Embracing Cost-Effective Observability Through an OpenTelemetry Approach

Mimi Shalash
Splunk

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage.

OpenTelemetry helps organizations understand the performance and health of their cloud-native applications and the infrastructure that supports them. As an open-source, vendor-neutral framework, it delivers the full toolkit to telegraph an organization's telemetry. With APIs, SDKs (software development kits) and a robust set of tools, OpenTelemetry helps teams tune in to the signals their systems are sending. Because when it comes to observability, it actually pays to keep your data well instrumented.

And the data proves it. Recent research shows that 57% of observability leaders have successfully reduced costs with OpenTelemetry by gaining control over what telemetry is collected, how it's routed, and where it goes.

Putting Organizations in Control of Their Valuable Data

Internal data is the engine driving digital transformation. Organizations rely on it to understand system behavior, optimize performance and make informed decisions. But as data volumes grow, so do costs.

OpenTelemetry gives organizations control over their telemetry strategy, enabling them to define where data is sent, what it includes, how it's structured, and how much is collected. This flexibility allows teams to implement intelligent data management policies, prioritizing high value telemetry for real-time analysis while routing lower priority data to cost effective archival storage. For example, critical data such as payment transactions can be sent to object storage for audit compliance, while simultaneously being forwarded to an APM tool for monitoring. It's a strategic shift: decoupling data collection from backend lock in and routing based on performance, compliance or cost requirements.

Boosting Efficiency with People and Process

Beyond cost savings, OpenTelemetry reduces organizational friction. While most developers agree on the need for observability standards, consensus often breaks down when teams push for their preferred tools.

OpenTelemetry solves this problem. It's the pragmatic standard that teams across stacks and languages can align around. It acts as a great equalizer, bringing consistency to data collection, while giving teams the flexibility to route telemetry to multiple backends based on evolving needs. And best of all, it avoids forcing immediate tool consolidation, which is often political, slow, and resource heavy.

Log it if you must … but it's the truth.

Giving Organizations Freedom and Reducing Vendor Lock-in

OpenTelemetry's value doesn't stop at efficiency. It's also about freedom. With OpenTelemetry, organizations can now challenge vendors to differentiate on how they analyze and visualize telemetry, rather than locking value behind proprietary data collection methods. What's the alternative? Getting stuck in tool jail where switching platforms feels like rewriting your entire application … with your wallet.

Proprietary tools might check the box today, but relying on vendor managed agents long term is a liability and creates technical debt. Here's why: out of the box telemetry rarely delivers the context required for intelligent automation. To enable smarter alerting, routing or remediation, teams need to enrich telemetry with custom tags and context. The more tightly you couple that enrichment to a proprietary agent, the more painful it becomes to migrate when pricing changes or architectural needs evolve.

OpenTelemetry has flipped the script by forcing vendors to compete where it matters; the quality of their insights, analytics and user experience.

Empowering Your Business with Observability

While many organizations recognize the business benefits of observability, turning that vision into reality takes more than good intentions. It takes the right skills, clear ownership and cross functional alignment.

Despite being the second largest project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), OpenTelemetry can still feel overwhelming, especially for those just starting out. But here's the good news; the most successful observability practices don't wait for the perfect hire. They grow their own. They invest in curious, motivated team members and empower them to become OpenTelemetry champions from within. Look for developers and engineers who are excited about improving visibility, then give them the space and support to dive in, whether that's reading the OpenTelemetry docs, exploring CNCF resources, or joining community forums where they can learn from peers and industry experts.

Observability isn't just a tool, it's a mindset. And when teams future proof their instrumentation, they don't just collect data, they unlock answers.

Drive Performance and Save Costs with OpenTelemetry

Remember, with OpenTelemetry, your data stays portable, your tooling stays flexible, and your observability strategy stays future proof. In a world full of noise, only the teams who own their telemetry will trace their way to uptime.

Mimi Shalash is Observability Advisor at Splunk, a Cisco company

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Embracing Cost-Effective Observability Through an OpenTelemetry Approach

Mimi Shalash
Splunk

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage.

OpenTelemetry helps organizations understand the performance and health of their cloud-native applications and the infrastructure that supports them. As an open-source, vendor-neutral framework, it delivers the full toolkit to telegraph an organization's telemetry. With APIs, SDKs (software development kits) and a robust set of tools, OpenTelemetry helps teams tune in to the signals their systems are sending. Because when it comes to observability, it actually pays to keep your data well instrumented.

And the data proves it. Recent research shows that 57% of observability leaders have successfully reduced costs with OpenTelemetry by gaining control over what telemetry is collected, how it's routed, and where it goes.

Putting Organizations in Control of Their Valuable Data

Internal data is the engine driving digital transformation. Organizations rely on it to understand system behavior, optimize performance and make informed decisions. But as data volumes grow, so do costs.

OpenTelemetry gives organizations control over their telemetry strategy, enabling them to define where data is sent, what it includes, how it's structured, and how much is collected. This flexibility allows teams to implement intelligent data management policies, prioritizing high value telemetry for real-time analysis while routing lower priority data to cost effective archival storage. For example, critical data such as payment transactions can be sent to object storage for audit compliance, while simultaneously being forwarded to an APM tool for monitoring. It's a strategic shift: decoupling data collection from backend lock in and routing based on performance, compliance or cost requirements.

