New Relic Unveils AI Agent Platform & OpenTelemetry Tools
▼ Summary
– New Relic has launched a no-code AI agent platform designed for data observability, allowing enterprises to deploy and manage agents that monitor data to preemptively catch issues.
– The platform supports the model context protocol (MCP) for connecting AI to external data and integrates with New Relic’s existing observability tools.
– New Relic’s strategy is not to be a sole, general-purpose agent platform but to provide specialized agent-building capabilities focused on solving observability problems within a broader ecosystem.
– The market for AI agent management software is growing rapidly, with companies like Salesforce and OpenAI launching similar platforms to address enterprise adoption concerns.
– New Relic also introduced new OpenTelemetry (OTel) tools, integrating OTel capabilities into its APM agents to help enterprises consolidate and manage OTel data streams more easily.
Businesses are actively seeking software solutions to construct and oversee AI agents, aiming to accelerate enterprise-wide artificial intelligence adoption. New Relic has entered this competitive arena with its own offering, recognizing it joins a field of established players. The data observability firm recently introduced a no-code agentic platform designed for enterprises to assemble AI agents that monitor company data, identifying bugs and potential issues before they impact products. This New Relic Agentic Platform allows for the deployment of pre-built agents and the management of existing bots.
The platform also incorporates support for the model context protocol (MCP), which links AI applications to external data sources, and integrates with New Relic’s broader toolset. According to Brian Emerson, the company’s new chief product officer, the goal is not to become the sole platform for all AI agent management. Instead, New Relic aims to provide clients with robust agent-building capabilities specifically tailored for observability outcomes, while remaining compatible with the wider ecosystem of tools.
“We are not building this as a general-purpose solution,” Emerson explained. “We are building it for the specific outcomes we care about within observability. This approach allows us to work with other existing tools but brings everything back into the context of solving problems for our users in the observability domain.”
The market for AI agent management software has expanded rapidly as organizations attempt to address concerns about granting AI systems access to sensitive data and software infrastructure. Salesforce pioneered this space with its Agentforce platform in late 2024, followed by OpenAI’s launch of OpenAI Frontier earlier this year. Industry analysts at Gartner have labeled such platforms “necessary infrastructure,” underscoring their critical role in facilitating enterprise AI adoption.
Alongside its AI agent platform, New Relic announced new developments centered on OpenTelemetry (OTel), the open-source observability framework. The company has enhanced its application performance monitoring (APM) agents with native OTel capabilities. This upgrade enables enterprises to consolidate OTel data streams with other data sources in a single location, directly tackling the fragmentation issues that have previously slowed widespread enterprise adoption of OTel.
Nic Benders, New Relic’s chief technology strategist, highlighted the practical benefits. “Customers can simply send their OTel data to us. What we’ve learned is that operating all the OTel data collectors can be a significant burden for many engineering teams. Providing comprehensive OTel fleet management is therefore a crucial service.” This move is part of a broader strategy to lower barriers and simplify the operational complexity associated with advanced observability frameworks.
(Source: TechCrunch)
