Lightstep
Delivering full-stack observability for today's complex systems.
Acquired by
ServiceNow
Acquisition Year
2021
Telemetry Standard
Co-creator of OpenTelemetry
About Lightstep
Originally focused on distributed tracing with its roots in Google's Dapper, Lightstep has evolved into a comprehensive observability platform, now part of ServiceNow. It ingests and analyzes telemetry data—metrics, logs, and traces—to provide deep insights into application and infrastructure performance. The platform is built to handle massive scale, making it suitable for enterprises with complex microservices architectures. Key features include its unique satellite architecture for scalable data collection, real-time analysis for rapid root cause identification, and integrations with popular open-source standards like OpenTelemetry, which Lightstep co-created.
Core Features
Unified Telemetry
Combines metrics, logs, and traces in a single platform.
Distributed Tracing
Deep analysis of request flows across microservices to identify bottlenecks and errors.
Service Health Monitoring
Real-time dashboards and service level objective (SLO) tracking.
Root Cause Analysis
Uses statistical analysis of trace data to pinpoint the cause of performance regressions.
Technology
Opentelemetry Native
Built on and a major contributor to the OpenTelemetry standard for vendor-neutral instrumentation.
Satellite Architecture
On-premise or cloud-deployed satellites perform data processing at the edge, reducing data volume and cost.
Dynamic Snapshots
Captures 100% of unsampled trace data for a short period to enable detailed debugging.