OpenTelemetry is a set of APIs, libraries, agents, and instrumentation that empower developers to observe, collect, and manage telemetry data (metrics, logs, and traces) from their services for improved reliability, understandability, and debuggability. The project is a merger of two formerly separate projects: OpenTracing and OpenCensus. By combining the best features from both, OpenTelemetry aims to offer a more unified, comprehensive, and efficient approach to observability.
The main goal of OpenTelemetry is to make telemetry a built-in feature of cloud-native software.
