OpenTelemetry collector
OpenTelemetry integration with IBM Instana Observability provides a first-class source of data collection that delivers a unified view of telemetry data across your entire stack 
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Illustration highlighting various elements of OpenTelemetry-integrated Instana dashboards

As the second most popular Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) (link resides outside ibm.com) project after Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry (OTel) (link resides outside ibm.com) provides an open standard for instrumenting applications, infrastructure and services to be monitored and debugged in a consistent and interoperable way. It consists of vendor-agnostic open-source tools, APIs and SDKs that work together to gather, clean, organize and export relevant data to a backend observability platform.

IBM® Instana® Observability integrates seamlessly with OpenTelemetry to ensure no service is left uninstrumented and complete real-time observability can be achieved. Instana’s powerful dependency map, upstream/downstream service correlation and full-stack visibility provide the most comprehensive set of OTel value-added capabilities available.  

What you can do
Mix and match different instrumentations 

Using W3C Trace Context, combine Instana-native and OpenTelemetry instrumentation for complete end-to-end visibility with all of Instana’s context and correlation benefits.


Enrich your OpenTelemetry data

Instana correlates your OpenTelemetry services with infrastructure entities (processes, containers, hosts), enriching your OTLP data and connecting it using Instana’s Dynamic Graph.


View all your telemetry data in one place

Easily navigate among and correlate stack traces, service and infrastructure metrics, distributed traces, logs, events, issues and incidents with automatic (and relevant) graphs and dashboards for every entity.


Ingest your OTel data your way

Send OTel data to Instana however you like using any one of four different ingestion methods: SDK exporter, collector exporter, agent OTLP and serverless OTLP.

300+ supported technologies

Instana integrates with other monitoring tools, such as log management and network monitoring tools like IBM® Turbonomic®, to provide a comprehensive view of application performance across the entire IT infrastructure with no plug-ins or application restarts.

Explore supported technologies
Resources What is OpenTelemetry?

OpenTelemetry is changing the landscape of observability. Learn what it is, how it works, what it is used for and why it is such a beneficial open-source tool.

OpenTelemetry Instrumentation example using IBM Instana as the backend

In this post, explore a detailed walkthrough of how to instrument an application using OpenTelemetry and send the tracing to an APM backend—in this case, Instana.

Observe your application's behavior and performance using telemetry data

Instana is fully committed to embracing OpenTelemetry. Learn about the Instana Collector Exporter, which was recently contributed to the OpenTelemetry community.

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