” But, experts argue, what these terms each truly means is still open for debate.

If you have ever worked in a kitchen, you know how tough it is to be short-staffed. Cooks have to work twice as hard and their performance suffers, leaving not-so-happy customers and comped meals for the complainers. It’s similar to how applications operate. Maybe an application is glitching out from poor coding on the backend or bogging from an influx of data coming in. In either case, the end-user application experience suffers.

Large cloud providers and ISPs offer service level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee uptime and help seal the deal with enterprises that value uptime. These same enterprises often ask IT to make the same guarantees for the performance and uptime of the internal network, its many varied connections and even the applications. At the same time, IT may have myriad SLAs from all kinds of vendors—including the aforementioned ISPs and cloud providers—it must manage.