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New Relic supports Next Update as it expands its Sifter bug and issue tracking application and improves availability
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Next Update, a small company founded in 2008, developed a SaaS-based bug and issue tracking application called Sifter. The application was designed to simplify the bug tracking process and make it accessible to both technical and non-technical team members. However, the entire Sifter application and database initially ran on a single virtual server. This meant that even minor issues could impact performance or take the application offline. With customers in almost every time zone, this was unacceptable. The team’s initial objective was to improve availability, avoid downtime, and have more time and resources to enhance the application.
About The Customer
Next Update is a small company founded in 2008 by Garrett Dimon. The company is focused on making work less tedious and more fun. Its product, Sifter, is a SaaS-based bug and issue tracking application that simplifies the bug tracking process. The application is designed to be simple enough to be used by both technical and non-technical team members in an organization. The company believes that not all teams need the complexity inherent in larger bug tracking systems. In some cases, problems are frequently unreported in traditional systems because the logging interface and process is too imposing. Next Update’s goal is to make Sifter more accessible for wider use across companies. The company has experienced steady growth, primarily driven by word of mouth.
The Solution
Next Update installed New Relic, an application monitoring and management system, in 2009 to monitor their single virtual server environment with the aim of improving overall application availability. With the insight gained from New Relic, the team realized that higher availability meant moving to a more complex environment. Next Update evolved their single virtual server to seven virtual servers at Rackspace. During and after the transition, Next Update relied on New Relic Server Monitoring to monitor the application performance across the different application servers, helping them prevent any problems before they were noticeable to customers or could result in an outage. The team also used New Relic to identify and make improvements to the slowest pages during their upgrade to Rails 3 and Ruby 1.9.3.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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