OpenTelemetry: extending your APM to the infinite edge
bitdrift's mobile observability platform helps extend the limited telemetry available in observability systems to an infinite edge of devices via an OpenTelemetry tracing integration.
The "Front to back" challenge
APM providers that offer “back-to-front” or full-stack observability can trace a user action from a mobile app all the way to, for example, a Node.js app running in a Kubernetes pod. This makes it possible to diagnose whether an issue originates in the app, the network, the backend, or some combination of these.
However, these providers rely on sampling to keep telemetry affordable. They sample both user device data and backend traces, often at very low rates. As a result, successfully diagnosing a specific user issue through back-to-front tracing often comes down to chance.
Solve for unsampled mobile observability
Enter bitdrift. Our unique observability architecture instruments mobile requests and user actions, and via bitdrift workflows allow for gathering of user telemetry when users experience a problem or any other set of conditions determined by an observability practice. Log everything. Observe everything. No sampling! And receive traced session data and logs when needed.
Extending this capability to your APM platform is easily done by adding an OpenTelemetry TraceID when needed.
Tracing any mobile sessions, problematic or not
A bitdrift workflow performs specific analysis on a granular basis for any unsampled mobile telemetry. One of the actions that a workflow can perform is adding OpenTelemetry and traceID to a network request. This action can be done on any narrow or wide targeted set of requests.
Workflows can be manually configured, designed by AI, or automatically set up via AI to match conditions found via mobile telemetry.
bitdrift can then deep link via a webhook into any observability system and include this trace request, linking the specific mobile session to a log or trace.
Fully customized use of these traceIDs and associated logs with network requests can be accessed via API. BYOI! (Bring your own integrations!)
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Peter Morelli, CEO at bitdrift