SQL Analytics has always been one of my favourite SquaredUp features. That's not just because I can use raw SQL to achieve complex data transformations. The fact that I can run SQL queries over data from all sorts of sources — not just relational databases, gives incredible power and flexibility. The great news is that SQL Analytics now ships with our AI-driven SmartAssist technology.

Operations teams have lived with the same frustrating tradeoff for years: the data exists, but getting to the right answer often takes too much time and too much expertise. Engineers are expected to know platform-specific query languages, navigate layers of dashboards, and understand exactly where the right visualization lives before they can even begin troubleshooting. That approach can work in smaller environments, but as infrastructure grows more distributed and complex, it becomes a bottleneck.

When an unexpected alert fires these days, most engineers' first move is to ask their AI assistant for help.You ask why your checkout service is slow and the assistant gets to work, but it can't get any meaningful insights—at least not quickly—without the proper guidance. So, the next thing you know you're sharing deals about your existing data sources, the services you have running, how they connect, which labels and metrics matter, and on and on.

I recently gave a talk at Experts Live India 2026 about SquaredUp, and even before getting into the demo, there was one question I knew I had to address: Is the dashboard era over? It's something we're all hearing more. "Just ask AI." "Agentic AI will build your dashboards automatically." "Why bother with static views when a chatbot can answer anything?" It's a fair question. Answering it requires a clear understanding of what a dashboard represents.

To simulate real user behavior, performance tests often rely on API keys, tokens, or credentials to interact with real systems. But as your testing suite grows, this sensitive data can start to sprawl across scripts, configs, and environments, increasing the risk of exposure and making tests harder to manage and maintain. To address this challenge, we’re rolling out secrets management for Grafana Cloud k6, the fully managed performance testing platform powered by k6 OSS.