New Relic: Can Observability Save Your Business?

Application performance issues can cripple a business. Imagine a sudden spike in user traffic crashing your e-commerce site right before the holidays. That’s the nightmare scenario for many companies, and preventing it requires powerful monitoring tools. Can New Relic, a leading technology platform for observability, truly deliver the insights needed to avoid such disasters and keep your systems running smoothly?

I saw firsthand how critical effective monitoring is during my time consulting with a fast-growing fintech startup in Atlanta. They were expanding rapidly, adding new features and onboarding thousands of new users every month. Their existing monitoring setup, a hodgepodge of open-source tools, simply couldn’t keep up. They experienced frequent outages, slow response times, and a growing backlog of performance-related support tickets. This was costing them not only money but also their reputation.

The VP of Engineering, Sarah, was at her wit’s end. “We’re spending more time fighting fires than building new features,” she told me during one particularly frustrating week. “Our customers are starting to complain, and I’m worried we’re going to lose them.” Their mean time to resolution (MTTR) was abysmal, often taking hours, or even days, to identify and fix the root cause of an issue.

That’s when we decided to implement New Relic. The initial setup was surprisingly straightforward. New Relic offers agents for various programming languages and frameworks, making it relatively easy to instrument their applications. We started by focusing on their core microservices, the ones responsible for handling user authentication, transaction processing, and data storage.

One of the biggest benefits we saw immediately was New Relic’s anomaly detection. Instead of relying on static thresholds, which often triggered false positives or missed genuine issues, New Relic used machine learning to identify unusual patterns in their data. For example, one night, New Relic flagged a sudden spike in database query latency. It turned out that a newly deployed feature was causing inefficient queries, putting undue stress on the database. Without New Relic’s alerting, that problem would have gone unnoticed until it caused a major outage.

As a consultant, I’ve seen that one of the biggest challenges with any monitoring solution is data overload. There’s just too much information to sift through, making it difficult to identify the signals from the noise. New Relic excels at providing a unified view of your entire system, from the front-end user experience to the back-end infrastructure. This allows you to quickly drill down into the areas that need your attention.

The fintech startup was using Amazon Web Services (AWS) extensively. New Relic seamlessly integrated with their AWS environment, providing insights into the performance of their EC2 instances, RDS databases, and other AWS services. This gave them a much clearer picture of their overall infrastructure health.

But New Relic is more than just infrastructure monitoring. It also offers application performance monitoring (APM), which allows you to track the performance of your code. You can see which methods are taking the longest to execute, which database queries are the slowest, and which external services are causing bottlenecks.

For instance, the fintech company had a problem with their payment processing service. Users were experiencing intermittent delays when making transactions. Using New Relic’s APM, we were able to pinpoint the exact line of code that was causing the issue. It turned out that a third-party API they were using was experiencing occasional slowdowns. Once we identified the problem, we were able to implement a caching mechanism to mitigate the impact of the API slowdowns.

Here’s what nobody tells you: implementing a monitoring solution like New Relic requires a cultural shift. It’s not just about installing the software and configuring the alerts. It’s about fostering a data-driven culture where everyone, from the developers to the operations team, uses the data to make informed decisions. This means investing in training, establishing clear processes, and encouraging collaboration. You might find some actionable advice in our tech expert interviews.

Another anecdote: I had a client last year, a small e-commerce business near the Perimeter, who initially resisted using New Relic. They thought it was too expensive and complex for their needs. They were relying on basic server monitoring and manual log analysis. However, after experiencing a series of frustrating outages, they finally decided to give New Relic’s free tier a try. They were amazed at how quickly they were able to identify and resolve issues. They eventually upgraded to a paid plan and haven’t looked back since. New Relic offers a tiered pricing structure, which makes it accessible to businesses of all sizes. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can leverage the free tier to gain initial insights before committing to a paid plan.

One aspect often overlooked is New Relic’s ability to monitor the front-end user experience. New Relic Browser allows you to track page load times, JavaScript errors, and other metrics that directly impact the user experience. This is crucial for ensuring that your website or application is performing well for your users, regardless of their location or device.

The fintech startup used New Relic Browser to identify a problem with their mobile app. Users in certain geographic locations were experiencing slow page load times. It turned out that the app was downloading large images from a server located on the other side of the country. By optimizing the images and using a content delivery network (CDN), they were able to significantly improve the performance of the app for those users.

Did New Relic solve all of the fintech startup’s problems? Of course not. They still faced challenges with scalability, security, and other areas. But New Relic gave them the visibility they needed to proactively identify and address performance issues, before they impacted their customers. Their MTTR decreased by over 50%, and their customer satisfaction scores improved significantly. They were able to focus on building new features and growing their business, rather than constantly fighting fires.

New Relic’s value extends beyond just reactive problem-solving. It also provides valuable insights for proactive optimization. By analyzing the data collected by New Relic, you can identify areas where you can improve the efficiency of your code, reduce resource consumption, and optimize your infrastructure. This can lead to significant cost savings and improved performance.

The fintech startup used New Relic to identify several opportunities for optimization. They discovered that they were over-provisioning their database servers. By analyzing the CPU and memory utilization data, they were able to scale down their servers, saving them thousands of dollars per month. They also identified several slow database queries that were consuming excessive resources. By optimizing those queries, they were able to improve the performance of their application and reduce the load on their database.

The story of Sarah and her fintech startup isn’t unique. Many companies struggle with application performance issues, especially as they grow and become more complex. New Relic offers a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing the performance of your applications and infrastructure. It’s not a magic bullet, but it can provide the visibility and insights you need to keep your systems running smoothly and deliver a great user experience. And who doesn’t want that?

The key to success with New Relic is to start small, focus on the areas that are most important to your business, and gradually expand your monitoring coverage. Invest in training and establish clear processes for using the data. And don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things. The more you use New Relic, the more valuable it will become. Perhaps you’re experiencing app lag and performance testing can help.

If you are in Atlanta, you may want to consider boosting performance with Atlanta Tech. Also, remember that a developer’s essential toolkit is vital.

Don’t wait for your application to crash before taking action. Start exploring New Relic today. Even the free tier can provide valuable insights into your application’s performance, helping you identify and resolve issues before they impact your users. The sooner you start monitoring, the sooner you can start improving.