--- title: The Pillar Is A Lie | daily.dev description: A critical examination of the "three pillars of observability" (metrics, logs, traces) framework, arguing it's primarily a marketing construct that leads to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-pillar-is-a-lie-lquq1zwlu twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Pillar Is A Lie | daily.dev og:description: A critical examination of the "three pillars of observability" (metrics, logs, traces) framework, arguing it's primarily a marketing construct that leads to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-pillar-is-a-lie-lquq1zwlu og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/lQUq1Zwlu.png og:image:alt: The Pillar Is A Lie og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Pillar Is A Lie **[Charity](https://daily.dev/sources/charity)** · 10 min read · 24 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary A critical examination of the "three pillars of observability" (metrics, logs, traces) framework, arguing it's primarily a marketing construct that leads to expensive, siloed tooling. The piece advocates for unified storage models (observability 2.0) that treat all telemetry signals as interconnected structured data, eliminating the need to hop between separate systems. It clarifies that OpenTelemetry uses "signals" as the technical term, not "pillars," and explains how modern observability tools can store data once while deriving multiple signal types from the same source, reducing costs and cognitive load. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@fabianletsch** · 1 upvotes > I get your point but you are arguing that people are talking about pillars for marketing reasons while this article is the same thing but for your product. 😂 > > And yours isn't cheap either 130$ a month lol. (But it has a free plan) **@doertedev\_rewe** · 0 upvotes > ex instana here: you forgot the fourth pillar - always on profiling <3 **@neilhatly** · 0 upvotes > Its all well and good having one source, but how does this work for real time metrics or alerts? Or metrics which have different security profiles depending on the data within? > As always the problem is that there isn't a fit all approach. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why Logs, Metrics and Traces Still Don’t Give You Real Observability](https://daily.dev/posts/why-logs-metrics-and-traces-still-don-t-give-you-real-observability-xkoqmowxi) · DevOps.com · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [From pillars to platform: How open observability data is changing the industry](https://daily.dev/posts/from-pillars-to-platform-how-open-observability-data-is-changing-the-industry-wou02ndbx) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Reading Observability Tools? That’s a Robot’s Job](https://daily.dev/posts/reading-observability-tools-that-s-a-robot-s-job-65lmkst3l) · The Last Week in AWS · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Your Data is Made Powerful By Context \(so stop destroying it already\) \(xpost\)](https://daily.dev/posts/your-data-is-made-powerful-by-context-so-stop-destroying-it-already-xpost--qrntsqvt7) · Charity · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [From Monitoring Signals to Observability Maturity](https://daily.dev/posts/from-monitoring-signals-to-observability-maturity-jqtzbuwqh) · InfluxData · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#monitoring](https://daily.dev/tags/monitoring), [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#opentelemetry](https://daily.dev/tags/opentelemetry) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-pillar-is-a-lie-lquq1zwlu) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Pillar Is A Lie","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-pillar-is-a-lie-lquq1zwlu","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-pillar-is-a-lie-lquq1zwlu"},"datePublished":"2025-10-30T05:43:03.045Z","dateModified":"2025-10-30T05:43:41.924Z","description":"A critical examination of the \"three pillars of observability\" (metrics, logs, traces) framework, arguing it's primarily a marketing construct that leads to...","image":"https://i0.wp.com/charity.wtf/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/srebunny.png?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1","thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/charity.wtf/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/srebunny.png?fit=800%2C1200&ssl=1","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Charity","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Charity","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/90a3f220350747218909de7f1214abae","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/charity"},"commentCount":3,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-pillar-is-a-lie-lquq1zwlu","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":24},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}],"keywords":"devops,monitoring,observability,opentelemetry","timeRequired":"PT10M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Charity","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/charity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Pillar Is A Lie"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-pillar-is-a-lie-lquq1zwlu","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"I get your point but you are arguing that people are talking about pillars for marketing reasons while this article is the same thing but for your product. 😂\nAnd yours isn’t cheap either 130$ a month lol. (But it has a free plan)","datePublished":"2025-10-30T10:05:37.035Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/lQUq1Zwlu#c-KqrPwJZLZ","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Fabian Letsch","url":"https://daily.dev/fabianletsch","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocKR6BVy_wn23EoOKq7-BlszlcXcLmASlnb7l-GtS-q1bePnkaJf=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"ex instana here: you forgot the fourth pillar - always on profiling <3","datePublished":"2025-11-04T08:15:26.851Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/lQUq1Zwlu#c-9mEG6WD3U","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Stefan Staudenmeyer","url":"https://daily.dev/doertedev_rewe","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--lTqNlgjF--/f_auto/v1725263384/avatars/avatar_HfImPrXFLUugZeQi8ORgj"}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Its all well and good having one source, but how does this work for real time metrics or alerts? Or metrics which have different security profiles depending on the data within?\nAs always the problem is that there isn’t a fit all approach.","datePublished":"2025-11-14T10:27:58.048Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/lQUq1Zwlu#c-A0ehcFuD3","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"neil hatly","url":"https://daily.dev/neilhatly","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--NQzs28XS--/f_auto/v1734692205/avatars/avatar_NM0uvu3dPLeLBaVyW0bIO"}}]} ```