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Experience Level Objectives (XLOs) represent a fundamental evolution in monitoring philosophy, moving beyond the conventional Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and SLAs that have dominated IT operations for years.

This post examines the key differences between these approaches and explains why XLOs provide a more business-aligned framework for modern digital operations.

Traditional SLA and SLO monitoring has primarily focused on system availability and IT infrastructure health. This approach centers on technical metrics like uptime percentages, server response times, and infrastructure resource utilization. While these metrics provide valuable insights into system health, they create a significant disconnect between technical indicators and actual business metrics.

In contrast, XLO monitoring prioritizes metrics that directly gauge user experience and satisfaction. This shift reflects a growing recognition that digital service quality cannot be measured solely by whether systems are functioning, but rather by how well they are functioning from the user's perspective. As research increasingly shows, "slow is the new down"—acknowledging that poor performance, even without complete failure, can severely impact user satisfaction and business outcomes.

This philosophical difference addresses a critical blind spot in traditional monitoring approaches. A system can report 100% uptime while delivering a frustratingly slow experience that drives users away. XLOs close this gap by measuring what actually matters to users: the quality and speed of their interactions with digital services.

Most monitoring tools rely on cloud-based vantage points for digital experience monitoring —convenient (for the vendor), but disconnected from the actual user experience. These first-mile checks confirm whether the infrastructure is up, but say little about how your application is experienced by users in the real world. Hence, it is primarily useful for QA purposes, especially for new code releases.

XLOs shift the perspective. They depend on insights captured from where users truly are—whether that’s on a connection inside an office through a regional ISP, a mobile connections through a mobile operator, or even a laptop connected via Starlink. This visibility uncovers the real issues users face: congestion, routing delays, delays from third part code, and other last-mile failures that cloud monitoring can’t see.

If SLOs tell you your system is available, XLOs tell you whether it’s delivering the experience the business expects to real users. This outside-in view is what turns data into real business insight. It closes the visibility gap between infrastructure health and user experience—and that’s where the real value lies.

Traditional SLOs often focus on individual components or services, creating a fragmented view of performance. XLOs, by contrast, are designed to capture the complete user journey across multiple systems and services. This end-to-end perspective reflects the reality that users experience services holistically, not as isolated components. Modern digital services span multiple providers, platforms, and technologies, making isolated component monitoring inadequate for ensuring overall service quality.

While an SLA may measure the uptime of an S3 storage bucket, or the uptime of your DNS or CDN provider, these are only three of dozens or hundreds of components in an entire system. As a rule of thumb, the quality of the experience delivered by a system is as good as the worst of its components. Thus, while most components could be working perfectly, an issue in a third-party API may be resulting in the entire experience for your users to be unacceptable.

The XLO, by contrast, is less concerned about CPU utilization or database response time, while entirely focused in the resulting experience for a user – whether the user is a customer, an internal user, or an API consumed by an internal or external system.

A critical difference between XLOs and traditional SLOs is their alignment with business outcomes. Traditional SLOs primarily serve technical teams, measuring system health in terms that may not translate directly to business impact, while SLAs establish accountability from vendors that deliver a component of the functionality of a system. This creates challenges in demonstrating IT's value to business stakeholders and securing resources for performance improvements.

XLOs fundamentally change this dynamic by providing metrics that directly correlate with business performance. By moving beyond "Is it up?" to answer "Is it meeting our users’ expectations?", XLOs address what business stakeholders actually care about. This alignment helps prove the value of IT Operations and justify investments in performance improvements by demonstrating clear connections between technical performance and business outcomes.

As more components of our business and personal lives are based on digital experiences or supported by digital processes, delivering on the expectations is a business priority. In a recent survey of thousands of users showed bad digital experiences are the main reason why consumers switch to different banking providers.

As a specific example, a team can set specific XLO targets that reflect business priorities, such as ensuring the critical part of loading a page, measured as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), does not exceed 2.5 seconds 90% of the time in a given month. This specific threshold directly impacts bounce rates and user engagement, providing clear business value.

