# Optimize before you observe with Active Telemetry Cut Datadog costs by up to 70% while accelerating incident resolution. Mezmo's intelligent pre-processing layer filters, transforms, and routes your telemetry data before it hits Datadog—giving you lower costs, faster insights, and fewer surprises. [Schedule a demo](https://www.mezmo.com/use-cases/datadog#demo-request) ## The Datadog challenge: great insights, growing costs While Datadog excels at analysis and visualization, its cost structure and limited preprocessing capabilities create significant challenges for modern engineering teams. ### The Reality: Teams Are Forced to Choose **Between Visibility and Budget** 📊 Up to 80% of ingested data provides little to no business value 📊 MTTR increases by 30-60% due to data noise and delays ### Runaway Datadog costs Log ingestion, indexing, and retention costs are exploding. You're paying to store low-value or unused data with limited cost control. ### Slow incident resolution Datadog's ingestion delays and UI lag slow down triage. Teams struggle to isolate root causes in massive volumes of noisy data. ### Unpredictable growth impact Small development changes, such as adding tags or log statements, can create huge, unforeseen financial impacts and force teams to choose between visibility and budget. ### Noisy, redundant telemetry Datadog doesn't provide enough control over verbose logs and high-cardinality metrics that inflate storage costs and create analysis paralysis. ## Mezmo + Datadog better together Mezmo sits as an intelligent pre-processing layer in front of Datadog, giving you the power to filter, transform, and route telemetry data before it incurs costs and complexity. ### Volume control without sacrificing fidelity Keep 100% visibility through Live Tail and buffer replay while only sending high-value data to Datadog for storage and indexing. ### Accelerate resolution Mezmo makes the right data available in real time—before it hits Datadog—enabling faster root cause analysis and improved responsiveness. ### Cost-effective preprocessing Use Mezmo for intelligent data processing and routing, then leverage Datadog for what it does best—analysis and visualization. ### Cut costs, keep visibility Reduce cost without losing insight by preprocessing telemetry with Mezmo—filter, sample, and aggregate data before it reaches Datadog. ## Before vs. after Mezmo: real impact on your operations See the measurable transformation teams experience when they implement Mezmo as their intelligent pre-processing layer for Datadog. | Operational Aspect | Before Mezmo | After Mezmo | Improvement | |----------------------------------------|----------------------------------|----------------------------------|-------------------| | Monthly observability costs | Unpredictable & rising | Controlled & predictable | 30-50% | | Time to troubleshoot | Slow & frustrating | Fast & efficient | 40-50% | | Data quality | Noisy & overwhelming | Clean & actionable | 3.5x | | Developer experience | Anxious & constrained | Confident & empowered | 100% | | Platform team load | Constantly fighting fires | Strategic & proactive | 75% | ## Key capabilities for Datadog users Powerful pre-processing capabilities that transform your telemetry data before it reaches Datadog, delivering both cost savings and operational improvements. ### Metric cardinality reduction Pre-aggregate high-cardinality metrics to reduce data bloat. Prevent cost explosions by filtering and remapping metric dimensions before they hit Datadog. **⚡ Control metric explosion** ### Trace sampling & filtering Send only high-value traces to Datadog while preserving trace fidelity. Eliminate trace noise from healthy services while guaranteeing 100% capture of critical error traces. **⚡ Reduce trace costs by 60-80%** ### Responsive pipelines Auto-adjust routing and filtering based on conditions with a 4-hour buffer. Automatically highlight anomalies and route alerts during critical events. **⚡ Risk-free optimization** ### Live tail Stream logs instantly, independent of Datadog indexing. Troubleshoot in real-time by viewing raw log streams before they hit any platform, bypassing ingestion delays entirely. **⚡ Zero-delay incident response** ### Data aggregation Combine logs or metrics at the edge for simplified, summarized insights. Turn thousands of high-volume events into meaningful aggregates. **⚡ Reduce volume by 70%+** ### Data enrichment Add context and structure to logs before they reach Datadog. Enrich data with metadata and transform unstructured logs into searchable, actionable insights. **⚡ Better data quality** ## Real-world use cases for Telemetry Pipeline See how teams like yours are winning with Mezmo. ### AuditBoard Enterprise SaaS **Challenge** Datadog costs growing 300% year-over-year with limited visibility into spending **Solution** Implemented Mezmo pipelines to filter and aggregate logs before Datadog ingestion **Results** ✔️ 52% reduction in Datadog costs ✔️ 40% faster incident resolution ✔️ 90% reduction in noisy alerts [Learn more](https://www.mezmo.com/use-cases/auditboard) ### Netlink Voice Telecommunications **Challenge** Overwhelming telemetry data volume from network infrastructure **Solution** Implemented Mezmo pipelines to filter and aggregate logs before indexing only necessary fields **Results** ✔️ 50% reduction in overall telemetry data ✔️ Eliminated redundant data storage ✔️ Improved query performance by 3x [Learn more](https://www.mezmo.com/archive/use-case-netlink) ## Common questions about Mezmo + Datadog Get answers to the most frequently asked questions about integrating Mezmo with your existing Datadog environment. - How does Mezmo integrate with our existing Datadog setup? - Will using Mezmo affect our Datadog dashboards and alerts? - How much can we realistically save on our Datadog costs? - What happens if we need to access the filtered-out data for troubleshooting? - How quickly can we implement Mezmo with our Datadog environment? - Does Mezmo add latency or create a single point of failure?