5 reasons why 2025 will be the year of OpenTelemetry

1. Broad adoption by observability platform vendors

One key proof point for OTel is the fact that virtually all of the major observability vendors offer integrated support for the open-source standard. According to Gartner’s August 2024 Magic Quadrant for observability platforms, leading vendors such as Chronosphere, New Relic, Datadog, Dynatrace, ServiceNow, Splunk, and SumoLogic support OTel. In fact, Gartner takes points away from Microsoft because, according to the report, Microsoft’s Azure Monitor doesn’t yet offer support for automated ingestion of OTel data directly via a collector interface; it requires an additional exporter tool.

2. Certification adds validation

Certification programs are important because they provide IT staffers with a formalized process to learn new skills (and make more money). And, as more network managers become proficient working with OTel, it becomes a standard part of their toolkit. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and Linux Foundation have announced an OpenTelemetry certification aimed at validating the skills needed to utilize OTel in order to gain visibility across distributed systems.

The OpenTelemetry Certified Associate (OTCA) is aimed at application engineers, DevOps engineers, system reliability engineers, platform engineers, or IT professionals looking to increase their abilities to leverage telemetry data across distributed systems of cloud-native and microservices-based applications.

“Earning your OTCA boosts your career by equipping you with sought-after skills for modern IT operations,” said Clyde Seepersad, senior vice president and general manager, Linux Foundation Education. “These skills position you as a proactive, problem-solving professional in an era of complex, distributed systems.” The exam costs $250 and applicants will be able to schedule exams beginning in January 2025.

3. OTel extends into CI/CD pipelines

OTel was initially targeted at cloud-native applications, but with the creation of a special interest group within OpenTelemetry focused on the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) application development pipeline, OTel becomes a more powerful, end-to-end tool.

“CI/CD observability is essential for ensuring that software is released to production efficiently and reliably,” according to project lead Dotan Horovits. “By integrating observability into CI/CD workflows, teams can monitor the health and performance of their pipelines in real-time, gaining insights into bottlenecks and areas that require improvement.” He adds that open standards are critical because they “create a common uniform language which is tool- and vendor-agnostic, enabling cohesive observability across different tools and allowing teams to maintain a clear and comprehensive view of their CI/CD pipeline performance.”