According to the GigaOm Maturity Model for IPM, organizations progress through five stages—from chaotic, reactive operations to optimized, business-driven monitoring. Traditional SLOs keep teams stuck in the early stages, focused on infrastructure uptime and siloed metrics. XLOs act as a catalyst for maturity by:

Aligning with advanced stages: XLOs introduce user-focused metrics that resonate with the 'Quantitative' and 'Optimized' stages, emphasizing business outcomes.

Facilitating proactive issue detection: Tools like burndown charts enable early identification of performance degradations, a hallmark of mature operations.

Fostering cross-functional collaboration: XLOs unify teams around shared objectives, essential for achieving higher maturity levels.

For example, a retail company using XLOs to monitor checkout flow performance (e.g., Time to Interactive across regions) isn’t just fixing errors—they’re optimizing a revenue-critical journey, a hallmark of GigaOm’s value-based observability.

Traditional SLO monitoring often creates a reactive posture, where teams respond to issues after they've already impacted users. This approach typically waits for error thresholds to trigger alerts before teams mobilize to address problems. Once these thresholds are crossed, the business is already suffering some impact.

XLO monitoring enables a substantially more proactive approach. By tracking performance trends over time, proactively simulating user experiences from their real-world locations, businesses can detect gradual degradations before they breach critical thresholds – and often before they impact users.

Tracking XLOs over time is where burn-down charts come into play. Burn down charts help track the progress of your performance against your set objectives, showing how much of your performance budget is left as time goes on.

When a team adopts XLOs as a KPI, it influences how the teams make decisions, how they see success, and what risks are acceptable. Operations can evaluate whether to release changes based on their projected impact on experience metrics, maintaining consistently high user satisfaction. In this way, burn down charts offer a clear status of service health over periods of time.

A significant practical difference between XLO and traditional SLO approaches lies in their organizational impact. Traditional SLOs often reinforce existing silos between development, operations, and business teams, as each group focuses on their own specialized metrics.

XLOs, by contrast, create a common language and shared objectives across organizational boundaries. By providing metrics that matter to both technical and business stakeholders, XLOs facilitate cross-functional collaboration and shared accountability for user experience. This collaborative approach enables faster problem resolution and more effective performance optimization.

For a long time, IT operations teams have built NOCs and SOCs to manage network operations and security. In today’s world where most business interactions are digital, as organizations mature, many are formalizing their cross-functional efforts by building Digital Operations Centers (DOCs).

A DOC brings together teams across IT, engineering, and business functions to monitor experience-centric metrics in real time. With XLOs at the core, a DOC isn’t just a control room—it’s a shared space for aligning around user outcomes, accelerating response times, and making performance a business-wide priority. It’s a sign of maturity and a strategic investment in digital resilience.

A DOC puts digital user experience at the center of the business and provides visibility into how every critical digital operation in the business performs - and what is the performance of all the key components that contribute to delivering that experience – from internet backbone to third party components, cloud services, APIs, DNS, front-end servers, databases, microservices, down to application code.

A DOC is a natural evolution of a NOC and a SOC as IT operations teams evolve from a systems-uptime focus to becoming a true operational intelligence team that is a critical component of how the business operates, and not only the team keeping the lights on.

XLO monitoring to measure specific performance metrics that directly impact user experience can include:

Wait Time: The duration between the user’s request and the server’s initial response

Response Time: The total time taken for the server to process a request and send back the complete response

First Contentful Paint (FCP): The time it takes for the browser to render the first piece of content on the screen

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Time when the largest content is visible within the browser

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): A measure of how much the layout of the page shifts unexpectedly during loading

Time to Interactive: The time it takes for a page to become fully interactive and responsive to user inputs

These metrics create a multidimensional view of the user experience that traditional infrastructure-focused SLOs simply cannot provide.

SLOs and Experience Level Objectives (XLOs) aren’t just buzzwords; they're guiding principles for ensuring performance indicators align with real customer expectations.

