TL;DR
Snowflake announced plans to buy telemetry platform Observe to help customers detect and limit IT downtime, revealing the move the same day it suffered a major service outage. The company says it has not yet integrated Observe’s products, disclosed no price or closing timeline, and sees observability as increasingly important as application stacks and AI grow.
What happened
Snowflake revealed it will acquire telemetry data platform Observe with the stated aim of helping customers discover and mitigate IT issues before they cause downtime. The announcement coincided with Snowflake reporting two incidents: degraded performance affecting the Snowsight web interface and a “major outage” in its Azure West region; both were resolved in under two hours. Snowflake’s head of analytics, Carl Perry, said the company evaluated Observe’s tools favorably but has not yet put them into use internally. Snowflake did not disclose the purchase price or provide a timeline for closing the deal. Observe, which processed hundreds of petabytes of telemetry and reported rapid revenue and customer growth in 2025, previously raised funding in July 2025 — a round that included Snowflake as an investor. Snowflake framed the acquisition as focused on improving customers’ visibility and reducing the impact and duration of outages.
Why it matters
- Adding a telemetry platform could give Snowflake customers better tools to detect and remediate issues before they cause downtime.
- The deal highlights the growing importance of observability as systems and AI-driven components expand, increasing operational complexity.
- Snowflake’s own outages on the announcement day underscore the reputational stakes and the urgency of improving operational resilience.
- Observe’s approach — using low-cost cloud storage at scale — may lower barriers for customers to retain telemetry data needed for troubleshooting.
Key facts
- Snowflake announced plans to acquire Observe, a telemetry data and observability platform.
- The acquisition announcement came the same day Snowflake reported two incidents, including a major outage in its Azure West region.
- Both incidents reported that day were resolved in under two hours, according to Snowflake’s incident history.
- Carl Perry, Snowflake’s head of analytics, said Snowflake evaluated Observe positively but has not yet added Observe’s products to its internal tooling.
- Snowflake did not disclose the purchase price or a timeline for closing the transaction.
- Observe said in 2025 it had processed large volumes of telemetry (reported in the hundreds of petabytes) and had rapid revenue and enterprise-customer growth.
- Observe raised $156 million in July 2025; Snowflake was among investors in that round.
- Snowflake recorded multiple incidents in preceding months (two in December and four in November, per its status history).
- Rival Databricks also experienced outages around the same period, and its incident notifications are less detailed, according to the source.
What to watch next
- Exact purchase price and the deal-close timeline — not confirmed in the source.
- Whether Snowflake integrates Observe’s tooling into its own operational systems and when that will happen — not confirmed in the source.
- How the acquisition affects customers’ outage frequency and mean time to recovery (MTTR) metrics — not confirmed in the source.
Quick glossary
- Telemetry data: Operational signals and logs produced by systems, applications, and infrastructure that help engineers monitor behavior and diagnose issues.
- Observability: The practice and tooling that enable teams to understand and reason about system state from telemetry such as logs, metrics, and traces.
- Cloud storage: Remote storage resources provided over the internet, often used to hold large volumes of data with scalable capacity and pay-as-you-go pricing.
- Snowsight: Snowflake’s web-based user interface for accessing features, visualizations, and administrative tools.
Reader FAQ
Has Snowflake completed the purchase of Observe?
Not confirmed in the source; Snowflake announced it is buying Observe but did not provide a closing timeline.
Did Snowflake disclose the acquisition price?
No — the source states Snowflake did not disclose the purchase price.
Is Observe already being used inside Snowflake to prevent outages?
Snowflake has evaluated Observe and views it positively but has not yet added its products to internal repair kits.
Were customers impacted by the outages mentioned?
Yes — Snowflake acknowledged customer impact from both reported incidents; each was resolved in under two hours.
SAAS Snowflake to buy Observe to mitigate customer downtime, as it reckons with its own Resets 'Days Since Last Outage' counter to zero, aspires to do the same for everyone,…
Sources
- Snowflake to buy Observe to mitigate customer downtime, as it reckons with its own
- Snowflake to Acquire Observe for Enhanced Data Observability
- Snowflake to acquire Observe for AI-powered …
- Snowflake Announces Intent to Acquire Observe to Deliver …
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