Guest: Brian Singer (LinkedIn)
Company: Nobl9
Show Name: An Eye on AI
Topic: Observability

In a world where digital services depend on hundreds of interconnected systems, reliability isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s everything. Yet many organizations still treat Service Level Objectives (SLOs) as static, one-time exercises. Nobl9’s new capability, SLO Oversight, is changing that by bringing visibility, accountability, and lifecycle management to the core of reliability engineering.

In this conversation, Brian Singer, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Nobl9, shares why keeping SLOs fresh is critical for any enterprise that relies on data-driven reliability decisions.

Why “Set and Forget” Fails

As Singer explains, SLOs too often go stale. Teams define them once, tie them to a few dashboards, and move on — only to discover months later that those metrics no longer reflect the real user experience. “It’s very easy for SLOs and reliability work in general to become stale,” he said. “You set them up once, and then nobody reviews them. It’s hard to tell if they’re still relevant.”

This is more than an operational issue. When teams don’t revisit SLOs, they start making reliability decisions based on outdated data. That leads to misguided priorities, wasted effort, and potential blind spots when incidents occur.

Introducing SLO Oversight

SLO Oversight adds a structured framework to keep SLOs accurate and trustworthy. At its core is an oversight dashboard that shows the operational health of services alongside the quality of the SLOs tracking them. The platform automatically identifies when an SLO might be obsolete or misaligned with current conditions.

For example, anomaly detection can flag when an SLO’s data stops flowing — as happened during a recent AWS outage. “We had customers who didn’t technically go down, but still experienced customer impact,” Singer said. “SLO Oversight detects those anomalies, marks them for review, and makes sure teams act before the next incident hits.”

Beyond Observability

Some might ask whether observability tools already cover this ground. Singer draws a clear distinction: “Observability gathers data. SLO management tells you what that data means for your users.” Nobl9’s approach doesn’t replace observability; it complements it by adding a layer of impact analysis.

Traditional observability can surface millions of telemetry points, but without a clear link to user experience, teams struggle to prioritize what matters. SLO Oversight bridges that gap — helping engineers, SREs, and business stakeholders align on what’s truly driving customer satisfaction and reliability.

Standardizing Reliability Across Teams

One of the biggest challenges in scaling SLO adoption is organizational inconsistency. Some teams adopt SLOs enthusiastically, while others lag behind. Without common practices and ownership, the process stalls.

Nobl9’s SLO Oversight introduces review cycles and ownership structures within the platform, ensuring every SLO has a responsible owner and a scheduled review date. This built-in cadence helps organizations move from ad hoc reliability management to a disciplined, company-wide reliability culture.

Singer emphasized that this kind of consistency is key to unlocking value from SLOs: “You might have one team doing SLOs right, but if their dependencies aren’t, everything slows down. Oversight gives leaders a way to see where things stand, identify what’s outdated, and take action.”

Turning Reliability Into a Business Metric

Reliability isn’t just an engineering concern anymore — it’s a business metric that affects everything from user retention to infrastructure spending. Nobl9 customers are using SLO data not only to improve uptime but also to optimize costs.

“We’re seeing direct financial value,” Singer said. “Teams are making smarter tradeoffs about where to invest. They can even turn off unnecessary infrastructure when it’s not needed — and do it safely because the SLOs tell them it’s okay.”

SLO Oversight helps companies quantify that reliability value, connecting the dots between uptime, performance, and real business outcomes.

What’s Next for Nobl9

After six years of building the plumbing for SLOs, Nobl9 is now entering what Singer calls its “second generation.” The focus is shifting from helping individual teams adopt SLOs to driving sustained, organization-wide reliability improvement.

For site reliability engineers (SREs), that means less firefighting and more strategic impact. “SREs often don’t carry the pager themselves,” Singer noted. “They’re responsible for overall reliability without direct control of all the services. SLO Oversight gives them the data and context they need to guide the organization — not just react to incidents.”

In short, SLO Oversight transforms reliability from a reactive metric into a proactive management discipline.