ANZ outages cost up to USD $3 million per hour as firms fight tool sprawl
Australian and New Zealand organisations are experiencing significant hourly costs from high-impact IT outages, according to findings from a global observability survey released by New Relic.
The 2025 Observability Forecast surveyed more than 1,700 IT and engineering leaders and team members across 23 countries and 11 industries, documenting strategies, trends, and challenges around observability investments amid increased enterprise AI adoption. The report found that the median cost of a high-impact digital business outage is USD $2 million per hour globally, with nearly a third of organisations in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) citing hourly outage costs between USD $1 million and USD $3 million.
Growth in observability tools
Organisations across ANZ have reported substantial year-on-year growth in observability tools, with the deployment of database monitoring nearly doubling from 38% in 2024 to 74% in 2025. Alert systems rose from 41% to 73% over the same period, and dashboard adoption grew from 35% to 70%. This reflects a rapid maturation of observability practices in the region.
The survey also revealed that engineering teams in ANZ spend the lowest proportion of their time globally addressing service disruptions, with a median figure of 20%. This compares to averages of 31% across the Asia Pacific region, 26% in EMEA, and 25% in the Americas.
Ongoing challenges with tool sprawl
Despite improvements, challenges remain concerning the number of tools used. The survey found that 35% of respondents in ANZ still use five or more observability tools to manage their systems, with only 5% relying on a single platform. This has improved from 2024, when 57% reported using five or more tools, but tool fragmentation remains a key concern for over a third of organisations.
"While organisations across Australia and New Zealand are leaps and bounds ahead of their Asia-Pacific peers in terms of observability maturity, tool sprawl and fragmentation remain significant hurdles and are contributing to costly outages costs," said New Relic Senior Vice President and General Manager Asia Pacific, Rob Newell. "To stay ahead of the curve, businesses across Australia and New Zealand need to prioritise reducing tool sprawl and data siloes so engineers can detect and resolve critical issues fast. With high-business impact outages costing up to $3 million per hour in lost revenue, organisations can no longer ignore the costs associated with maintaining the status quo."
Financial impact and operational disruptions
The frequency and impact of outages are significant for ANZ businesses. A quarter report experiencing high-business-impact outages at least weekly, with 2% encountering them multiple times daily. Of these, nearly a third estimate the cost per hour between USD $1 million and USD $3 million, while 10% of organisations reportedly do not track the financial losses incurred during outages.
Detection and resolution times remain a challenge. For 21% of high-impact events, it takes between 30 and 60 minutes to identify the outage, while almost a quarter of organisations require another 30 to 60 minutes to resolve them. The cumulative cost for organisations experiencing such incidents weekly can be substantial.
Benefits and consolidation trends
Despite the disruptions, organisations across Australia and New Zealand report positive returns from investments in observability. About 32% noted returns of two to three times their spend, and the adoption of dashboards for monitoring KPIs almost doubled from 24% in 2024 to 47% in 2025. Key drivers for investment include security, governance, and compliance (35%), followed by AI adoption (32%), customer experience, and cost management (both at 26%).
The value of observability is gaining broader recognition within organisations. The report notes that 53% of executives believe observability helps them achieve business KPIs, a notable increase from 38% in previous years. Additionally, 45% of practitioners report increased productivity as a result of faster issue resolution.
Efforts to reduce tool sprawl are also evident in the survey data, which shows a 27% global decrease in the average number of observability solutions used per organisation between 2023 and 2025. Nearly half (48%) of organisations plan to further consolidate observability tooling in the year ahead, up from 31% the previous year. The preference for unified platforms is also growing, with 46% of respondents in New Zealand favouring a single solution.
The research was conducted in partnership with Enterprise Technology Research, which surveyed IT and engineering professionals and leaders across regions and industries.
