05/28/25 | EverOps
A Guide to Unlocking Business Intelligence with Custom Metrics and Predictive Insights Using Datadog
The way businesses make decisions is undergoing a fundamental shift. Today’s forward-thinking leaders are moving beyond outdated methods, replacing gut instinct and boardroom intuition with data-driven insights and advanced analytics. This isn’t a passing trend or empty buzz. It marks a new era in how organizations operate and compete.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, 65% of B2B sales organizations will fully adopt data-driven strategies. This movement is gaining speed thanks to the rise of virtual selling and the growing demand for measurable results. Advanced analytics is now central to this transformation, offering deeper visibility into customer behavior, operational performance, and changing market dynamics. With the rise of ‘analytics as a service’ (AaaS), these capabilities are now more accessible than ever.
Datadog is a leading platform that enables teams to put advanced analytics into action. From custom metrics to predictive insights, they offer powerful tools to help you go beyond traditional monitoring and turn your data into a competitive advantage. In this guide, you’ll learn how to harness these capabilities to make smarter decisions, uncover hidden trends, and stay ahead of what’s next.
The big data analytics market is on a meteoric rise, highlighting the pivotal role of data-driven insights in modern commerce. As companies increasingly harness the power of information, the ability to extract meaningful patterns from vast data sets has become game-changing across all industries.
In 2023, the global big data analytics market was valued at an impressive $225.3 billion. However, this is just the beginning. Projections indicate that by 2033, the market will reach a staggering $650 billion, representing a nearly threefold increase in less than a decade.
This remarkable growth is driven by organizations recognizing the power of data to fuel innovation, optimize performance, and gain a competitive edge. As businesses generate and collect unprecedented volumes of data, the ability to extract meaningful insights has become a key differentiator in the market.
As we move forward, the importance of advanced analytics will only continue to grow. Organizations that effectively harness these tools will be better positioned to anticipate market trends, optimize operations, and deliver superior customer experiences.
In the realm of application performance monitoring, the ability to capture and analyze data that’s uniquely relevant to your business can be significant. While out-of-the-box metrics provide a solid foundation, they often fall short of addressing the specific nuances of your application and business goals.
This is where custom metrics come into play, offering a powerful way to tailor your monitoring approach to your exact needs. By integrating custom metrics, you can unlock a wealth of insights that directly align with your business objectives, enabling more targeted optimizations and informed decision-making.
Standard metrics offer a helpful starting point, but they often overlook the nuances of individual businesses. Custom metrics let teams monitor what matters most, whether that’s tracking user conversions, load time on high-traffic pages, or internal KPIs, giving leaders data they can act on.
Let’s consider a real-world scenario to illustrate the power of custom metrics. Imagine an e-commerce company seeking to gain insights into user engagement within its web application. Standard metrics might provide general information about page views and session durations, but they fail to capture the specific actions and behaviors that are crucial to the company’s success.
By defining custom metrics such as “add_to_cart_count” and “checkout_completion_time,” the e-commerce company can track and analyze the most relevant aspects of user engagement.
Here’s how these custom metrics provide value:
These custom metrics allow the e-commerce company to focus on the specific data points that directly impact their business performance, enabling more targeted improvements and strategic decision-making.
Datadog offers a flexible and powerful API that enables you to integrate custom metrics into your monitoring ecosystem seamlessly.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to implementing custom metrics using Datadog’s API:
Here’s a code snippet demonstrating how to implement custom metrics using Python:
| from Datadog import initialize, statsd options = { ‘api_key’: ‘<YOUR_API_KEY>’, ‘app_key’: ‘<YOUR_APP_KEY>’ } initialize(**options) # Track a custom event statsd.increment(‘web_app.user_signup’) statsd.histogram(‘web_app.page_load_time’, 200) |
Once you’ve implemented custom metrics, the next step is to visualize them effectively.
Datadog’s dashboards provide a powerful platform for bringing your custom metrics to life, enabling you to gain quick insights at a glance.
To incorporate custom metrics into your dashboards, complete the following:
For example, you might create a line graph showing the trend of your “add_to_cart_count” metric over time or a heat map displaying the distribution of “checkout_completion_time” throughout the day.
To truly leverage the power of custom metrics, it’s crucial to stay informed about significant changes or anomalies. Datadog’s alerting system allows you to set up notifications for when your custom metrics breach certain thresholds or exhibit unusual behavior.
To set up alerts for your custom metrics:
By setting up these alerts, you ensure that you’re always aware of significant changes in your custom metrics, allowing for quick responses to potential issues or opportunities.
Predictive analytics in Datadog offers a transformative approach to monitoring, allowing organizations to stay one step ahead of potential issues. By analyzing historical data and employing sophisticated machine learning algorithms, Datadog’s predictive capabilities enable businesses to forecast trends, identify anomalies before they become problems, and set up alerts that anticipate future needs.
Imagine never having to scramble to free up disk space again. With predictive analytics, you can do just that.