According to the SRE Report 2025, 40% of businesses are prioritizing the adoption of SLOs and XLOs over the next 12 months. By focusing on user experience rather than just system availability, providing specific experience-focused metrics, aligning with business outcomes, enabling proactive optimization, capturing end-to-end journeys, and breaking down organizational silos, XLOs provide a more comprehensive and business-relevant approach to monitoring.

This evolution reflects changing expectations from both users and businesses.

For organizations seeking to improve digital experience quality while demonstrating clear business value from IT investments, XLOs offer a powerful framework that goes beyond traditional SLO limitations. By implementing XLO monitoring, organizations can align technical performance with business objectives, ultimately delivering superior digital experiences that drive competitive advantage.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• Spider-Man: Brand New Day's position on the MCU timeline might have been revealed
• Filming will begin in Glasgow, Scotland in August
• A Marvel fan has snapped some set photos that indicate when it could be set

Spider-Man: Brand New Day won't arrive in theaters until July 2026, but some fans think they've already worked out where it'll sit on the Marvel timeline.

With filming due to begin on Spider-Man: Brand New Day in August, preparations have been underway in Glasgow for a number of weeks now. The Scottish city is being used a stand-in for New York City (NYC), so Glaswegians have seen their hometown receive a US makeover before the cameras start rolling.

One eagle-eyed Marvel fan has wasted no time snapping images of the sets being erected for Spider-Man 4, too. Indeed, X/Twitter user lukec1605 recently uploaded some photographs that indicate what year it might take place in.

Photos from set on #SpiderManBrandNewDay @eavoss @NewRockstars pic.twitter.com/LZICv2IohfJuly 28, 2025

As the above post reveals, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) version of NYC is being renovated, with numerous construction builds in progress. This might have something to do with events that occurred in Thunderbolts*, aka one of three new movies released by Marvel Studios this year. That film is set in the MCU's present, which is believed to be the year 2027. You can read more about what happened in that flick via by Thunderbolts* ending explained piece.

But I'm getting off-track. Two of the images in the aforementioned post reveal that work is due to be completed on these renovations and new builds by December 2027. Cue MCU fans jumping to conclusions and convincing themselves that the next Marvel Phase 6 movie will take place in late 2027.

I'm not satisfied this is the case, though. Those pictures only indicate that the buildings will be erected before that year ends. Depending on the size of said build, it can take multiple years to complete work on them, too. It's entirely possible, then, that Spider-Man's next outing in the MCU could be set in early or mid-2027, or even sometime in 2026.

There's evidence that Brand New Day could take place well before December 2027 as well. Season 1 of Daredevil: Born Again, whose story is thought to play out between late 2026 and early 2027, sees Wilson Fisk become NYC's latest mayor. Throughout the Disney+ show's first installment, Fisk fast-tracks a number of developments in the city, so it's plausible that the ongoing construction work was greenlit by him. If that's the case, events in Spider-Man 4 might run concurrent to Daredevil: Born Again season 1.

That said, Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle/The Punisher will a supporting role to play in Brand New Day. The last time we saw him, i.e. in Born Again's season 1 finale, he escaped captivity after being incarcerated in a secret prison facility patrolled by Fisk's Anti-Vigilante Task Force. In order to show up in Spider-Man 4, he'll need to have broken out of jail before that film begins. This would mean Brand New Day has to take place from mid-2027 onwards.

Hopefully, we'll get a better idea of when the film is set, plus who Stranger Things' Sadie Sink is playing in Spider-Man 4, when principal photography finally gets underway. In the meantime, find out why Spider-Man: Brand New Day's release was delayed or learn more about how its official title takes its cue from the most controversial moment in Spidey's comic book history.

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• Windows 11 24H2 had a strange bug that messed with the mouse
• It made the mouse cursor larger after the PC woke from sleep (or was rebooted)
• Microsoft has seemingly fixed this problem with the July update

Microsoft has reportedly fixed a bug in Windows 11 which caused the mouse cursor to supersize itself in irritating fashion under certain circumstances.

