OpenTelemetry Collectors are essential tools for managing telemetry data, acting as intermediaries to gather, filter, and transmit logs, metrics, and traces from applications to backends like Grafana. While it's possible to send data directly to backends, using a collector offers significant advantages, such as filtering sensitive information, managing data costs, and decoupling services from specific backend endpoints. Collectors enable organizations to redact sensitive data before transmission and control the volume of data sent, which is crucial for cost management given Grafana's data ingestion fees. Additionally, collectors provide operational flexibility by allowing services to send telemetry to a single collection point, simplifying maintenance and backend changes without altering individual application configurations. Although direct transmission may work for simple or early-stage projects, collectors are recommended for complex, production-level systems to ensure efficient data management and avoid potential pitfalls such as privacy issues and service downtime during backend maintenance.