Daniel Mello’s Post

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Engineering Manager, Delivery Manager, DevOps & DevSecOps Manager, Project Manager

Open Source vs SaaS in Observability: What’s Really at Stake? In recent years, many organizations have faced the same dilemma: should we manage our own observability stack or rely on a fully managed SaaS service? At first glance, it may seem like a purely technical decision, but in practice, it’s much more than that... It’s a strategic, cultural, and organizational choice. Running your own open-source stack is, in a way, like building the house you live in... You choose every material, every detail, and understand the foundations intimately... You gain full control, flexibility to adapt to your context, and the freedom to evolve without being tied to commercial cycles. But with that freedom comes responsibility: maintenance, upgrades, hidden costs, training, incidents, the constant effort to ensure the house is not only beautiful but also strong enough to withstand time and storms... On the other hand, choosing a SaaS observability stack is like renting a modern apartment in a well-managed building... Everything works, support is available, and the team can focus on delivering business value instead of maintaining infrastructure... It’s predictable, efficient, and accelerates innovation. Yet, that convenience comes at a cost: less control, limited flexibility, and a certain distance from the technical foundation, which, in the long run, can limit deep learning and adaptability. In the end, the real question may not be “which is better” but “which makes more sense for the organization’s current stage and maturity.” Because no tool, no matter how advanced, can replace a strong observability culture, cross-team alignment, and a mindset of continuous improvement. True observability doesn’t live only in metrics, logs, or traces, it lives in people, in their decisions, and in how they take ownership of building a more resilient, predictable, and efficient ecosystem. And perhaps the best path forward is combining the best of both worlds: leveraging the openness of self-managed tools to learn and customize, and the stability of SaaS when the focus shifts to scaling and delivering value faster. In the end, it’s not just a technology decision... It’s a decision about strategy, autonomy, and purpose... #Observability #OpenSource #SaaS #TechLeadership #EngineeringCulture #DevOps #SiteReliabilityEngineering #DigitalTransformation #Innovation #SystemResilience #Monitoring #CloudStrategy #Scalability #TechStrategy #ContinuousImprovement

Amanda Silva de Souza

Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Bradesco | AWS Community Builder | AWS User Group Leader | Observability | DevOps | Cloud Architect | Agile Coach | PO

1w

Exactly! 🥰

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