Technology juggernauts–despite their larger staffs and budgets–still face the “cognitive load” for DevOps that many organizations deal with day-to-day. That’s what led Spotify to build Backstage, which supports DevOps and platform engineering practices for the creation of developer portals.

In 2023, monitoring is essential to modern DevOps teams' work. DevOps teams need reliable and flexible tools to effectively monitor and manage complex systems that can provide real-time insights into system performance, availability, and security. Open-source monitoring tools have become increasingly popular due to their cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and community support.

Observability has become a critical aspect of modern software development and operations, allowing organizations to gain insights into the health and performance of their applications and systems. One of the key decisions when implementing observability is choosing between commercial or open-source tools. We spoke to several professionals who shared their experiences and insights on this topic, shedding light on the pros and cons of each approach.

There are many advantages to using dashboards that are powered by open-source technology that make them a compelling choice for many organizations. Below we will discuss some of the major benefits of using dashboards that are built with the help of open-source technology, along with examples of some of the leading use cases for which open-source technology has been utilized.