Nations Info Corporation adopted Kloudfuse to streamline its observability strategy, replacing costly and fragmented tools. The switch enabled better cost control, enhanced troubleshooting, and deeper insights into user behavior.
Reduced Monitoring Costs Despite Tripling Data Volume.
3x
Faster Troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis.
Improved User Tracking, Boosting Conversion Rates and Sales Flow Optimization.
Nations Info Corporation offers a comprehensive suite of data-driven products designed to help businesses and individuals make informed decisions. Their products span across real estate listings, turn-key programs for agents, the well-known RealtyTrac marketplace, non-traditional financing, and real-time credit monitoring with identity theft protection.
Krishna Govindarajan
VP Of Engineering, Nations Info Corporation
Nations Info Corp has developed a platform that simplifies complex data into clear insights across all their applications. Their tech stack utilizes cloud services from Azure and AWS, Kubernetes, MySQL, SQL Server, and a React-based web app hosted on Netlify.
Before using Kloudfuse, Nations Info used several observability and monitoring tools, including New Relic and Azure Insights. To improve troubleshooting and identify root causes, they began increasing their log collection. However, the high monthly costs associated with log analytics became a wake-up call. Their main challenges included:
High Costs of Log Management: Azure Insights incurred significant costs due to excessive log data. This limitation restricted the team to only analyze Access Logs, leaving critical Container Logs unmonitored.
Excessive Alerts and Monitoring Limitations: Nations Info initially utilized OpsGenie and New Relic for monitoring but found New Relic's features to be limited and expensive, with alerts that were overwhelming and not tailored to their specific needs.
Lack of Customization The team faced difficulties in customizing their monitoring tools, leading to insufficient visibility across all layers of their infrastructure.
As the team began replatforming their RealtyTrac application, they re-evaluated their approach to observability. They explored several solutions, including DataDog and Elastic. While both were strong contenders, Nations Info found them unsuitable due to their limited support for custom logs and the additional need for consulting services. Ultimately, the team sought a more flexible and cost-effective solution that could accommodate their growing data volume without restrictions.
Why Kloudfuse?
Unlimited Data Volume: Kloudfuse operates within Nations Info’s own VPC environment, allowing them to effectively manage data volume and costs. This setup eliminates the concerns associated with data volume restrictions that they encountered with other tools.
Observability for Homegrown Environments: Unlike most vendors that focus solely on monitoring cloud-based infrastructure, Kloudfuse enables observability for both cloud and in-house environments, offering comprehensive insights across the entire tech stack. Given that Nations Info has developed its own tech stack, Kloudfuse’s customizable features made it a particularly attractive option.
Integrated Experience: The team sought to streamline root cause analysis, which often required switching between tools and matching timestamps to gather insights. Kloudfuse provides an integrated experience, allowing users to drill down from trace spans into metrics and logs, enhancing efficiency.
Superior Support: The Kloudfuse team provided dedicated partnership and developer support, enabling Nations Info to tailor the tool to their specific requirements.
After transitioning to Kloudfuse, the team shifted from using multiple tools—such as New Relic, DataDog, and Azure Insights—to a unified observability platform. Now, Nations Info relies on Kloudfuse for all their observability needs, covering metrics, events, logs, and traces.
Cost Control: Nations Info controlled monitoring costs as their data volume tripled. This newfound flexibility allowed them to gain more insights without trimming logs to save costs, enhancing their ability to identify root causes of issues without restrictions or concerns.
Enhanced Troubleshooting: The ability to analyze traffic patterns, including bot activity, allowed the team to respond to potential issues much quicker. They can now visualize performance metrics and user behaviors, improving their overall troubleshooting capabilities without restrictions.
Enhanced User Tracking: Kloudfuse facilitated better tracking of user interactions, such as identifying drop-off points in their web traffic and inbound sales flow, a crucial insight into optimizing conversion rates.
Kenny Fordham
DevOps Engineer, Nations Info Corporation
Looking ahead, Nations Info plans to further integrate Kloudfuse into their evolving tech stack. As they re-platform and consolidate applications, all new services will be centralized and monitored through Kloudfuse. Their goal is to enhance user monitoring capabilities, enabling detailed analysis of user journeys and optimizing application performance.
