# [[OpenTelemetry]]
![[OpenTelemetry.svg]]
[site](https://opentelemetry.io/)
[repos](https://github.com/open-telemetry)
OpenTelemetry ("OTel") is an [[Open source]] project to facilitate and standardize the collection of [[Telemetry]] signals for [[Observability]]. It is the merger of two other tools, OpenTracing and OpenCensus.
OTel is available in several languages and is a [[CNCF]] project. It's the second most active CNCF project behind [[Kubernetes]]. [^grafana]
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## Areas
"OTel" refers to several things because there are multiple components to the project:
- [[OpenTelemetry Specifications]] are standards (including [[OTel Semantic Conventions]]) set by committees about the format of different telemetry signals
- [[OpenTelemetry Logging Specifications]]
- [[OpenTelemetry Instrumentation SDKs]] are libraries and APIs for implementing OTel in different languages
- The [[OpenTelemetry Collector]] is a [[Telemetry collector|Telemetry collector]] for gathering telemetry signals
- OTel Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are self-selecting working groups formed to collaborate on specific projects
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## Why OpenTelemetry?
The promise of OpenTelemetry is in the creation of standards and tools that are vendor-neutral. In theory, if an application is instrumented with OpenTelemetry, the company maintaining it can switch [[Observability]] providers (like [[Datadog]] to [[Grafana]] for example) without needing to reconfigure any [[Telemetry]] endpoints.
In practice, however, migration from one service provider to another is never easy, and *still* requires significant configuration.
## See also
- [[OpenTelemetry Python SDK]]
- [[OpenTelemetry Logging Specifications]]
- [[OpenTelemetry and Loki]]
- [[OpenTelemetry Instrumentation SDKs]]
- [[Logs Drilldown]]
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## Related
- [[OpenTelemetry Logs SIG]]
- [[Grafana Labs OTel strategy for databases]]
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[^grafana]: OpenTelemetry OSS | Analyze software performance. Grafana Labs. Retrieved on 23 April 2023 from: https://grafana.com/oss/opentelemetry
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