Why Cloud-Native Applications Need Observability

Enterprises use security to safeguard their data from vulnerabilities. They have been deploying high-end enterprise-version antivirus suites to lockdown system security and hedge their bets against malware and all forms of web nastiness.

Now, that the era of cloud-native applications is here, managing changes to cloud assets has become a universal pain felt by developers despite all the advancements in monitoring tools. In the recent past, tools have come to the rescue enabling them to troubleshoot and resolve developer issues. These platforms let organisations track, measure, and optimise the performance of their applications — commonly referred to as ‘observability’. 

It’s more common to talk about ‘observability’ as companies are trying to make the backend work more efficiently. But a year ago, Sawaram Suthar and Laduram Vishnoi at Acquire were facing issues visualising their cloud infrastructure due to the unavailability of a platform allowing them to do so. 

The platform being used by the team lacked real-time monitoring, issue detection, improved customer experience, security, cost optimisation, and data-driven decision-making, which became a huge task for the team.

“We didn’t know what went wrong in the system. If it is down, then why is it so and what are the logs that we look at,” Suthar recalled in a conversation with AIM. “As developers, we kind of felt underserved at that point, as these platforms were mostly enterprise-focused rather than end-user focused,” he added. 

“That's why we unified on the particular form which can help us visualise a complete data flow and started Middleware,” he said introducing the platform. “Observability is not new in the market. It's been here for almost 20 years. But people have started using it now because they realise how important it is,” he added.  

The rising demand for observability tools is visible today as 86% of Indian organisations surveyed in 2022 saw observability as a key enabler to achieving core business objectives. 

The company is currently witnessing a surge in the Indian market as companies continue to go cloud native. As per reports, Indian firms spent an average of INR 370 crore on cloud between June 2022 and 2023. 

“For on-premise servers, it doesn't require observability platforms. When cloud usage increases, there is a need for software which can visualise how this cloud will affect the services. That's where we come in. As several companies are moving away from non-cloud and monoliths, the demand is going to be high in the upcoming year,” he stated. 

Newer and Cheaper 

The global cloud computing market dramatically grew by 635% from $24.63 billion in 2010 to $156.4 billion in 2020. “A few years ago, cloud adoption was still picking up. People were using monolithic environments, or maybe on-demand services,” Suthar pointed out. 

Suthar further highlighted the sheer size of the industry and the already existing dominant players. Early on, the team realised they required a lot of capital. Initially, they tested some different small models before jumping into visibility because they didn't want to go directly competing with the big players.

This strategy bore fruit as Middleware raised $6.5 million in seed funding in August 2023, right after graduating from Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 batch. The company now aims to expand its team from 25 to 50 within the next year and targets a series A funding round by mid-2024.

“Existing competitors, built almost 10 years ago, are still not compatible with the latest technology like cloud-native and AI,” Suthar stated. As a startup backed by YC, it has access to most of OpenAI's innovations and currently uses GPT-4.

He further highlighted and elaborated on the three USPs of MW. Firstly, there’s an AI advisor that can pinpoint errors and recommend what needs to be done to fix them. 

The second is that the platform can predict incoming errors in the next few hours based on data. “That’s a unique differentiator for us. We can predict if a particular server is going to be down, that's a feature that people really love,” Suthar explained. 

Lastly, Middleware offers its services at one-third of the cost compared to major competitors like Datadog, making it an attractive option for cost-conscious customers. “We are in the process of acquiring more customers in a couple of months. Around 35+ customers are actively using our platform,” he added. 

For the DevOps

Headquartered in San Francisco, Middleware is one of the first observability platforms in the market that uses generative AI to accelerate issue identification and resolution. Suthar also recalled that the term observability hadn’t gained much popularity when they entered the market. 

“We started creating content around it to raise awareness. Initially we noticed that people don't understand the word because people used to call it a cloud monitoring tool rather than observability,” he said. 

“People are accustomed to using platforms and metrics differently. It's very hard to adapt to using tools, which give you a full stack of liberty. Now they also know that finding a threat is the biggest problem for DevOps or any developer. What used to take one hour, can now be solved within 10 seconds because you will have complete visibility to take action. Not only data, but you have the right suggestions too,” he concluded.