Telemetry service for data-driven decisions & product growth

Client

Percona is widely recognized as a world-class open-source database software, support, and services company. The organization is dedicated to helping businesses make databases and applications run better through a unique combination of expertise and open-source software. Percona works with numerous global brands across many industries creating a unified experience to monitor, manage, secure, and optimize database environments on any infrastructure.

Industry: Software Development

Location: USA

Challenge

Percona had a lot of new ideas and requirements for the complex topic of database monitoring and management. They had a multi-year product roadmap and an ever-increasing backlog of ideas, but they needed assistance with a telemetry project that was critical to their understanding of how and where to provide the most value to their users and customers. Although an existing system was in place, it was incapable of adapting to their growing needs and hindered their ability to make data-backed decisions.

To address this issue, they required a service that could overcome data collection challenges and provide information to help structure and prioritize the next phases of product development. The telemetry service needed to be lightweight, scalable, and user-friendly. As the current teams were already at capacity and focused on essential features, they were doubtful they could fit it into their packed schedule anytime soon. Percona turned to Implex to design and implement a revamped telemetry service that would be highly configurable and easy to modify.

"When we engaged with Implex, we figured they might be able to help us out with just one project. The speed that they were able to implement the solution and results they delivered was so impressive we looked for more ways to involve them in our roadmap activities. They’ve become a critical piece of our development strategy and a trusted partner!"

Stephen Hoffman

SVP, Engineering at Percona

"The Telemetry project Implex delivered for us not only exceeded our expected value, but they made substantial contributions to improve processes, practices and tooling while doing so. The quality of their efforts along with their valued contributions made it an easy choice for us to look to expand their areas of responsibility. We consider Implex a trusted, valued, and integral partner."

David Poole

Senior Director of Engineering

Solution

Our team successfully developed a scalable Telemetry service and implemented technical improvements for increased productivity. We continue to work together towards the empowered team transformation project.

Collaborative Approach & Infrastructure Design

Our team was made up of experienced software engineers who had worked on similar projects in the past. We worked closely with Percona's Product manager and architect to understand their requirements and to design a service that met their needs. We used AWS EKS on EC2 instances as infrastructure, which allowed us to deploy and manage the service in a scalable and efficient way. During implementation, we used ClickHouse as a storage engine and Grafana for collecting and visualizing the data, which allowed Percona to monitor PMM in real-time and make informed decisions based on the data they collected. To ensure that the service was of high quality, we implemented a rigorous testing and review process.

Quality Assurance & Continuous Improvement

We used automated testing tools to ensure that the service met all of its functional requirements, and we also conducted extensive manual testing to ensure that the service was easy to use and met Percona's needs.

Worth to add that during the implementation of the new service, our team was proposing additional technical improvements which allowed to increase the productivity of all development teams, such as enabling debugging and implementation of PMM using an Apple silicon-based machine, etc.

The tools and technologies we used were:

Results

Our team's implementation of the new Telemetry service was a success and had a significant impact on Percona's business decision process. The Telemetry service allowed Percona to collect data on how the PMM tool was being used in the real world. They could see which features were being used the most, which parts of the software were causing the most problems, and which configurations were most popular. This data was used to identify and fix issues more quickly, and to prioritize new features based on user needs.

The Telemetry service was implemented quickly and in high quality, which allowed Percona to meet its product release schedule. The service was also easy to use and scalable, which allowed Percona to manage and monitor their software more efficiently.

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