Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Distributed tracing tracks how a single request moves across multiple microservices, helping teams see the entire execution path end to end. In modern architectures where dozens of services interact, it becomes difficult to understand where latency starts, why bottlenecks appear, and which component breaks under load. Traditional monitoring only shows isolated metrics. Distributed tracing connects those dots.

Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming software development. Teams are shipping more code, deploying more frequently, and getting features to market faster than they could a year ago. The productivity gains are real. But we kept hearing a different story from engineering leaders. Yes, velocity is up. But incidents are climbing, resolution times are getting longer, and code review processes are struggling to keep up.

Businesses today have more access to information about their products and engineering teams than ever before, and the push to be data-driven is also at an all-time high. Engineering metrics can provide actionable insights that help accelerate technology and business impact.

I'm excited to share that we're launching Braintrust by Cortex, a podcast I've been wanting to create for a while now. After years of building Cortex and working with engineering leaders across industries, I’ve noticed an opportunity for conversations that dig deeper into the daily work of building great engineering teams.

At Cortex, our mission is to empower engineering organizations to ship reliable, secure, and efficient software, faster. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a formalized partnership with Sonar, the leader in code quality and security. For years, Sonar has been one of the most popular integrations in Cortex. Teams rely on Sonar’s deep code insights to identify vulnerabilities, ensure coverage, and raise the bar for clean, secure code.

If you're anything like your peers, you probably blinked in April and found yourself a month away from Black Friday when you opened your eyes. Much like a shopper desperately scrambling to pull together gift lists for their loved ones, many engineering teams find themselves rushing to ensure their systems can handle the biggest shopping day of the year.

Platform teams handle cluster provisioning manually because it requires oversight. A product team needs a cluster, so they submit a request. Someone reviews the configuration, provisions it through the cloud provider, waits for it to spin up, and sends back access details. Two days later, the cluster is ready. The delay is intentional. Without review, teams provision oversized clusters that blow budgets, misconfigure networking, or deploy in the wrong regions.

Two weeks ago, we hosted IDPCON 2025, and the response has been overwhelming. Over 250 engineering leaders from 20+ countries joined us for 12 sessions featuring speakers from Canva, Skyscanner, Blackstone, and more. Attendees participated in discussions at 20+ roundtables, sharing strategies and challenges around engineering excellence and internal developer portals.

Today's Recipe: Vibe-coding an identity-provider integration for Cortex.