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Shakespeare might've pondered Internet interconnectivity if he was a modern wizard, as he wrote about the witches in Macbeth, who longed for a time when their responsibilities would ease after the "hurlyburly" of keeping enterprise networks online. Today, Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) navigate these challenges, striving to keep websites reliable amidst the chaos of daily operations.
The Witches' Cauldron: The Rise of AI and Toil
In keeping with the witches' theme, Catchpoint, an Internet performance monitoring company, found that toil levels in modern enterprise IT stacks have been increasing despite AI implementations. The 2025 SRE report reveals that after five years of decline, the median reported percentage of "work spent on toil" has risen from 25% in 2024 to 30%. This trend poses questions about the practical impact of AI on daily workloads.
Catchpoint also argues that slow performance is as harmful as downtime for enterprises. They found that poor performance negatively impacts user experience, making it a crucial reliability metric for businesses.
Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of Catchpoint, notes that the key to success lies in embracing SRE as a facilitator of outcomes, not just a technical enhancement process. However, many organizations prioritize release schedules over reliability due to escalating performance expectations.
The Real IT Team Challenges: Agility vs. Stability
Two main operational hurdles impact today's network-connected IT teams. First, over two-thirds of professionals surveyed by Catchpoint admit to frequently prioritizing application releases over reliability, indicating the ongoing struggle between agility and stability.
Second, the plethora of monitoring tools used by modern enterprises can result in "too many cooks spoiling the broth." The sheer number of tools in use can lead to misalignment and confusion, reducing overall effectiveness.
The Exacerbation of Toil
To Catchpoint's surprise, their report found that the burden of operational tasks had increased for the first time in five years. Leo Vasiliou, the report's author, attributes this to the misalignment in reliability priorities between IT departments and business management.
Catchpoint discovered that incident response is a shared responsibility across all business levels. Some 40% of respondents report managing between one to five incidents in the previous 30 days.
Internet at its Core: Monitoring, Restoring, Innovating
Catchpoint's primary mission is to monitor the health and wealth of web pipes, aiming to provide high-fidelity data and visualizations with advanced analytics. They offer tools like real user monitoring (RUM), tracing, and "Internet synthetics" to help businesses ensure their IT services function optimally under various coverage conditions.
The Silence of Disconnect: Balancing agility and Reliability
In light of these reports, we can learn that the key challenges facing enterprises involve balancing the need for continuous improvement and the impact of performance on user experience. Tools like those provided by Catchpoint can help in monitoring, restoring, and innovating to ensure a reliable and efficient digital presence.
- Enrichment data highlights the impact of AI on daily workloads, noting that, despite expectations, AI has yet to significantly reduce toil levels in modern enterprise IT stacks. The report also emphasizes the ongoing struggle to balance agility and stability while using monitoring tools effectively.
Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) might find the results of Catchpoint's 2025 report concerning, as it indicates a rise in the median reported percentage of "work spent on toil" from 25% in 2024 to 30%, despite AI implementations in the industry.
Catchpoint, an Internet performance monitoring company, has argued that slow performance is as harmful as downtime for enterprises, negatively impacting user experience and making it a crucial reliability metric.
Reference(s):The Witches' Cauldron: The Rise of AI and ToilThe Real IT Team Challenges: Agility vs. StabilityThe Exacerbation of ToilInternet at its Core: Monitoring, Restoring, InnovatingThe Silence of Disconnect: Balancing agility and Reliability
