OpenTelemetry

Open source observability framework for cloud native software. Provides a single set of APIs, SDKs, agents, and collector services to capture distributed traces, metrics, and logs from applications. Instrument once and export telemetry to any backend without changing application code.

Backed by the CNCF, OpenTelemetry emerged from the merger of OpenTracing and OpenCensus. Adopted by GitHub, eBay, Shopify, Mercado Libre, Alibaba, and other enterprises. Differentiates through vendor-neutral instrumentation, unified signals across traces and metrics, and a single protocol that works with 100+ observability vendors. Native SDKs for 12+ languages and over 900 integrations.

Key capabilities:

• Auto-instrumentation for popular frameworks without code changes
• OpenTelemetry Collector pipeline with 200+ components to receive, process, filter, and route telemetry
• OTLP wire protocol and semantic conventions for consistent telemetry across backends
• Context propagation to correlate traces across service boundaries
• Deploy anywhere: on-premises, hybrid, or multi-cloud

Use cases: distributed tracing across microservices, application performance monitoring, debugging request flows across services, correlating logs with traces for incident investigation. Integrates with Jaeger, Prometheus, and commercial APM tools. Developers add SDKs and auto-instrumentation agents, then export via the Collector to their chosen observability backend.