Uncovered: The Hard Truth About OpenTelemetry's Vendor Neutrality

We still hear people saying, "OpenTelemetry is vendor neutral so you can switch vendors any time you want to." This is like saying that because the vCard format exists, it's easy to switch from iOS to Android. Sure, your core data will ultimately be portable, but you'll be missing a *lot* of other things.

Does that make vendor neutrality moot? Not at all! Vendor-neutral instrumentation means that all of our code artifacts aren’t impacted by tool changes. Switching vendors won’t be like waving a magic wand, but it will be much easier thanks to OpenTelemetry (OTel). We’ll cover some of the challenges and pitfalls, and offer best practices to make this process as pain-free as possible. We’ll discuss:

* OTel API and SDKs: they ease the pain of total tool switch, but aren’t a magic wand
* The OTel Collector’s simulcast capabilities to multiple tools and how it helps enable vendor “bake-off” evaluations
* The OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP): the best part of OpenTelemetry (hint: vendors used to all have their own exporters, but now most accept OTLP)
* What’s transferable between vendors vs what’s not
* Even the instrumentation isn’t always safe: Structuring your your OTel data to optimize for a vendor

Attendees will come away with an understanding of what OTel vendor neutrality means, so that they can make informed decisions when considering switching to or adopting new tooling.