Observability / APM
ServiceNow Cloud Observability (Lightstep)
ServiceNow
Was a high-scale distributed-tracing platform (Lightstep) folded into ServiceNow; pioneered "deployment-aware" tracing and helped birth OpenTelemetry.
- Category
- Observability / APM
- License
- Proprietary
- Deployment
- SaaS
- Cost
- Enterprise
- Free tier
- No
- Self-host effort
- —
- Maturity
- Abandoned
- Popularity
- Historically significant (OTel co-origin); now EOL
The catch
End-of-life — support ends March 1, 2026 and ServiceNow is NOT offering an equivalent replacement, so existing users must migrate off. The cautionary tale for "buy a startup APM."
Monitors
MetricsTracesK8s
Built for
Enterprise
The honest take
Included as a tombstone. Lightstep helped create OpenTelemetry, got bought by ServiceNow, and is being shut down in March 2026 with no successor. Exhibit A in why “don’t bet your stack on a startup that gets acquired” is a real article.
Ownership
ServiceNow (acquired Lightstep, 2021); sunset Mar 2026