AI Agents Drive Up Telemetry Costs, Complicate Network Observability
Network World, Tuesday, October 20th, 2026
Splunk survey: 57% of organizations spend more on observability than on the infrastructure being monitored, and AI agents add more data.
Cisco Splunk's State of Observability 2026 report, based on a survey of 2,050 IT operations and engineering professionals, found that 57% of organizations have observability costs that exceed the cost of the infrastructure they monitor.
Splunk says a production AI agent emits four to five times more telemetry than a traditional application, covering workflows, tool calls, context and model interactions.
Noisy logs (31%) and high-cardinality metrics (27%) remain the biggest cost drivers, ahead of AI infrastructure.
The report found that 38% of organizations have cut telemetry coverage or retention to control costs, which can create blind spots for later troubleshooting.