Custom software development of monitoring platform

Client and Business Goals:

Our client GSI is a certified Oracle Platinum Partner located in the USA.

Their main business can be described as consulting and management services for JD Edwards, Netsuite, ServiceNow. Each of these enterprise application technologies is crucial to the business using it. A single hour of outage can cause disastrous consequences for operations. That’s why monitoring and keeping these enterprise applications alive is a business-critical mission. To ensure stable, constant and continuous operation, monitoring the clusters, to react immediately and fix the potential problems before they arise, a SaaS infrastructure monitoring software has been chosen. However, it’s become clear very soon that it doesn’t have all the capabilities, and a custom java development company Broscorp has been requested to make appropriate changes to solve the business’s problems.

Product Description:

The product Broscorp intended to build was a custom java-based software that acts as a monitoring system that:

1. Collects all the metrics from the clients hardware (hundreds of servers);
2. Detects the problems and creates tickets for the support team with a detailed description of what happens;
3. Notifies about potential issues that may cause further problems in the future;
4. Aggregate metrics & provide analytics to measure the quality of the support team.

Technology Stack:

Cloud provider: MS Azure

Storages: Cosmos DB, SQL Server

Main language: Java

Frontend technologies: AngularJS

Challenges:

The biggest challenge Broscorp had was that there was legacy software which had dozens of problems such as bugs, code quality, stability, memory leaks, etc. Moreover, it didn’t have all the functionality to solve the business problem efficiently. So the complete list of all the challenges we had is as follows:

1. Existing software didn’t have enough capabilities to create custom metrics collection;
2. Existing software had a number of bugs and issues in Java code that prevented from constantly working, resulting in missed alerts;
3. Lack of monitoring and slow speed of reacting to the problems;
4. Lack of dashboards to simplify access to the data so that management can easily make decisions and detect problems on a bigger scale.

Solution:

GSI requested custom java development services from Broscorp and we delivered a completely customisable cloud-based infrastructure monitoring platform that can:

1. Collect infrastructure (CPU, memory, dead processes) metrics in real-time from hundreds of machines;
2. Aggregate the metrics and store them for efficient processing;
3. Raise alarms and warnings based on custom rules and notify the support team.

Moreover, our java developers were able to improve the continuous delivery process significantly. It now takes only minutes to package, release and deploy a new software version.

Business Results:

A new system that was built achieved the following goals: 

1. Previously the system was so erroneous that it couldn’t collect metrics in time which resulted in outages of clients’ environments. Current system is stable so no issue is missed and clients’ business operates 24/7;
2. New metrics which helps diagnose clients environment on earlier stages has been developed so we can prevent even more outages;
3. Previously the system didn’t have dashboards so there was no big picture and it was difficult to see common problems for different clients. Now there are management dashboards solving this problem.

Conclusions

This project is just another great example when custom software development can be more beneficial than relying on existing saas services. Despite all the advantages of saas services, when your business is scaling and strives for custom business requirements then it’s time to move toward tailor-made software.

Sometimes, the tools offered provide limited solutions for solving unique business problems, so it is worth ordering the development of your own software taking into account the specifics of your business. 

It is not difficult to check the advantages of custom java software development: you just need to enlist the support of experts in the industry. The Broscrop team also has experience in dealing with the outdated code base. If you encounter troubles with legacy code, you can order a code analysis of your software and a plan for its redesign from us.

Look at our software development expertise and fill out the contact form below to find the answers to all your questions.