Windows Latest explained the nature of the bug, and provided a video illustrating the odd behavior. It shows the mouse cursor being at its default size (which is '1' in the slider in settings for the mouse), and yet clearly the cursor is far larger than it should be.

When Windows Latest manipulates the slider to make the mouse cursor larger, then returns it to a size of '1', the cursor ends up being corrected and back to normal. Apparently, this issue manifests after resuming from sleep on a Windows 11 PC.

Windows Latest says this bug has been kicking around since Windows 11 24H2 first arrived (in October last year), but the issue hasn't been a constant thorn in its side. Seemingly it has only happened now and again – but nonetheless, it's been a continued annoyance.

Not anymore, though, because apparently with the July update for Windows 11, the problem has been fixed.

Oddly enough, Microsoft never acknowledged this issue, although other Windows 11 users certainly have – Windows Latest hasn't been alone in suffering at the hands of this bug.

I've spotted a few reports on Reddit regarding the issue, and some posters have experienced the supersized cursor after rebooting their machine rather than coming back from sleep mode (and there are similar complaints on Microsoft's own help forums).

Whatever the case, the issue seems to be fairly random in terms of when or whether it occurs, but the commonality is some kind of change of state for the PC in terms of sleeping or restarting.

While the mouse cursor changing size may not sound like that big a deal, it's actually pretty disruptive. As Windows Latest observes, having a supersized cursor can make it fiddlier and more difficult to select smaller menu items in apps or Windows 11 itself.

And if you weren't aware of the mentioned workaround – to head into the Settings app, find the mouse size slider, and adjust it – you might end up rebooting your PC to cure the problem. And that's if a reboot does actually fix things, because, as some others have noted, restarting can cause the issue, too.

This was an irksome glitch, then, so it's good to hear that it's now apparently resolved with the latest update for Windows 11.

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• Xbox will be showcasing Hollow Knight: Silksong at Gamescom 2025
• The game will be playable on the upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X handhelds at the Xbox booth
• Other titles present include Grounded 2 and Ninja Gaiden 4

Xbox has unveiled its plans for Gamescom 2025, which will include the opportunity to play a Hollow Knight: Silksong demo.

The brand will have a strong presence at the European gaming event, which runs from August 20 to 24 in Cologne, Germany. The Xbox booth will show off more than 20 games across a whopping 120 demo stations, alongside offering photo opportunities and unique experiences.

Big highlights include hands-on time with the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, the two recently revealed Xbox PC handhelds. A demo of Hollow Knight: Silksong will be playable on the handheld, potentially giving us our first substantial look at the long-awaited game in years.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was first announced back in 2019 but we have hardly heard a peep about it aside from a few brief appearances at various showcase events such as the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct earlier this year. The game also featured prominently in the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X reveal, where it was confirmed that it would be available in time for the handheld's launch.

Could this mean that a Hollow Knight: Silksong release is around the corner? It definitely seems so, especially with the handhelds slated for later this year.

The Xbox booth will also offer visitors the chance to try the likes of Grounded 2, the first public hands-on demo of Ninja Gaiden 4, in addition to some third-party titles like Borderlands 4 and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.

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While mainstream media channels were earlier considered the primary destination by brands for digital marketing of inspiration, consideration, and conversion, that is no longer true today.

With growing diversification of the media landscape, Retail Media Networks (RMN), a collection of digital channels owned by retailers, have emerged among the fastest growing digital media channels.

With a healthy annual double-digit growth, the global retail media market is expected to reach ($179.5 billion) by 2025. In the UK alone, retail media ad spending is expected to outdo TV ad spending in 2025 and exceed £7 billion in 2028.

Amazon leads the pack with the lion’s share of retail media revenue (~$60bn in 2024). Walmart is a distant second (~$4bn). This gap speaks of the market’s growth potential and intense competition for other RMNs.

Compared to the thin traditional retail margins, RMN revenues typically exceed 70%. Many retailers have entered the fray considering this additional revenue stream and margin contribution potential – over 200 RMNs – have been launched in the last few years.

