What are integrations primarily used for in Datadog?

Integrations in Datadog are primarily utilized for collecting metrics from various sources, which is essential for effective monitoring and analysis. These integrations connect Datadog with a multitude of services, applications, and platforms, allowing it to pull in critical performance data, logs, and other metrics automatically. This data collection is vital as it provides insights into system health and performance, enabling users to track their infrastructure and applications in real-time.

While data visualization, alert settings, and user access management are important aspects of the Datadog ecosystem, they depend heavily on the metrics collected through these integrations. For example, data visualization tools rely on the metrics gathered to create useful dashboards, alert settings are based on thresholds set for the collected metrics, and user access management can determine who has the visibility of the data being collected. Therefore, the primary function of integrations is to gather and consolidate data, which subsequently empowers other functionalities within Datadog.