Correlate Datadog RUM events with traces from OTel-instrumented applications

OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open source observability framework that provides APIs, SDKs, and tools for instrumenting cloud-native applications and services. It enables the collection of metrics, logs, and traces from various sources and routes them to different backends. However, OTel alone cannot help analyze this data or correlate telemetry from different parts of a stack. To achieve full visibility, it needs to be paired with a monitoring platform that allows visualization of telemetry data across an application's frontend and backend. Datadog's APM and RUM integration already provides complete visibility into the journey of an API request issued from an application through the entire backend stack by automatically connecting distributed traces to RUM resources captured from web and mobile apps. With the support for W3C and B3 trace headers in Datadog's Browser and Mobile RUM SDKs, users can now bring this full-stack visibility to their OTel-instrumented applications with minimal added configuration. This enhanced OTel header support enables users to gain full-stack visibility into OTel-instrumented apps, pinpoint the root cause of increased latency and failed requests, and streamline collaboration between frontend and backend teams. By linking these traces to related resources directly within RUM user sessions, users can leverage powerful RUM features for quick troubleshooting and effective root cause analysis for their OTel-instrumented apps. With the end-to-end correlation of user actions, requests, and backend traces provided by RUM, users can easily investigate issues by working their way from frontend impacts to backend root causes without ever leaving the page. This helps identify which backend services are responsible when an OTel-instrumented app is responding slowly or failing altogether. To start correlating OTel-instrumented traces across APM and RUM, users can follow the documentation provided by Datadog to collect traces from OTel-instrumented apps in Datadog, enable the Datadog APM and RUM integration, and add W3C and B3 trace context to their RUM SDKs. Alternatively, new users can sign up for a 14-day free trial of Datadog.