The availability of various social media and online channels has ensured the path to purchase is not linear anymore and follows multiple channels. Post-pandemic, consumer behavior has changed significantly, as seen in the emergence of the Research Online Purchase Offline or ‘ROPO’ effect.

Both local and large brands are constantly seeking opportunities to create brand awareness across available channels. They want to reach consumers with the right messages, right content, and at the right moment on their path to purchase.

Today’s retailers offer a variety of ad units and ad formats with audience reach across an extended ecosystem. It includes their own onsite, in-store, and partner networks. Most importantly, retailers with right shopper loyalty programs have high quality first-party (1P) data that advertisers want to capitalize. Therefore, advertisers are more willing to invest in retail media which can deliver incrementality and ROI.

Well-established RMN can create a true fly-wheel effect for retailers in growing sales, consumer experience, and ad revenue.

Despite the opportunity for retailers in the RMN business, they may not generate expected revenues from brands and their agencies due to various reasons like lack of relevant operating model and technology capabilities. The retail business requires a buyer mindset, while the media requires a seller mindset.

The absence of integrated joint business planning (JBP) hampers collaboration between retailers and brands organizations. Insufficient technology capabilities lead to poor 1P data, limited ad inventory and formats, without a self-service model or supplier insights to verify ROI and incrementality. Often organizations apply the wrong measurement metrics to measure success. RMNs also face intense competition from various retailers.

Currently, over 80% of the RMN spend by brands is for onsite (retailer’s .com and mobile app) channels in the form of sponsored products, brands, display ads, and videos - their primary focus is bottom-of-the-funnel marketing.

Retailers have a high-margin revenue stream in monetizing the 1P data in their omni channels by becoming full funnel player – ecommerce sites, mobile apps, in-store ad units, magazines, themed events.

With offsite channels like Meta, Google, Tik Tok, CTVs and in-store digital screens, RMNs can transform into full-funnel marketing channels. Many have already become omni-channel, media owners through strategic partnerships like Tesco Media & Insights + ITVX, Walmart + Tiktok.

The following steps will support the success of RMNs:

• The right organization structure, well-defined operating model and strategically aligned retail teams and RMN teams
• High-quality 1P data that can activate various audience segments
• Ad Units and Ad formats across onsite, offsite and in-store channels which can shape in-store themed experiences
• ML based audience activation and measurement across the channels
• Data clean rooms to combine 1P data with partner data, safely and securely
• Self-service and managed service options for an integrated campaign booking, activation and reporting
• Experimentation platform that can perform A/B testing
• Real-time insights - metrics like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), Incremental Return on Ad Spend (iROAS), incrementality, brand lift, sales lift
• Standardization of metrics and definition of measurement

When it comes to instore, the ability to integrate ad servers and screens delivering ad content and including a feedback loop on aspects like the number of impressions shown, view time etc., is crucial. By mapping these metrics against in-store purchases, retailers help brands get an accurate view of sales incrementality, iROAS, and other key metrics to close the marketing loop.

RMNs that offer a 360-degree view of customer interactions across retailer touchpoints will help brands achieve micro-segmentation and hyper-personalization.

To compete against the likes of Amazon, Google, and Meta, RMNs must demonstrate how they can provide superior ROI to the brand advertisers by leveraging AI and ML technologies, impacts consumer behavior. A consulting partner like Infosys can draw from their vast experience in implementing and integrating such technology platforms for global retailers.

Above all, retailers must begin to view RMN earnings as an additional revenue stream derived from a brand’s marketing spends. Those able to effectively don an agency’s hat in selling ad performance will encourage brands to entrust these precious marketing resources with them.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• Report finds 73% are aware of Copilot+ PCs, but only 33% see AI as important purchasing factors
• Many business buyers are more interested in Windows 11 support
• Price, lack of use cases and interoperability are also concerns

Although AI PCs are becoming increasingly available to both consumers and businesses, it seems firms are still not rushing to buy them.

