OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework that provides standard APIs, libraries, and tools to collect metrics, logs, and traces from applications and infrastructure. It enables vendor-neutral telemetry collection and correlation. Often referred to as OTel, OpenTelemetry is a foundational standard for modern observability.
Without standardisation, observability becomes fragmented and tightly coupled to specific tools. OpenTelemetry reduces vendor lock-in, simplifies instrumentation, and ensures consistent, high-quality telemetry across distributed systems—especially in microservices and Kubernetes environments.
Applications and platforms use OpenTelemetry SDKs to generate telemetry data. This data is processed and exported via the OpenTelemetry Collector, which can filter, enrich, and route metrics, logs, and traces to one or more observability backends.
BuildPiper leverages OpenTelemetry to correlate deployments, environments, and services with observability data. By integrating OTel-based telemetry, BuildPiper helps teams understand the real-world impact of releases and operate systems with consistent, standardised visibility.
OpenTelemetry is not a monitoring tool itself. It is a standard for collecting and exporting telemetry data, which can then be consumed by monitoring or observability platforms.
No. OpenTelemetry complements these tools by providing standardised data collection. Prometheus and Grafana are often used as backends for visualising OTel data.
BuildPiper uses OpenTelemetry to ingest standardised telemetry and correlate it with deployment and release context, enabling deeper observability and faster troubleshooting.