Application Insights — The Most Underused Azure Service, Here’s Why

Application Insights is one of the most critical Azure services for managing and reducing operational risks in IT solutions.

Yet, despite being available for over a decade, it remains misunderstood, poorly utilized, and underappreciated by most organizations.

In practice, teams frequently treat it merely as a log repository, while business leaders question its costs and perceive little return on investment.

The Goal

Clarify the real purpose of Application Insights, highlight why organizations often fail to leverage its full potential, and outlines how to effectively use it to protect your business from operational disruptions.

What Application Insights Really Is

At its core, Application Insights is an observability service, but not simply a tool for monitoring performance or capturing errors. It’s a strategic asset for reducing operational risks in IT systems.

Its most valuable—and often neglected—capability is predictive analytics, which identifies, correlates, and anticipates issues before they become serious incidents.

From a business standpoint, predictive analytics is essential. It empowers companies to proactively manage risks, minimize impact, and maintain continuous business operations.

In my experience, this capability has repeatedly proven invaluable, preventing downtime and preserving customer trust.

In addition to predictive insights, Application Insights provides comprehensive visibility into system behavior, answering crucial questions like:

• How stable is our IT solution?
• How do users interact with our system?
• Are there undetected issues impacting customer experience?
• Where is degraded performance affecting our revenue?
• Which integrations or dependencies are negatively impacting system performance?

When implemented effectively, Application Insights goes beyond basic telemetry—it becomes an essential business safeguard.

The Reasons Behind Misuse

In most companies, Application Insights runs quietly in the background. It collects telemetry that no one reviews and is typically configured by people who don’t understand its purpose.

Here are the key reasons why organizations fail to realize its full potential:

“Pigeon” Architects

Many so-called Cloud Architects focus more on theory than implementation. Their main contribution is placing the Application Insights icon on a diagram — without understanding its role or verifying its integration. They often:

• Fail to define a clear observability strategy
• Don’t understand the full capabilities of Application Insights
• Lack hands-on experience
• Can’t connect telemetry with business outcomes

We call them “Pigeon Architects” because they fly in, drop diagrams, and disappear — leaving behind pretty but useless architecture.

Unaware Developers

Modern development practices often favor abstraction layers, but rarely acknowledge their downsides.

These abstractions can hide essential capabilities of the tools they encapsulate. This is exactly what happens with Application Insights.

For example, .NET developers typically rely on ILogger<T>, which reduces Application Insights to a basic log collector — distorting the data model, correlation, and context.

Without a clear observability strategy, developers typically push everything into Application Insights. This leads to bloated telemetry, increased Azure costs, and reduced return on investment.

Microsoft’s “Install and Forget” Mentality

To make adoption easier, Microsoft promotes the idea that Application Insights requires just a simple install and a line of configuration. While this increases adoption, it also creates a dangerous illusion: that the service works out-of-the-box without any need for understanding.

As a result, developers integrate the tool without knowing how it works — and businesses never benefit from its full capabilities.

What To Do

Observability must be regarded as a business imperative, not just a technical afterthought.

Organizations should engage experts who understand both business needs and the practical implementation of telemetry tools.

Key actions include:

• Hire hands-on architects: Experts who understand telemetry intricacies, can align it with business objectives, and directly assist in implementation.
• Assign clear architectural accountability: Architects should own not only the design, but also validate and ensure successful practical implementation.
• Integrate telemetry with business goals.

The true value lies not just in having Application Insights but understanding precisely how and why to use it effectively.

Final Thought

Application Insights is more than a monitoring feature—it's a strategic business safeguard.

When used intentionally, it becomes your early-warning system, identifying potential disruptions before they impact your business.

Ignoring Application Insights means firefighting reactively. Embracing it ensures you proactively prevent operational crises.

Understand it. Integrate it. Use it purposefully.

Only then can you turn a perceived cost into genuine operational risk reduction and measurable business value.