OpenTelemetry, Open Collaboration
July 20, 2020

Dave McAllister
Splunk

OpenTelemetry — the merger of OpenCensus and OpenTracing — appeared in May of 2019. OpenTelemetry is a project within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) that has gathered contributors and supporters far and wide, becoming one of the most active projects found in open source today. It's currently #2 behind only Kubernetes!

So what is OpenTelemetry?

From the website: “OpenTelemetry provides a single set of APIs, libraries, agents, and collector services to capture distributed traces and metrics from your application.” Given the increasingly complex nature of applications and computing environments as companies progress in their cloud-native journey, and the corresponding need for better visibility — or observability — in production environments, this is pretty important. After all, proprietary, heavy agents are quickly fading into the sunset, with developers and DevOps teams clearly opting for open, flexible instrumentation 

In fact, the collaboration that OpenTelemetry has developed is pretty amazing. Looking at the data from CNCF's Devstats, we can find that over 130 companies including cloud providers, monitoring and observability vendors, and end-users, are shown as having made contributions to the project over the last quarter. And, as open-source goes, 26,000+ contributions is substantial for any project, reflecting in the definite importance of this technology.

The 28-day moving average (also from CNCF) shows that this is an active project, with 62 companies and 322 developers contributing to the project, as of July 8, 2020.

This is pretty amazing, since, while every contribution is valuable, deep looks into open source projects have previously indicated that the majority of the work is driven by 1-3 entities. (This may be changing, as a survey by The New Stack and Tidelift show that 84% of polled developers say they contribute to open source projects actively.) And the contributions are across many different areas: collectors, languages, specifications, and more.

The strength of such widespread involvement means that OpenTelemetry is becoming the defacto standard for observability data. With the recent advancement of the logging specification, OpenTelemetry is clearly the leader in targeting the pillars of observability data, namely metrics, traces, and logs. And with its acceptance of OpenTelemetry Enhancement Proposals (OTEP), it is likely to continue to expand in the future.

OpenTelemetry provides a vendor-agnostic collection mechanism for data, allowing you to choose the right observability tools for your needs. Instrumentation and data collection need to become a commodity. In many ways, data acquisition can be the new lock-in, being tied directly to a specific back end application for the analysis of said data. By removing the barriers of data acquisition and ingest, OpenTelemetry enables choice, your choice of the right technology without limitations, and the ability to freely move to the best technology.

Even more important is the breaking down of those artificially created silos that require moving from tool to tool manually, often requiring the repetition of forensic steps to determine underlying causes.

OpenTelemetry is more than a bandwagon — it's a dynasty. As OpenTelemetry moves forward in its own pathway to software dominance, it's going to accelerate the ability of DevOps teams to implement robust observability and deliver amazing results with cloud-native applications at a time when digital experiences via mobile and web apps are more important than ever.

Dave McAllister is a Sr. Technical Evangelist at Splunk
Share this

Industry News

March 28, 2024

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. announced a collaboration with Microsoft that utilizes the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to enhance Check Point Infinity AI Copilot, marking a significant advancement in cyber security AI applications.

March 28, 2024

ArmorCode announced ArmorCode Risk Prioritization, providing a 3D scoring approach for managing application security risks.

March 28, 2024

AppViewX and Fortanix announced a partnership to offer cloud-delivered secure digital identity management and code signing.

March 27, 2024

WaveMaker has updated its platform in response to customer demand for more sophisticated API and code management tools.

March 27, 2024

Vercara announced the launch of UltraAPI™, a product suite that protects APIs and web applications from malicious bots and fraudulent activity while ensuring regulatory compliance.

March 27, 2024

Legit Security announced the launch of its standalone enterprise secrets scanning product, which can detect, remediate, and prevent secrets exposure across the software development pipeline.

March 26, 2024

Progress announced a strategic partnership with Veeam® Software, the #1 leader by market share in Data Protection and Ransomware Recovery, to provide customers with an enterprise-ready cyber defense solution that strengthens the security of their business-critical data.

March 26, 2024

GitGuardian released its Software Composition Analysis (SCA) module.

March 26, 2024

DataStax announced a milestone in its journey to simplify enterprise retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for developers by integrating with Microsoft Semantic Kernel.

March 25, 2024

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. is collaborating with NVIDIA to enhance the security of AI cloud infrastructure. Integrating NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, which feature a broad range of purpose-built, innovative security capabilities, the new Check Point AI Cloud Protect solution will help prevent threats at both the network and host levels.

March 25, 2024

Sentry announced the release of Autofix, an AI-powered feature to debug and fix code in minutes, saving important time and resources.

March 25, 2024

Apiiro announced a product integration and partnership with Secure Code Warrior, the agile developer security training platform, to extend its ASPM technology and processes to the people layer.

March 21, 2024

Progress announced that Progress® Semaphore™, its metadata management and semantic AI platform, was named a Champion in SoftwareReviews’ 2024 Metadata Management Emotional Footprint Awards.

March 21, 2024

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®) has partnered with Udemy, an online skills marketplace and learning platform.

March 21, 2024

GitLab has acquired Oxeye, the provider of a cloud-native application security and risk management solution.