ServiceNow acquired observability and log management software maker Era Software this week, adding to the list of companies it has acquired to enhance its flagship Now platform.
Last year, SeviceNow bought Lightstep, makers of cloud-native software that collects and analyzes data on infrastructure, applications and third-party software. Together, the two offerings will offer users a more unified observability offering that is easier to scale, ServiceNow said.
Observing approaches in larger organizations continue to converge, leading to a fragmented experience for DevOps teams, ServiceNow officials believe. The combination of Era Software’s user-centric approach to log management combined with Lightstep’s features can prevent this fragmentation.
Company officials believe that a unified approach to observability software is a key ingredient in helping users’ digital transformation projects succeed.
Lightstep is a founding member of the OpenTelemetry project, an open source project dedicated to vision unified telemetry. The organization believes that a unified approach to telemetry enables development teams to innovate faster and with greater precision and control thereby helping users realize the potential of their digital transformations project.
Observability software allows users to reach deeper into the technology stack for data, said Carlos Casanova, principal analyst at Forrester Research. The complicating factor, however, is that users are dealing with hybrid environments that span multiple clouds and on-premise locations, he said.
“This is why vendors who want to solidify a position in the fast-moving observability market must expand their native capabilities to observe the rapidly changing IT environment in real-time,” said Casanova. “Era Software’s ServiceNow acquisition appears to reinforce its other acquisitions in this arena over the past several years.”
Some of those acquisitions include Hitch Works, DotWalk, Mapwize and Gekkobrain.
But the key to the success of the acquisition is ServiceNow’s ability to seamlessly integrate several code bases to deliver a reliable offering that runs smoothly with the Now Platform and the other acquired products. Perhaps the best route to do this is to rebuild the product from scratch on a new platform, which presents some challenges.
“Rebuilding it requires a large number of resources but it can greatly improve quality and usability compared to combining disparate code bases,” Casanova said. “Delivering the newly acquired functionality on the Now platform without additional overhead will determine how successful the Era Software acquisition will be for users.”
A recent report from IDC forecasts that the observability market will grow to $9.08 billion by 2025.
Financial terms of the ServiceNow-Era Software deal were not disclosed.
As Editor At Large with TechTarget’s News Group, Ed Scannell is responsible for writing and reporting breaking news, news analysis and features focused on technology issues and trends affecting corporate IT professionals.