---
title: "OpenTelemetry Observability — Definition & Engineering Context"
description: "OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open-source observability framework for collecting, processing, and exporting telemetry data — traces, metrics, and logs — from distributed applications into monitoring backends like Grafana, Datadog, or Jaeger."
canonical: https://erpstack.io/glossary/opentelemetry
markdown_url: https://erpstack.io/glossary/opentelemetry.md
publisher: ERPStack
---

# OpenTelemetry Observability

> **Definition:** OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open-source observability framework for collecting, processing, and exporting telemetry data — traces, metrics, and logs — from distributed applications into monitoring backends like Grafana, Datadog, or Jaeger.

## In depth

In complex ERP systems where a single user action triggers 15 database queries across 4 services, OpenTelemetry creates a distributed trace showing the latency contribution of every component. OTel auto-instruments Next.js, Node.js, and PostgreSQL drivers, producing W3C TraceContext-compliant spans without modifying application code. This is the CNCF-standardized successor to proprietary APM agents.

## How ERPStack applies this

We instrument all production ERP deployments with OpenTelemetry, exporting traces to Grafana Tempo and metrics to Prometheus for real-time SLA monitoring and database query optimization.

## Related reading

- [CI/CD Deployment Pipelines](https://erpstack.io/glossary/ci-cd)
- [Microservices Architecture](https://erpstack.io/glossary/microservices)
- [Sentry Observability Platform](https://erpstack.io/glossary/sentry)