Gartner Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies 2024: Top Takeaways and Trends

By Amit SharmaDecember 26, 2024

If you missed this year’s Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference—or simply want a quick refresher—we’ve got you covered. Below are our key insights, hot topics, and standout trends from industry experts who took the stage in Las Vegas.

For the third year in a row, the Observe team was at full strength at this conference, and we enjoyed sharing how our AI-Powered Observability is shaping the future of I&O, guiding strategic decision-making, and helping teams stay ahead in a world continually transformed by AI and cloud innovation.

1. AI Will Be the Foundation of Next-Generation IT Operations

In the opening keynote, Gartner emphasized AI’s role as the cornerstone of modern IT operations. From proactive incident detection to automated incident response, AI-driven tools will shape the infrastructure landscape.

Our Take

  • Use Agentic AI for Faster Resolutions
    Observe is innovating by setting the vision for Agentic AI in Observability. AI Investigator goes beyond chatbots and copilots. AI agents analyze system behaviors, detect anomalies, and suggest root-cause hypotheses, empowering on-call engineers to tackle the complexity of incidents in distributed systems.


Read more about O11y AI Investigator here.

  • Accelerate Data Exploration with Conversational Language
    Effortlessly explore observability data—including logs, metrics, and traces—using O11y Copilot. Craft powerful queries in the Observe Processing and Analytics Language (OPAL) simply by conversing in natural language.
  • Privacy-First Large Language Model
    Observe LLM, trained specifically on OPAL, generates and executes queries without any data leaving your organization’s boundaries, ensuring complete data privacy and compliance.

2. Observability Is the Central Nervous System for Your Applications

In his session, Observability Is the Central Nervous System for Your Applications, Matt Crossley, Sr. Director Analyst at Gartner, encouraged attendees to think holistically about their monitoring strategies and evolve to Observability, which can provide deeper insights into the internal state of systems.

Our Take

  • Unified Observability for the Entire Tech Stack
    Observe unifies infrastructure monitoring, application performance management, log analytics, and front-end observability so teams can quickly detect and isolate problems, determine root causes, and resolve issues faster than ever before—no matter where they occur. Powered by a cloud-native architecture, Observe delivers an unparalleled combination of fast performance, effortless scalability, and dramatically lower costs.

3. Achieve Adaptive Delivery with Agility, Speed, and Resilience

Success in the digital era hinges on delivering better experiences, faster. Gartner urged attendees to embrace a mindset that combines infrastructure platform engineering (IPE) and site reliability engineering (SRE) with lean, Agile principles to continuously optimize infrastructure and delivery pipelines.

Our Take

  • Automate Everything
    Use AI technologies that keep humans in the loop but automate all repetitive tasks to drive up efficiency in I&O functions.
  • Learn From Production
    Move beyond firefighting and adopt a “learn, improve, optimize” culture.

4. OpenTelemetry Is Going Mainstream

In his session about the Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms, a VP Analyst at Gartner discussed the rapid momentum of OpenTelemetry. It has quickly evolved from a promising open-source project into a ubiquitous observability standard embraced by developers and organizations worldwide. From cloud-native startups to large enterprises, organizations see the value in reducing complexity and cost by consolidating disparate tooling, ultimately accelerating their journey toward building resilient, high-performing systems. As more services and platforms integrate OpenTelemetry natively, it stands at the forefront of modern observability, driving the industry’s transition toward truly holistic monitoring strategies.

Our Take

  • OpenTelemetry enables developers to instrument and collect telemetry data in a vendor-agnostic way. By unifying traces, metrics, and logs through standardized protocols and semantic conventions, OpenTelemetry simplifies the gathering and correlation of essential data, fostering a culture of proactive observability and rapid issue resolution.


Learn more about Observe’s distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector here.

5. The Hybrid, Distributed Future

Organizations are increasingly splitting their workloads between on-premises, edge, and multi-cloud environments. Gartner provided a glimpse into a near-future world where infrastructure is everywhere—and seamlessly interconnected.

Our Take

  • Plan for Distributed Environments
    Choose platforms such as Kubernetes that provide portability across different cloud providers and on-premises deployments.

Observe just released Kubernetes Explorer, a purpose-built Observability solution for Kubernetes that simplifies monitoring and troubleshooting Kubernetes-deployed workloads.

Read more about Kubernetes Explorer here.

Reflecting on the 2024 Conference & What’s Next

The Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference offered a wealth of expert insights on shaping the next generation of IT. From AI adoption and SRE best practices to cost optimization and security-by-design, the event highlighted the changing role of I&O leaders as both technologists and strategic partners.

If you attended, don’t forget to replay the sessions on Conference Navigator to dive deeper into the topics that matter most to you. If you missed this year, mark your calendars for next year’s conference:

December 9 – 11, 2025 in Las Vegas, NV

The Observe team will once again be at full strength next year at Gartner IOCS 2025 to partner with you on your Observability journey.