Boosting Efficiency with People and Process

Beyond cost savings, OpenTelemetry reduces organizational friction. While most developers agree on the need for observability standards, consensus often breaks down when teams push for their preferred tools.

OpenTelemetry solves this problem. It's the pragmatic standard that teams across stacks and languages can align around. It acts as a great equalizer, bringing consistency to data collection, while giving teams the flexibility to route telemetry to multiple backends based on evolving needs. And best of all, it avoids forcing immediate tool consolidation, which is often political, slow, and resource heavy.

Log it if you must … but it's the truth.

Giving Organizations Freedom and Reducing Vendor Lock-in

OpenTelemetry's value doesn't stop at efficiency. It's also about freedom. With OpenTelemetry, organizations can now challenge vendors to differentiate on how they analyze and visualize telemetry, rather than locking value behind proprietary data collection methods. What's the alternative? Getting stuck in tool jail where switching platforms feels like rewriting your entire application … with your wallet.

Proprietary tools might check the box today, but relying on vendor managed agents long term is a liability and creates technical debt. Here's why: out of the box telemetry rarely delivers the context required for intelligent automation. To enable smarter alerting, routing or remediation, teams need to enrich telemetry with custom tags and context. The more tightly you couple that enrichment to a proprietary agent, the more painful it becomes to migrate when pricing changes or architectural needs evolve.

OpenTelemetry has flipped the script by forcing vendors to compete where it matters; the quality of their insights, analytics and user experience.

Empowering Your Business with Observability

While many organizations recognize the business benefits of observability, turning that vision into reality takes more than good intentions. It takes the right skills, clear ownership and cross functional alignment.

Despite being the second largest project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), OpenTelemetry can still feel overwhelming, especially for those just starting out. But here's the good news; the most successful observability practices don't wait for the perfect hire. They grow their own. They invest in curious, motivated team members and empower them to become OpenTelemetry champions from within. Look for developers and engineers who are excited about improving visibility, then give them the space and support to dive in, whether that's reading the OpenTelemetry docs, exploring CNCF resources, or joining community forums where they can learn from peers and industry experts.

Observability isn't just a tool, it's a mindset. And when teams future proof their instrumentation, they don't just collect data, they unlock answers.

Drive Performance and Save Costs with OpenTelemetry

Remember, with OpenTelemetry, your data stays portable, your tooling stays flexible, and your observability strategy stays future proof. In a world full of noise, only the teams who own their telemetry will trace their way to uptime.

Mimi Shalash is Observability Advisor at Splunk, a Cisco company

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

Observability Is Becoming the Grid That Powers AI - and It Isn't Ready

For fifteen years, observability lived downstream of everything else. Code shipped, something broke, an engineer went to the dashboards. The job was forensic. The pillars we built, such as logs, metrics, and traces, were designed for that role: tell a human what just happened, fast enough that they can make it stop. That role has quietly ended ...

Hybrid IT Dominates Enterprise Architecture, with Colocation Anchoring Critical Workloads

Hybrid IT has become the standard operating model for enterprises — but that companies are still looking for the right hybrid IT mix, according to the 2026 State of the Data Center Report from CoreSite. After years of cloud migration and hybrid adoption, organizations are shifting their focus from deciding whether to use cloud, colocation or on-premises infrastructure to determining which workloads belong in each environment ...

AI is Moving Fast, and Enterprise File Data Is Not Ready

Pilots are everywhere, stakeholders are seeking results, businesses are pushing for new tools, and IT teams are being asked to make AI secure, reliable, and useful at scale. But as organizations move from testing AI to operationalizing it, many are discovering that the biggest barrier is not the model, the use case, or even the budget. It is the file data foundation within ...

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Fast or cheap? For most of my career in engineering, speed and quality sat on opposite ends of a seesaw. The "OR" in "fast or cheap" was non-negotiable. It was expected that pushing for faster releases meant that something in quality would give way. Tightening quality controls meant the schedule slipped. Every engineering leader I know has lived some version of that tradeoff ... The seesaw is starting to level out ...

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I have been building enterprise software for more than 20 years ... One thing stays true across all of it: You do not find out your foundation is wrong during the crisis. You find out when the debt comes due. For a lot of organizations, that bill is arriving now. New research ... puts hard numbers on something practitioners have been sensing for a while. The telemetry problem isn't coming. It's already here ...

AI is Breaking Enterprise Log Management

The rapid growth of AI workloads is pushing traditional log management approaches to their limits, according to The State of Log Management 2026 report from Dynatrace. Modern logs have become critical to understanding, validating, and securing AI-driven decisions, helping organizations ensure reliability, compliance, and performance at scale. However, the volume and complexity of AI telemetry are overwhelming legacy tools ...

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44% of organizations have reported an outage in the past year tied to suppressed or ignored alerts, and 78% had at least one incident where no alert was fired at all ... Engineers learned about failures from customers. That gap between what our tools report and what our customers experience is the problem DevOps teams have been quietly solving with GenAI tooling, even as most enterprises continue to run their NOCs on manual alert triage ...

Why Cloud Reliability Comes Down to People and How to Improve It

Cloud outages are usually described as technical failures. When a service goes down, a dependency breaks, or a region has issues, the focus immediately shifts to infrastructure. But if you look closely at how these incidents actually unfold, the root cause is rarely the technology itself. It is almost always tied to decisions made earlier, during design, implementation, or day-to-day operations. The system behaves the way it was built. The real question is how it was built ...