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Observe, a software observability platform for SaaS companies, raised $ 70 million in a “series A-2” round of funding.
Observation, for those who don’t already know, is about measuring the internal state of an application by tracking raw telemetry data, such as metrics, logs, and traces. This will help companies better understand why their software is lagging or otherwise performing poorly in a production environment, and thus take action to avoid customer churn. The space includes companies covering log analytics, application performance management (APM), and infrastructure monitoring.
“Today’s software applications are architected very differently-they’re cloud-based, highly distributed, and new releases come out every day,” Observe CEO Jeremy Burton told VentureBeat. “When faced with a problem, this increase in complexity, combined with so many changes in production, can be overwhelming to resolve quickly.”
And this is something Observe will do to fix.
Data loops
There has been a flurry of activity in the broader observability sphere lately, with the likes of ServiceNow snapping up Lightstep; IBM buys Instana; and Datadog acquiringSqreen and Timber. New Relic and Dynatrace, meanwhile, continue their fight for dominance in a market that Observe says is worth at least $ 20 billion.
Since it left stealth in 2020 with approximately $ 35 million in funding, Observe said it has acquired fifty paying customers, most of them smaller SaaS companies running AWS and Kubernetes. However, Observe claims a handful of larger customers, including Upstart Financial, OpenGov, and Audiboard, while it says it is “working closely” with the likes of Capital One and F5 to develop new enterprise features .
But in what is clearly a competitive space, how does Observe seek to carve out its own niche? Well, according to Burton, it’s all about helping companies filter the amount of telemetry data they generate, and steer clear of the data loop created by the many tools they use.
“Users experience problems with mobile or online applications every day – performance slowdowns, errors and even loss,” Burton said. “Engineering teams can spend up to half of their time on ‘unplanned work’ investigating and fixing these problems. It’s been a long time since the telemetry data they use to analyze the problem is siled- and special tools are used to view each loop. “
And so Observe promises to remove these data loops using an interface for troubleshooting problems “an order of magnitude faster,” according to Burton.
“A nice analogy – it’s similar to how the iPhone combines a camera, web browser, and phone into one device,” Burton said. “We do the same for log analytics, monitoring, and APM. It creates a better user experience for the user… and they save money by not having to buy three devices. ”
Under the hood, Observe said it stores all telemetry data in a Snowflake database, rather than individual data stores, and then converts all telemetry data generated by this machine into a graph of associated datasets that makes it easier for people to understand – such as “customers,” “shopping carts,” “containers,” and so on.
“This means users can quickly access relevant contextual information for the problem they’re investigating,” Burton said.
More importantly, Observe said it charges based on usage, rather than on data volume or number of users.
“Our system is fully resilient and the customer only incurs a cost when they are analyzing data,” Burton added.
Observe’s A-2 round series includes investments from Capital One Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Madrona Ventures.
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