The Case for Open Source Observability
Why we standardised on OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana — and haven't looked back.
Vendor lock-in in observability is an expensive trap. When your traces, metrics, and logs are tied to a single commercial platform, switching costs compound with every service you add.
OpenTelemetry as the common layer
OpenTelemetry provides a vendor-neutral API and SDK for instrumenting applications. We instrument once, and the data can flow to any compatible backend — Jaeger, Tempo, or a commercial APM if the client requires it.
This approach has saved our clients significant costs when procurement constraints have forced backend changes mid-project.
Prometheus + Grafana for metrics
The Prometheus ecosystem has become the de facto standard for metrics in cloud-native environments. The query language (PromQL) is expressive, the ecosystem is vast, and the operational model is well understood.
Paired with Grafana for dashboards, this stack gives teams a full observability story without per-seat licensing.
When to use commercial tooling
Open source isn’t always the answer. High-cardinality distributed tracing at very large scale, ML-based anomaly detection, and certain compliance reporting requirements are areas where commercial platforms earn their keep.
The key is knowing the tradeoffs — and making that decision based on your actual requirements, not vendor marketing.