# OpenTelemetry Project and Roadmap Update from Kubecon 2022 has been an incredible year for OpenTelemetry. Metrics became a first-class signal type, and are being used on production services and infrastructure alongside OpenTelemetry’s existing distributed tracing support to send critical performance data to any observability backend for processing. Everywhere we look we see OpenTelemetry being tested, rolled out, or already in use in organizations everywhere, from the largest to smallest, from the most cutting edge to the historically cautious. Since January, we’ve delivered: - Metrics: defined in the specification, and delivered in the Java, JS, .NET, and Python SDKs and instrumentation, with support all the way through the Collector and protocol. More language implementations are on the way. - More instrumentation for all languages. - [A great demo application](../announcing-opentelemetry-demo-release), which includes services written in every supported language, already instrumented with OpenTelemetry. This is a great way to see practical examples of OpenTelemetry that you can learn from or experiment with, and the demo can also be used to test out different observability analytics systems. - Tracing stability in C++, Erlang, and a number of other new languages. - Progress on Ruby, Erlang, Swift, and .NET auto instrumentation. - Major progress on logs, OpenTelemetry’s third signal type. - Documentation! - Various improvements to all components. The community also continues to grow substantially. [We now have over 800 monthly-active developers on GitHub, from 150 different organizations](https://opentelemetry.devstats.cncf.io/d/7/companies-contributing-in-repository-groups?orgId=1&from=now-4y&to=now). More and more of these contributors are end-users - [10 out of our top 25 contributing orgs](https://opentelemetry.devstats.cncf.io/d/5/companies-table?orgId=1) - which is a very healthy signal for the project. People and companies are getting so much usefulness out of OpenTelemetry that they’re contributing back and making it even more useful for everyone. We’re publishing this post during KubeCon, where many community members and end users will be gathered discussing OpenTelemetry and how it’s being used, how it can be improved, and where we should go from here. In May of this year at KubeCon EU we [started a process to create a more formal OpenTelemetry roadmap](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jt47KPwgDG_-4kR4J5GtFSCEhQO3CHgUdAwpCKTQHO8/edit#), and we’ll be continuing that process in Detroit. I’m writing this post in advance of the conference, so I won’t be able to post the full outcome, but here are some of the items that we think are most important: - Finishing logs: completing the full specification and then implementing this spec across each language. - Making OpenTelemetry easier to use, both technically (new features and functionality like an OpenTelemetry control plane), and through documentation, collecting user feedback, etc. - Client instrumentation: extending OpenTelemetry to capture performance data from web, mobile, and desktop client applications. This can be used to capture data from true user-facing SLOs, show end-to-end latency in traces, etc. - Profiling, which will tie service performance (captured today through metrics and traces) to actual function performance within code. - Improving the contributor and maintainer experience. Our focus for the remainder of this year and next year will be on both rounding out OpenTelemetry’s existing functionality across all languages, scenarios, and integrations, and on the roadmap items mentioned above. As mentioned above, in the coming weeks we’ll be publishing a more formal roadmap document that incorporates these, though it’s important to note that the prioritization and progress made on each is dependent on the amount of effort and number of community members that get engaged with each. Many of these, like logs, client instrumentation, and profiling, are already in-flight. We’re excited about these new initiatives because they not only expand the project’s usefulness and bring it closer to its original vision, but they have brought in a new wave of members to the community who are already adding their knowledge, experience, and zeal to OpenTelemetry. These are exciting days for the project, and it’s invigorating for everyone involved to see it grow and be adopted so rapidly.