OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open-source observability framework that enables monitoring and management of cloud-native applications. It provides tools for tracing, metrics collection, and logging, helping developers gain insights into distributed systems. By standardizing observability, OpenTelemetry assists in monitoring application health, troubleshooting issues, and analyzing microservice interactions to ensure reliability and optimize performance.

Key Features of OpenTelemetry

1. Distributed Tracing – Tracks requests across microservices.
2. Metrics Collection – Captures system performance data (latency, errors, resource usage).
3. Logging Support – (Planned for future releases) Standardized logging integration.
4. Vendor-Agnostic – Works with Prometheus, Jaeger, Zipkin, Grafana, AWS X-Ray, Datadog, New Relic, etc.
5. Auto-Instrumentation – Automatically collects telemetry data from supported frameworks.
6. Multi-Language Support – Supports Java, Python, Go, JavaScript, .NET, C++, PHP, Ruby, Rust.

Key Players