External observability stack overview

What is external observability stack integration

External observability stack integration allows you to connect your existing enterprise observability tools with the IBM® Sovereign Core observability framework. This enables you to use tools, maintain consistent monitoring practices across your organization, and use existing investments in observability infrastructure.

Supported integration scenarios

You can integrate the following types of external observability tools:

Monitoring platforms

Connect to enterprise monitoring solutions such as New Relic or Prometheus-based systems to collect and visualize metrics.

Logging platforms

Integrate with centralized logging systems or cloud-native logging services to aggregate and analyze logs.

Tracing platforms

Connect to distributed tracing systems or vendor-specific tracing solutions to track requests across services.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solutions

Integrate with Application Performance Monitoring tools that provide end-to-end visibility into application behavior and performance.

OpenTelemetry standards

The integration relies on OpenTelemetry standards, which provide:

• Vendor-neutral instrumentation APIs and SDKs
• Standardized data formats for metrics, logs, and traces
• Flexible exporters for sending data to various backends
• Consistent semantic conventions for telemetry data

This standards-based approach ensures that you can switch between observability vendors or use multiple tools simultaneously without changing application instrumentation.

External observability tools can be reached within the boundary of the sovereign core. This ensures that telemetry data remains within your controlled environment while still enabling integration with enterprise tools. For example, you can use New Relic or other vendors as long as they are deployed within the sovereign core boundary.

Key features

Integrating external observability stacks provides the following benefits:

• Leverage existing enterprise observability investments
• Maintain consistent monitoring practices across the organization
• Use familiar tools and workflows
• Centralize observability data from multiple sources
• Comply with organizational standards and policies
• Reduce training requirements for operations teams

Configuration

The integration requires only configuration changes, not code modifications. You can configure the OpenTelemetry Collector to export telemetry data to your external observability stack while maintaining the platform's built-in observability capabilities. This allows you to use both the platform's native tools and your enterprise tools simultaneously if needed.