External observability platform integration

End-to-end monitoring enables you to export transaction trace data to external application performance monitoring (APM) platforms so that you can view end-to-end traces alongside other application performance data in the tools that your organization already uses.

What this integration provides

You can configure end-to-end monitoring to send transaction trace data to external APM platforms such as Instana, New Relic, or Dynatrace. This capability enables you to complete the following actions:

  • View integration traces together with application performance metrics in a single platform.
  • Use existing observability tools instead of switching between multiple systems.
  • Correlate integration activity with upstream and downstream application behavior.
  • Maintain flexibility by integrating with standards-based monitoring platforms.

Why configure external APM integration

Many organizations use a centralized observability platform to monitor their entire application landscape. By exporting trace data to these platforms, you can analyze integration performance in the broader context of your systems.

This integration helps you troubleshoot issues that span multiple services, understand performance trends, and align integration monitoring with your organization's observability standards.

How it works

Integration flows generate trace data and export it to an external APM destination that you configure in the user interface. For more information about how to configure trace export, see Configuring external observability platforms.

The high-level flow works as follows:

  1. End-to-end monitoring generates trace data during transaction execution, then collects and prepares it.
  2. You configure the export destination and enable trace export.
  3. The external APM platform receives and visualizes the trace data.

How trace data is exported

The system exports trace data using the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) Protocol (OTLP), a vendor-neutral standard for transferring observability data, and gRPC or HTTP as transport protocols. This approach ensures compatibility with multiple APM platforms and supports secure, reliable data transfer.

Important: Trace export is limited to 50 million spans per day per tenant. Because a transaction can contain multiple spans, the number of transactions that you can export depends on the number of spans per transaction. For example, if each transaction contains three spans, approximately 16.6 million transactions can be exported per day.