Expert Events

Protecting Margins at Scale: Taming Cloud-Native & AI Telemetry Costs

Name: Protecting Margins at Scale: Taming Cloud-Native & AI Telemetry Costs
Start: 2026-10-28T12:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-10-28T13:30:00-04:00
Location: Virtual

Join Blend and Cortex XCOR by Palo Alto Networks for an exclusive virtual roundtable exploring the rising costs of cloud-native and AI-driven observability. Discover how engineering leaders can manage telemetry growth, reduce unnecessary spend, maintain system reliability and build sustainable observability strategies.

Virtual

October 28, 2026

to October 28, 2026

12:00 pm

- 1:30 pm

About this event

Cloud-native architectures already produce enormous amounts of telemetry. GenAI is adding another dimension to the challenge, increasing both the cardinality and volume of observability data while introducing new workloads whose behavior and costs can be difficult to predict. For engineering leaders, the result is a growing economic problem: observability budgets can rise faster than the business value the additional data delivers.

Simply collecting less isn’t necessarily the answer. Aggressive filtering can create dangerous blind spots, while indiscriminate collection can leave organizations paying to ingest, store, and analyze enormous volumes of data they may never use. The challenge is establishing greater control over the telemetry lifecycle: understanding what data is valuable, filtering low-value signals at ingestion, managing trace depth intelligently, and allocating observability spend where it produces the greatest operational value.

Join Blend and Cortex XCOR by Palo Alto Networks for an intimate virtual roundtable exploring the changing economics of observability in the AI era. Through candid peer discussion, we’ll examine how organizations are controlling telemetry growth, protecting reliability while reducing cost, governing observability spend across teams, and using AI itself to identify waste and optimize an increasingly complex telemetry footprint.

Our speakers

Andrew Tunall

VP, Observability Product Management | Cortex XCOR by Palo Alto Networks

Andrew is a VP, Product at Palo Alto Networks. He has a wealth of experience in product leadership and building innovative, cloud-scale software in observability and cloud computing, serving many of the world’s largest and most innovative brands. Prior to Palo Alto, he was President and Chief Product Officer at Embrace, which was acquired by Palo Alto in August 2026. Before that, he was VP of Product at New Relic where he built New Relic’s cloud observability practice, and then led product for APM, Infrastructure, and Digital Experience Monitoring among other areas. Prior to New Relic, Andrew worked for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Edge Services, working extensively with digital and media companies.

Colin Cosell

Head of New York & Boston Community | Blend

Colin Cosell is a professional emcee, announcer, and executive communications expert with more than 25 years of experience across television, radio, film, stage, and corporate events. When he’s not at the lectern or moderating executive panels, Colin serves as the Public Address Announcer for the New York Mets, Army Football, the Premier Lacrosse League, and numerous other professional and collegiate teams. Over the course of his career, Colin has earned three Emmy Awards and has announced to more than 30 million attendees worldwide. His greatest source of pride, however, are his wife, Julia, and their little girl, Eloise.

Key themes & discussion topics

Managing the Rising Cost of AI and Cloud-Native Telemetry
How GenAI workloads are accelerating telemetry growth, increasing observability complexity and challenging traditional cost management strategies.

Optimising Telemetry Without Compromising Reliability
How organisations can identify and filter low-value observability data, reduce unnecessary ingestion and storage costs, and avoid creating critical visibility gaps.

Establishing Accountability and Governance for Observability Spend
How engineering and platform teams can allocate telemetry costs, establish effective governance frameworks and encourage financial accountability without slowing innovation.

Leveraging AI for Sustainable Observability
How AI-driven automation can identify redundant telemetry, optimise data collection, prevent unexpected cost overruns and support a more predictable observability model.

Event agenda

Welcome remarks

12:00 – 12:15 AM

Guided group discussion

12:15 – 13:15 PM

Closing thought & group reflection

13:15 – 13:30 PM

Why should you attend?

Gain practical insights into managing escalating telemetry volumes and protecting operational budgets as cloud-native and AI workloads expand.

Explore approaches to reducing unnecessary observability spend while maintaining the visibility needed to support performance, reliability and incident response.

Exchange experiences and strategies with fellow leaders navigating the challenges of observability governance, cloud economics and AI-driven infrastructure.

Discover how intelligent filtering, automated governance and AI-powered optimisation can help your organisation move towards scalable, cost-effective and sustainable observability.

Who should attend

This discussion is designed for senior technology and engineering leaders responsible for Engineering, Platform Engineering, Infrastructure, Cloud Architecture, SRE, Site Reliability, DevOps, and Observability. The conversation will be particularly valuable for leaders balancing cloud economics, observability cost, system reliability, developer productivity, and rapidly expanding AI workloads.

Relevant attendees include CTOs, VPs of Engineering, Platform Engineering and Infrastructure, Heads and Directors of Observability, Infrastructure Directors, Cloud Architecture leaders, SRE Directors, Site Reliability leaders, DevOps Managers, and Observability Managers.

Venue

Virtual

N/A

Apply to participate