Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

AI costs are changing. As noted by research from EY, outputs that cost just $0.04 in 2023 now cost $1.20, a 30x increase over just three years. It’s worth noting that task operations and complexity have also changed. In 2023, the process was simple. Users input a question, retrieval engines found relevant data, and AI models returned a response. Today, many tasks are handled by orchestrated AI agents capable of much more complex reasoning and analysis.

I recently heard a song that was written by a girl but sung and composed by AI. It left me confused— I'm not sure if I liked it. I was a bit prejudiced and automatically hated it because it was composed by AI. Similar to many works of AI, it had a rhythm, but it was too repetitive and lacked emotions. This made me think about all the other forms of art that might be created by AI, and it left me with a bitter feeling.

Teams often track operational work across spreadsheets, Slack threads, Jira tickets, and whatever system generated the original alert or signal. This fragmentation makes it difficult to maintain a consistent record of what needs attention, who or what is addressing the issue, and what has already happened. As AI agents take on more responsibility for investigations, triage, and code changes, the number of handoffs grows, making ownership, status, and history even harder to preserve.

Vibe coding made building software feel almost too accessible. You describe what you want, an AI assistant scaffolds it, and a few hours later, something is running. So, it was only a matter of time before developers started asking the obvious question: why should I pay for a monitoring tool when I can just build my own? In all fairness, the DIY instinct is a healthy one. But monitoring is one of the last corners you’d want to cut.