groundcover Eliminates Blind Spots in OpenTelemetry
Today, we are thrilled to welcome to The Prime View interview, Shahar Azulay, co-founder and CEO of groundcover, a cloud-native observability platform. Shahar highlights groundcover’s unique approach, leveraging eBPF technology for efficient data collection and offering an inCloud model to reduce costs and enhance security. The conversation also covers the integration of groundcover with OpenTelemetry and the company’s vision for the future of observability, incorporating AI to improve insights and ease of use.
Watch&Listen to the full interview episode here.
Shahar Azulay
Co-Founder&CEO at groundcover
Why is observability such a critical challenge for organizations today?
Observability has become essential in today’s distributed, cloud-native world. Applications are incredibly complex, with thousands of microservices interacting across environments. The problem is that traditional observability tools come with serious trade-offs—high costs, limited data retention, and data privacy concerns.
“We’ve reached a point where companies are paying enormous amounts to store logs and traces in SaaS-based platforms. Yet, they still suffer from blind spots, and the pricing models are unpredictable. Observability tools should empower teams, not burden them with cost and complexity.”
At groundcover, we asked ourselves: How can we make observability more seamless, secure, and cost-efficient? The answer lies in cutting-edge technologies like eBPF and our inCloud architecture.
eBPF has been getting a lot of attention lately. Can you explain why it’s such a game-changer for observability?
eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is revolutionary because it changes how data is collected. It allows us to instrument applications without touching the code, providing deeper visibility with minimal overhead.
Here’s why it matters:
Frictionless onboarding – You deploy a small sensor, and within 60 seconds, you have infrastructure monitoring, log management, and application performance monitoring (APM) up and running.
Eliminating blind spots – eBPF doesn’t care what tech stack you’re using—it’s completely agnostic. That means no blind spots. Whether you’re running OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, or anything else, we’ve got you covered.
Deeper insights – While OpenTelemetry shows you that Service A talked to Service B and it took 1 minute, eBPF can show you exactly what was said in that conversation. This level of granularity can cut hours off troubleshooting time.
Importantly, groundcover is one of the only companies that’s taking an eBPF-first approach. We believe eBPF will become the cornerstone of modern observability because it delivers deeper insights with much less friction.
groundcover’s inCloud architecture is another key differentiator. How does it work, and why is it important?
Traditional observability tools rely on SaaS models, where you send your data to a third-party vendor. This comes with three major problems: spiraling costs, limited data retention, and privacy risks.
Our inCloud architecture flips this model on its head. Instead of shipping data to us, you store and manage everything within your own cloud environment and enjoy these benefits:
Data retention: When data storage costs less, you can retain logs for longer. Instead of deleting data after a few days, you can extract much more value from historical insights.
Cost-efficiency: Companies already have discounts and commitment plans with their cloud providers. Why not leverage those? By keeping the data in your own cloud, you save on both cost and predictability.
Data privacy: Privacy is non-negotiable. As regulations tighten, companies are wary of sending logs and traces to third parties. With in-cloud, your data stays on your premises, giving you complete control.
You also incorporate AI into the observability process. How does AI enhance the experience?
Analyzing observability data often requires complex queries and deep technical expertise, which can slow down decision-making. groundcover simplifies this process by automatically detecting and highlighting anomalies, trends, and correlations across logs, traces, and metrics by leveraging AI models. For example, instead of manually sifting through data to identify a spike in latency, the AI pinpoints the root cause and presents it with clear visual insights. This allows teams to focus on problem-solving rather than data wrangling.
groundcover integrates with OpenTelemetry. How do you complement this popular open-source standard?
OpenTelemetry is an outstanding framework established as the standard for observability data collection. But on its own, OpenTelemetry doesn’t provide deep enough insights.
We enrich OpenTelemetry traces with eBPF data behind the scenes. It’s like sending OpenTelemetry to groundcover and unlocking double the value—automatically. You get the depth of eBPF with the openness of OpenTelemetry.
For teams considering groundcover, where should they start?
My advice? Just try it. groundcover has a free tier and live demo. We designed the platform to be product-led because we know our users. They want to see the technology in action, not sit through a sales call.
In less than a minute, you can experience what eBPF-powered observability looks like and see how in-cloud architecture transforms costs and performance.