Skip to main content

Instana Releases Automatic Support for W3C User Timing and Trace Context APIs

Instana announced the availability of the integration of data from both the W3C Trace Context and User Timing APIs.

With the release, Instana automatically identifies custom W3C events and consumes them, with no code changes required.

“Developers and Operations staff need maximum observability to work as effectively as possible,” said Chris Farrell, Instana Technical Director and APM Strategist. “By combining data from proprietary sources and W3C User Timing and Trace Context, Instana provides the best of both visibility worlds, a powerful way to provide maximum visibility with minimum effort.”

Instana’s implementation of support for W3C User Timing API automatically collects all pre-existing W3C User Timing events, without developers needing to add their own JavaScript API calls to get the events into their analytics platforms. Similar to other performance entities inside Instana’s solutions, W3C User Timing API is made available for analysis in Instana’s Unbounded Analytics™ engine, allowing patterns across multiple profiles to be discovered and analyzed collaboratively.

“The W3C Distributed Tracing Working Group via the Trace Context specification defines the format and semantic of distributed trace context propagation, enabling an integrated experience for users of various tracing tools, libraries, and platforms, while leaving space for innovation and experimentation,” said Sergey Kanzhelev, W3C Distributed Tracing Working Group Editor and Co-Chair. “Standards like Trace Context are increasingly important with the rise of cloud computing and modern platforms, especially as application development moves to a new level of abstraction where standards provide building blocks enabling compatibility and interoperability of different application components, simplifying the development process and speeding up time-to-market.”

Instana’s support for W3C Trace Context includes correlating traces with AutoTrace, Instana’s automated distributed tracing technology. Every trace, regardless of origin, is then available in the Instana Analytics Engine (called Unbounded Analytics), allowing developers and operations to get to the root of any issue and easily pass contextual information from one transaction to next across different tracing sources.

Instana’s automated Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solution discovers all application service components and application infrastructure, including infrastructure such as AWS Lambda, Kubernetes and Docker. Instana automatically deploys monitoring sensors for each part of the application technology stack, traces all application requests and profiles every process – without requiring any human configuration or even application restarts. The solution detects application and infrastructure changes in real-time, adjusting its own models and visualizing the changes and any performance impact in seconds.

The Latest

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...

In March, New Relic published the State of Observability for Media and Entertainment Report to share insights, data, and analysis into the adoption and business value of observability across the media and entertainment industry. Here are six key takeaways from the report ...

Regardless of their scale, business decisions often take time, effort, and a lot of back-and-forth discussion to reach any sort of actionable conclusion ... Any means of streamlining this process and getting from complex problems to optimal solutions more efficiently and reliably is key. How can organizations optimize their decision-making to save time and reduce excess effort from those involved? ...

As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, CIOs are routinely exceeding their cloud budgets — a concern that's about to face additional pressure from an unexpected direction: uncertainty over semiconductor tariffs. The CIO Cloud Trends Survey & Report from Azul reveals the extent continued cloud investment despite cost overruns, and how organizations are attempting to bring spending under control ...

Image
Azul

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

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 ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

Instana Releases Automatic Support for W3C User Timing and Trace Context APIs

Instana announced the availability of the integration of data from both the W3C Trace Context and User Timing APIs.

With the release, Instana automatically identifies custom W3C events and consumes them, with no code changes required.

“Developers and Operations staff need maximum observability to work as effectively as possible,” said Chris Farrell, Instana Technical Director and APM Strategist. “By combining data from proprietary sources and W3C User Timing and Trace Context, Instana provides the best of both visibility worlds, a powerful way to provide maximum visibility with minimum effort.”

Instana’s implementation of support for W3C User Timing API automatically collects all pre-existing W3C User Timing events, without developers needing to add their own JavaScript API calls to get the events into their analytics platforms. Similar to other performance entities inside Instana’s solutions, W3C User Timing API is made available for analysis in Instana’s Unbounded Analytics™ engine, allowing patterns across multiple profiles to be discovered and analyzed collaboratively.

“The W3C Distributed Tracing Working Group via the Trace Context specification defines the format and semantic of distributed trace context propagation, enabling an integrated experience for users of various tracing tools, libraries, and platforms, while leaving space for innovation and experimentation,” said Sergey Kanzhelev, W3C Distributed Tracing Working Group Editor and Co-Chair. “Standards like Trace Context are increasingly important with the rise of cloud computing and modern platforms, especially as application development moves to a new level of abstraction where standards provide building blocks enabling compatibility and interoperability of different application components, simplifying the development process and speeding up time-to-market.”

Instana’s support for W3C Trace Context includes correlating traces with AutoTrace, Instana’s automated distributed tracing technology. Every trace, regardless of origin, is then available in the Instana Analytics Engine (called Unbounded Analytics), allowing developers and operations to get to the root of any issue and easily pass contextual information from one transaction to next across different tracing sources.

Instana’s automated Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solution discovers all application service components and application infrastructure, including infrastructure such as AWS Lambda, Kubernetes and Docker. Instana automatically deploys monitoring sensors for each part of the application technology stack, traces all application requests and profiles every process – without requiring any human configuration or even application restarts. The solution detects application and infrastructure changes in real-time, adjusting its own models and visualizing the changes and any performance impact in seconds.

The Latest

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...

In March, New Relic published the State of Observability for Media and Entertainment Report to share insights, data, and analysis into the adoption and business value of observability across the media and entertainment industry. Here are six key takeaways from the report ...

Regardless of their scale, business decisions often take time, effort, and a lot of back-and-forth discussion to reach any sort of actionable conclusion ... Any means of streamlining this process and getting from complex problems to optimal solutions more efficiently and reliably is key. How can organizations optimize their decision-making to save time and reduce excess effort from those involved? ...

As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, CIOs are routinely exceeding their cloud budgets — a concern that's about to face additional pressure from an unexpected direction: uncertainty over semiconductor tariffs. The CIO Cloud Trends Survey & Report from Azul reveals the extent continued cloud investment despite cost overruns, and how organizations are attempting to bring spending under control ...

Image
Azul

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

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 ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ...