OpenTelemetry Collectors: Re-architecting Observability Ingestion for Modern Production Systems

For years, observability ingestion has been dominated by vendor-specific agents, collectors, and tightly coupled pipelines. Each monitoring platform came with its own way of collecting data, its own agent, and its own opinionated ingestion path. While this worked in isolated setups, it created a long-term problem: vendor lock-in, operational rigidity, and limited freedom of choice.