Now, let’s consider how this might work for managing storage capacity. By analyzing past usage patterns, Datadog can help project future disk space needs, providing ample time to plan and act. This foresight allows companies to avoid the fire drills often associated with sudden storage shortages. This ensures systems run smoothly and teams can focus on more strategic tasks.
For this, users should:
To start:
With these alerts in place, you’ll receive early warnings about potential issues, allowing you to take action before problems arise. By embracing predictive analytics with Datadog, systems are not just being monitored—they’re being predicted. This proactive stance can lead to improved stability, more efficient resource allocation, and ultimately, a better user experience.
In data analytics, the magic often happens at the intersection of different approaches.
Combining custom metrics with predictive analytics creates a powerful synergy that offers more than just the sum of its parts. This integration provides a comprehensive view of businesses, tracking unique indicators while forecasting future trends.
Let’s explore how this potent combination can elevate your analytics strategy and drive your business forward.
When you combine custom metrics and predictive analytics, you’re not just adding two powerful tools, but you’re creating a whole new level of insight. This combination allows organizations to track the unique aspects of the business and forecast how they might evolve.
To paint a picture of how this might look in the e-commerce world, imagine running an online store and wanting to understand the customer’s journey.
By creating custom metrics for things like “time spent browsing,” “items added to wishlist,” and “cart abandonment rate,” you’re already getting a unique view of your customers’ behavior.
Now add predictive analytics into the mix. You’re no longer just reviewing yesterday’s behavior. You’re anticipating tomorrow’s trends. This foresight allows you to forecast product demand, prepare for traffic spikes, and optimize customer engagement ahead of time.
To effectively achieve this, users should:
Users get to see real results when they start using these insights to drive action. For example:
The key is to move from reactive to proactive, using your combined insights to stay ahead of the curve.
While the benefits of advanced analytics are clear, many organizations still struggle to embrace data-driven decision-making fully, and the journey from data collection to actionable insights isn’t always smooth sailing.
Here’s a candid look at the current industry and strategies to overcome these common hurdles.
Despite widespread interest in becoming data-driven, many companies remain early in their journey. Recent studies show that only 25% of organizations consider themselves truly data-driven, and fewer than 40% believe they effectively manage data as a strategic asset.
This highlights a significant gap between aspiration and reality in the world of data analytics. As a result, many organizations have the tools but struggle to translate data into meaningful action.
So, how can your organization bridge this gap and truly harness the power of advanced analytics? By:
It is helpful to know that becoming a truly data-driven organization doesn’t happen overnight. It requires long-term commitment, a culture shift, and the courage to rethink traditional decision-making processes. But for those willing to invest in the right tools, talent, and strategies, the payoff can be transformative while offering a potent competitive edge.
As we stand on the cusp of a new era in data analytics, it’s clear that the future of monitoring is not just about tracking metrics. It’s about extracting actionable intelligence from the wealth of data at our fingertips.
By embracing these advanced analytics capabilities, organizations can move from guesswork to data-driven decision-making. With tools like Datadog, businesses are well-positioned to ride this wave of innovation and turn data into a competitive advantage.
Are you ready to step into this future? The world of advanced analytics awaits, promising a new level of insight, efficiency, and innovation in how we monitor and manage our digital ecosystems.
As organizations embrace advanced analytics, many still struggle to turn raw data into meaningful, actionable insights. EverOps helps bridge that gap.
Our unique TechPod model embeds seasoned technologists directly into your team, combining hands-on expertise in platforms like Datadog with a deep understanding of how to align observability with your specific business goals. We don’t just recommend best practices—we roll up our sleeves and help implement them in a way that drives measurable outcomes.
By partnering with EverOps, you’ll gain tailored strategies, on-demand expertise, and a proactive approach that evolves with your needs. Whether you’re building out custom metrics, deploying predictive analytics, or translating technical data into business impact, we ensure your observability efforts deliver real value.
Ready to move from monitoring to momentum? Contact us today and let’s explore how we can help transform your approach.
Custom metrics are user-defined data points that track specific aspects of your business or application. They’re essential because they allow you to monitor and analyze data that’s uniquely relevant to your organization, providing insights that standard metrics might miss.
Predictive analytics in Datadog uses machine learning algorithms to analyze historical data and forecast future trends. This allows you to anticipate potential issues or opportunities before they occur, enabling proactive decision-making.
Combining these strategies provides a comprehensive view of your systems, allowing you to both track unique business indicators and forecast their future trends. This synergy enables more informed, forward-thinking decision-making.
EverOps helps by implementing tailored strategies for custom metrics and predictive analytics, providing expertise in tools like Datadog, and helping you translate technical data into business value. We address common challenges like data overload and alert fatigue.
Yes, EverOps has expertise in a wide range of observability tools, including Datadog, New Relic, and Dynatrace. We can help you optimize your existing setup or guide you in selecting and implementing new tools as needed.
To get started, simply reach out to us through our website or contact information. We’ll set up an initial consultation to understand your needs and goals, and then propose a tailored approach to elevate your observability journey.