This explains how to design self-hosted software and SaaS products so customers can export logs, traces, metrics (and soon profiles) to any OpenTelemetry-compatible backend. The core argument is that supporting OTLP export avoids vendor lock-in, meets compliance and cost needs, and gives users flexibility to centralize observability. Practical guidance includes exposing a configurable OTLP endpoint, standardizing internal telemetry architecture, and preserving consistent semantics across signals. Profiles reached public alpha on March 26, 2026, but the piece concentrates on logs, traces, and metrics and on aligning product design with OpenTelemetry signal definitions.
Concrete examples and architectural choices illustrate implementation trade-offs: self-hosted projects (Kuma, Keycloak) and cloud platforms (Cloudflare Workers, Heroku) show different constraints and integration patterns. Export routing can use a single endpoint or per-signal endpoints, and multi-tenant environments can run one Collector per tenant or a shared Collector with static pipelines per tenant. The recommendation is to prefer OTLP and Collector-based approaches over custom polling APIs because they are standards-oriented, easier to maintain, and more interoperable, enabling users to route telemetry to whichever observability stack they choose.
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