New Relic introduces new capabilities to support enterprise adoption of OpenTelemetry
New Relic has announced a set of updates aimed at simplifying enterprise adoption of OpenTelemetry (OTel), as organisations increasingly move towards open observability standards. The company introduced hybrid APM agents, enhanced infrastructure monitoring through its OpenTelemetry distribution, and new collector monitoring capabilities designed to reduce operational complexity and integration overhead.
OpenTelemetry, an open-source framework for collecting and transmitting telemetry data, is seeing growing adoption among enterprises seeking vendor-neutral observability approaches. However, many organisations have faced challenges balancing open standards with existing proprietary tools, often requiring significant re-engineering efforts.
Hybrid instrumentation to bridge legacy and open standards
The company’s updated APM hybrid agents are designed to support both proprietary instrumentation and OpenTelemetry APIs within a single deployment model. According to New Relic, this approach allows organisations to modernise telemetry pipelines without replacing existing dashboards or workflows, enabling gradual migration to open standards.
The agents aim to provide mixed-mode interoperability across environments, allowing teams to retain trace continuity while introducing newer capabilities such as dimensional metrics and enhanced span-level insights. Industry observers note that hybrid instrumentation models are emerging as enterprises attempt to avoid disruptive “rip-and-replace” migrations while transitioning to open observability ecosystems.
OTel-based infrastructure monitoring
New Relic also expanded its infrastructure monitoring capabilities through the New Relic Distribution of OpenTelemetry (NRDOT). The offering is intended to provide OTel-native visibility for hosts and applications while integrating directly with the platform’s existing monitoring experiences.
An integrated telemetry processing capability is designed to reduce unnecessary data ingestion by filtering low-value signals, reflecting growing enterprise concerns around observability costs as telemetry volumes increase.
Monitoring the observability pipeline itself
Another addition, Collector Observability, focuses on monitoring the health and performance of OpenTelemetry Collectors, components that route observability data across systems. The capability provides real-time visibility into configuration issues, performance bottlenecks and connectivity risks, helping teams manage the operational overhead associated with scaling open observability architectures.
With enterprises increasingly exploring open standards to reduce vendor lock-in and improve flexibility, vendors across the observability ecosystem are introducing tools designed to simplify migration and governance.
The newly announced capabilities, including APM hybrid agents, NRDOT-based infrastructure monitoring and Collector Observability, are now available to New Relic customers globally.