Getting Started with OpenTelemetry: Three Companies Check Into OTel Observability

OpenTelemetry, often referred to as OTel, is gaining traction as a unified standard for collecting and sending telemetry data to various backend observability tools, thus allowing development teams to avoid vendor lock-in and gain deeper insights into complex systems. Companies like Jimdo, Upgrade, and Campspot have shared their adoption stories, highlighting the benefits and challenges of implementing OpenTelemetry. Jimdo took a "start small" approach by initially integrating OpenTelemetry with one team, which allowed them to test and compare different observability vendors. Upgrade faced slow tracing yields with their existing setup and used OpenTelemetry to enhance their system observability, while Campspot moved to OpenTelemetry to escape vendor lock-in with their previous APM solution. OpenTelemetry offers SDKs for multiple languages, automatic and manual instrumentation options, and the OpenTelemetry Collector, a versatile tool for processing and exporting telemetry data. These stories underscore the potential of OpenTelemetry to provide comprehensive observability, with Honeycomb being a favored tool among the panelists for achieving effective monitoring and analysis.