OTel-Native by Design – Building Products That Export to Any Observability Stack

Products should be designed to export logs, traces, and metrics to any OpenTelemetry (OTel)-compatible backend, allowing users flexibility in choosing their observability stack rather than being locked into proprietary solutions. This vendor-neutral approach using the standard OTLP protocol avoids unnecessary friction, supports compliance and cost management, and future-proofs products by eliminating the need for custom integrations. Building OTel export capabilities from the start—supporting logs, traces, and metrics—is preferable to retrofitting this functionality later.