While observability is the first step towards building observable systems, monitoring is what enables us to action on the telemetry collected in a more automated way. Previous approaches to monitoring have relied primarily on infrastructure and service metrics, but modern approaches have embraced the idea of monitoring based on metrics that reflect the user experiences that consider business impact more accurately. In this, we're enabled to drive clarity over reliability targets, effectively prioritize reliability improvements, and hold ourselves accountability to customers.

This talk will elaborate on those differences and review traditional and new approaches to monitoring, including the role of Service Level Objectives (SLOs). Additionally, we’ll cover the following:
1. Observability vs Monitoring
2. Metrics and the types of Metrics & Monitors
3. The benefits of an SLO-based approach to monitoring
4. Effective Accountability with Error Budget Policies

Takeaways:

1. How observability is a more holistic and human centered, whereas monitoring is about automating away the tasks that enable us to effectively debug our applications.
2. Differentiated approaches to monitoring & alerting, e.g. traditional monitor based vs error budget based approaches.
3. How Error Budget Policies clarify reliability expectations to our users, and hold us accountable to delivering these experiences.
4. Acquiring buy-in from upper management across different stakeholder groups (product, engineering, business analysts, etc).