AWS has transformed CloudWatch into a unified observability platform that consolidates operational, security, and compliance logs across multi-account environments. The update introduces Apache Iceberg-compatible access through S3 Tables, enabling in-place querying without ETL pipelines, and native support for OCSF and OpenTelemetry standards. CloudWatch now aggregates logs from AWS services and third-party sources like CrowdStrike and Okta, offering natural language queries and multiple query languages through a single interface. While this positions CloudWatch as a potential alternative to Splunk and Datadog for AWS-centric organizations with lower costs, critics note it primarily replicates existing capabilities with tighter AWS ecosystem integration.
Sort: