The Truth About OpenTelemetry’s Vendor-Neutrality
Understanding what “vendor neutral” actually means for OpenTelemetry
About a month or so ago, my friend wrote a post on LinkedIn about OpenTelemetry (OTel) vendor neutrality:
Ever since I read his post, I couldn’t get it out of my head, especially the opening statement:
“I still hear people saying that ‘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.”
So is OTel vendor neutral or not? The answer is, “Yes, but…” meaning that OTel is absolutely vendor neutral on data ingest. When I switched jobs from Lightstep to Dynatrace, I was able to keep existing instrumentation on my application code, and all I had to do was repoint my OTel Collector to a different backend. Boom. Magic. ✨ I was able to see my traces, logs, and metrics in the Dynatrace UI, just like I had in the Lightstep UI.
BUT…
What nobody talks about is that it’s not *just* about data ingest, is it? If you’ve been working with Vendor X for a while, you’ve been used to doing things a certain way. A certain workflow, if you will. Whether it’s your own personal workflow, or perhaps one that your SRE team follows. Bottom line: using a new vendor means getting used to a new UI and vendor-specific nuances. Maybe Vendor X has some features that Vendor Y doesn’t have, that lets you do some cool stuff with your OTel data. Which means that you have to familiarize yourself with these new features in order to get the most out of them.
And then there are the dashboards and the queries behind those dashboards. Those don’t just grow out of trees. They require time and effort to build out. Many vendors have their own UI for dashboards, often with their own query language — think PromQL for Prometheus, DQL for Dynatrace, and SPL for Splunk, to name a few. That means having to learn a new dashboarding interface, along with a new query language.
Does that mean that switching vendors is a no-go? Not at all. I’m just saying that you should manage your expectations when switching vendors, because it won’t be like waving a magic wand. 🪄
The wonderful thing about OpenTelemetry is that because OTel-compatible vendors all accept the same data, what differentiates them is what they do with your data. Does one vendor enable you to ask meaningful questions, get useful answers, and allow you to act on what you’ve learned better than another? Then going through the effort of switching vendors is absolutely worthwhile and warranted, because at the end of the day, if your applications and systems are more reliable as a result, then that’s what matters most.
I will now leave you with a photo of our baby rat, Barbie, who is looking absolutely hilarious in this paper towel roll.
Until next time, peace, love, and code. 🖖💜👩💻
