Your team knows something is wrong the moment the alerts start firing. What they don’t know — at least not right away — is why. If your database operations workflow still involves jumping between dashboards, correlating alerts manually, and spending up to 15 minutes piecing together a probable root cause, you’re not alone. That’s the reality for most teams today, and it’s exactly what Foglight AI Insights is built to change.
We’re excited to announce the general availability of Foglight AI Insights, a conversational AI add-on for Foglight Cloud that simplifies complex database investigations by allowing users to ask questions to bring analysis, SQL performance insights, and operational intelligence into a single experience. Whether you’re a DBA chasing a blocking query at 2 a.m. or an operations lead trying to understand the business impact of a critical alarm, Foglight AI Insights gives you answers in seconds, not minutes.
“Foglight AI Insights reduces investigation time from 5 to 15 minutes down to less than 30 seconds, and compresses new user onboarding from 40 hours to approximately one hour.”
Why database investigation takes too long
Most monitoring tools are built to surface problems. Very few are built to explain them. The result is a familiar workflow: an alert fires, your team opens several dashboards, manually correlates alarms with SQL activity and infrastructure metrics, and starts forming a hypothesis — all while the clock is ticking and application performance continues to degrade.
As database environments grow more distributed and complex, and as DBA teams are asked to manage more with fewer people, this process is becoming slower and harder to scale. The cost is real. A single hour of downtime costs more than $300,000 for mid-size and large enterprises, according to ITIC’s 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey.1 Getting to root cause faster is not just an operational improvement — it’s a financial imperative.
What is Foglight AI Insights?
Foglight AI Insights is a conversational AI experience powered by your Foglight monitoring data. Instead of navigating multiple dashboards to find answers, you ask questions using natural language and get contextual, guided responses in seconds.
It extends Foglight’s deep database monitoring capabilities across three critical outcomes:
Faster database troubleshooting. Ask questions that automatically connect alarms, SQL activity, topology, and infrastructure metrics.
Broader access to database insights. Enable DBAs, SREs, operations teams, and executives to access operational intelligence through role-based experiences — no deep database expertise required.
Connect technical issues to business impact. Understand the operational context and potential business consequences of database issues so your team can prioritize what matters most.
Foglight AI Insights reduces investigation time from 5 to 15 minutes down to less than 30 seconds, and compresses new user onboarding from 40 hours to approximately one hour. It is available now as an add-on to Foglight Cloud.
Explore how Foglight AI Insights simplifies database investigations through conversational AI.
Faster troubleshooting: from alerts to answers
When a critical alarm fires, the last thing you need is to manually navigate five dashboards to build a theory. With Foglight AI Insights you can use natural language to ask questions that automatically connect alarms, SQL activity, topology, and infrastructure metrics. For example, ask “Why is my production database x slow now?” and within seconds you get a response that identifies the likely cause, explains what it means, and recommends where to focus next.
Beyond root cause analysis, the conversational AI experience extends to SQL performance. You can quickly identify expensive queries and performance bottlenecks across all your database instances using natural language, and receive query optimization recommendations to accelerate tuning cycles — without requiring deep SQL expertise to get started.
Broader access to database insights
Traditional monitoring tools were built for expert DBAs. Today, business teams, SREs, operations managers, and executives all need direct access to operational intelligence — and the bottleneck of routing every question through a DBA is no longer sustainable.
Foglight AI Insights makes database monitoring accessible through role-based conversational experiences. DBAs get deep diagnostic context. Operations teams get clear summaries and prioritized issue lists. Executives get the business-level visibility they need to make informed decisions without depending on a technical intermediary. Dynamic dashboards and visualizations are available on demand through natural language — no configuration required.
Connect technical issues to business impact
One of the persistent gaps in database operations is the distance between what a technical alert says and what it means for the business. Teams need to know not just that a problem exists, but how severe it is, which services are affected, and whether it requires immediate escalation or can wait.
Foglight AI Insights adds operational and business context to alerts. Severity analysis and business context mapping surface the downstream consequences of technical problems, so your team knows the stakes and can act accordingly.
Built on Foglight’s deep monitoring foundation
Foglight AI Insights uses Foglight’s deep database monitoring and performance analysis capabilities, which means the answers you get are grounded in high-fidelity, real-time data from across your database environment.
For teams already running Foglight, Foglight AI Insights extends that investment rather than replacing it. For teams evaluating database monitoring solutions, the ability to combine deep cross-domain visibility with an AI-powered investigation experience is a meaningful advantage over assembling generic APM tools that lack database depth.
Get started with Foglight AI Insights
Foglight AI Insights is available now as an add-on for Foglight. If you’re already a Foglight customer, reach out to Quest for info on getting started. If you’re evaluating your options, this is a good time to see what Foglight and Foglight AI Insights can do together.
Sources:
- ITIC, “2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey,” September 2024