New data from Canalys found around three-quarters (73%) of B2B partners are aware of Copilot+ PCs between March and April 2025, yet only one in three considered AI capabilities important in purchasing decisions.

Despite the huge performance updates, businesses still look to be prioritizing Windows 11 refreshes and battery life over Copilot+ exclusive features, particularly with the Windows 10 end of life on the horizon.

Initially launched with Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips and later available with Intel Core Ultra 200V and AMD Risen AI 300 series chips, Copilot+ PCs are seen as high-end devices with 40+ TOPS NPUs for local AI processing.

Canalys' data shows nearly one in four (23%) PCs sold globally in the final three months of 2024 was an AI PC, however this is a generalized term that means different things across the industry. For Canalys, it means that the devices include a "chipset or block for dedicated AI workloads such as an NPU."

However, Context Senior Analyst Marie-Christine Pygott explained (via The Register) only 9% of the 1.2 million AI-capable PCs shipped by European distributors in Q2 2025 classified as Copilot+ PCs, meeting the 40 TOPS requirement.

Pygott blamed the slow uptake on high pricing, a lack of use cases and low perception of what a Copilot+ PC is and what it can do. Some enterprise customers have also been reluctant to moving to Arm-based Snapdragon chips due to software compatibility issues.

However, things could be on the verge of changing, with a recent Dell survey revealing that around three in five (62%) IT decision-makers would prefer a Copilot+ PC over a regular PC.

Looking ahead, Canalys expects 60% of the PCs shipped in 2027 to be AI-capable, with 2025 potentially seeing them hold a 40% market share.

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• Rumors suggest Nvidia's RTX 5000 series Super GPU models are on track for launch later in 2025
• The RTX 5080 Super is speculated to have 24GB of VRAM, matching the RTX 4090's
• It appears to be the ideal opportunity for Nvidia to improve upon its Blackwell launch mishaps

It's been a long time since Nvidia launched its RTX 5000 series GPUs in late January, followed by other configurations in later months, after a CES 2025 keynote that showcased the Blackwell GPUs. However, it seems Nvidia might not be done with new GPU launches in 2025 just yet.

According to TweakTown, Nvidia is set to launch RTX 5000 series Super models later this holiday season, which typically means November or December. The RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 are the GPUs reported to receive Super upgrades, with the new 5080 and 5070 Ti reportedly set to use 24GB of VRAM.

Pricing isn't finalized, and there aren't any figures to work from at this point. But considering Team Green's previous move was reducing the RTX 4080 Super price (as a slightly more powerful GPU) compared to the standard model, we could see a similar pattern again.

There's no sugarcoating the level of controversy that shrouded the Blackwell GPUs, with missing specs (ROPs), a lack of availability, and most importantly, inflated prices across multiple online retailers. With the RTX 5000 series Super models, Nvidia and, notably, its board partners, have a chance to right those wrongs.

A combination of improved performance across the board and adjusted price points may work wonders – and that mostly applies to the RTX 5080 potentially closing the gap on the RTX 4090 (supposedly using 24GB of VRAM). It may be even more interesting to see an RTX 5060 Super using more VRAM, but we'll have to wait and see.

Above all, if these Super GPU model rumors are legitimate, prices will once again determine their success. While I'm aware that Nvidia may have good intentions with more reasonable pricing, all of that work could be undone by board partners and retailers marking up prices significantly.

It's the same issue that botched AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series launch for many; the Radeon RX 9070 XT was seen as the inexpensive and powerful alternative to Blackwell mid to high-tier GPUs, at $599 / £569 (around AU$944), but the market told a different story with prices soaring far above that.

Fortunately, prices have recently fallen back down to original retail pricing, which I'm seeing with more stock and availability for both Team Green and Team Red GPUs than ever before.

I'm hoping that prices can stabilize and stay within reasonable ranges leading up to the eventual launch of Nvidia's new Super GPU models, as it could decrease the chances of ludicrous pricing. Let's just watch this space...

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