Kubernetes 1.33 was released today.
OpenTelemetry is quickly becoming a foundational element of observability, according to a new report I wrote in partnership with Dan Twing, President and COO of Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), titled Taking Observability to the Next Level: OpenTelemetry's Emerging Role in IT Performance and Reliability. The report was sponsored by Elastic, an APMdigest sponsor, as well as Apica, Beta Systems, Dynatrace, Embrace and SolarWinds.
OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open source CNCF project offering a framework and suite of tools including APIs and SDKs that facilitate the generation, collection, and exporting of telemetry data for observability platforms and related tools. OTel collects logs, metrics and traces, and is expanding data types to include profiling and many other possibilities.
This report comes at just the right time, with OpenTelemetry emerging as an essential component of modern observability. Our first objective for the research was to assess the awareness and perception of OpenTelemetry in the IT industry. We assumed the research would show that the project has some good momentum, but the results were even a bit higher than expected, with a majority (68.3%) of respondents saying they are moderately or very familiar with OTel.
OpenTelemetry also enjoys a positive perception, with half of respondents considering OpenTelemetry mature enough for implementation today, and another 31% considering it moderately mature and useful. So more than 80% basically feel that OpenTelemetry can be used now. And almost everyone surveyed (98.7%) expresses support for where OpenTelemetry is heading — a very strong vote of confidence. BTW those last two groupings include respondents that are only marginally familiar with OpenTelemetry, which suggests that OTel has a rock solid reputation.
The majority also say OpenTelemetry's role in observability is important — 61% believe OpenTelemetry is a very important or critical enabler of observability, and 57% place a similar value on the importance of OpenTelemetry to their own observability strategy.
The usage numbers are also encouraging. The report states, "Almost half (48.5%) of respondents currently use OpenTelemetry. Another 25.3% are not using OpenTelemetry yet, but are planning to implement. This means that just under 75% are either using or planning to use OpenTelemetry, a statistic that bodes well for the future of the standard. The remaining 24.8% are still evaluating, while only 1.5% of respondents had no plans to implement."
The survey findings further reflect the momentum of OpenTelemetry by showing how observability maturity correlates directly with the awareness, perception and even adoption of OpenTelemetry. A majority (64%) of survey respondents assess their own observability practices as mature or very mature, and 45% of that group are very familiar with OpenTelemetry; 67% see OpenTelemetry as very important or critical to their own observability strategy; and 61% already use OpenTelemetry.
The report also shows broad usage of OpenTelemetry across various IT roles beyond ITOps, including developers, DevOps, and site reliability engineers.
The EMA report holds much more interesting stats about OpenTelemetry that can be valuable to both observability practitioners and IT product vendors, answering questions such as:
■ Where are users deploying OpenTelemetry?
■ What are the concerns and challenges?
■ What are the benefits of OpenTelemetry?
■ What level of ROI are users gaining?
■ What are the expectations for OpenTelemetry's future?
One of the final points we made in the report: OpenTelemetry will become a competitive advantage for organizations across most industries. "One of the most consequential points to consider: the survey findings suggest that your competitors have already started using OpenTelemetry to improve digital performance, availability, and the user experience. With this in mind, if you have not already adopted OpenTelemetry, the time to start is now."
Industry News
Docker announced a major expansion of its AI initiative with the upcoming Docker MCP Catalog and Docker MCP Toolkit.
Perforce Software announced the release of its latest platform update for Puppet Enterprise Advanced, designed to streamline DevSecOps practices and fortify enterprise security postures.
Azul announced JVM Inventory, a new feature of Azul Intelligence Cloud designed to address the complexity and risk of migrating off Oracle Java.
LaunchDarkly announced the acquisition of Highlight, a powerful, open source, full-stack application monitoring platform known for its error monitoring, logging, distributed tracing and session replay capabilities.
O’Reilly announced AI Codecon—a groundbreaking virtual conference series dedicated to exploring the rapidly evolving world of AI-assisted software development.
Veracode unveiled new capabilities offering proactive risk mitigation and automated security at enterprise scale.
Snyk launched Snyk API & Web, delivering a dynamic application security testing (DAST) solution designed to meet the growing demands of modern and increasingly AI-powered software development.
Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. announced that it has ranked as a Leader and the only Outperformer for its Check Point Quantum Security Solutions in GigaOm’s latest Radar for Enterprise Firewall report.
Postman announced new releases designed to help organizations build APIs faster, more securely, and with less friction.
SnapLogic announced AgentCreator 3.0, an evolution in agentic AI technology that eliminates the complexity of enterprise AI adoption.
GitLab announced the general availability of GitLab Duo with Amazon Q.
Perforce Software and Liquibase announced a strategic partnership to enhance secure and compliant database change management for DevOps teams.
Spacelift announced the launch of Saturnhead AI — an enterprise-grade AI assistant that slashes DevOps troubleshooting time by transforming complex infrastructure logs into clear, actionable explanations.
CodeSecure and FOSSA announced a strategic partnership and native product integration that enables organizations to eliminate security blindspots associated with both third party and open source code.