Why Observability Will Define Digital Resilience in 2026

Peter Marelas, Senior Director of Product Management at New Relic

“Today’s observability tools tell engineers what’s happening. In 2026 and beyond, observability platforms will go beyond dashboards and alerts; they will identify and action. The next wave of platforms will introduce autonomous AI agents capable of identifying issues, reasoning through causes, and initiating fixes in real time.

Human oversight will remain essential with new ‘critic agents’ that will validate proposed actions, manage ambiguity, and escalate complex issues to people when needed. Engineers will be able to focus on defining rules and boundaries that shape system behavior by teaching AI how to think, not just what to do. This shift will drastically reduce repetitive firefighting, allowing teams to focus on innovation, resilience and improved system performance.”