My most important lesson from working on 7+ cloud-based products: “Failing to prepare for failure is costly... but failing to prepare for success can be even worse”. Learn from my experience - read this deck to learn the top 6 SaaS mistakes you should avoid.

1. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Six Critical SaaS Engineering
Mistakes to Avoid
Manoj Chaudhary
CTO & VP of Engineering
April 2014

2. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
My SaaS Engineering Background

3. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
World’s most popular cloud-based
log management service
What Loggly Does
§ >5,000
customers
§ Near real-
time
indexing of
events

4. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
“Failing to prepare for failure is
costly… but failing to prepare
for success can be even worse.”
My Most Important
Lesson from 7+
Cloud-based Products

5. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
“Adoption for our offering will
take time, so we can get some
experience before we think
about how to scale.”
Mistake #1

6. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
You never really know what your own
service’s adoption curve will look like.
Reality #1
Credit
gkofiannan.

7. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
§ Treat scalability as a P1 feature for launch
§ Set realistic adoption goals and scenarios
§ Translate into:
§ Performance testing
§ Stress testing
§ Longevity testing
§ Capacity plans
§ Build service components for horizontal scalability
Avoiding Mistake #1
Scalability should never be the bottleneck for your service
adoption and success. The potential damage is too great.

8. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
“Our customers will follow
predictable behavior patterns.”
Mistake #2

9. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Reality #2
Be ready for something unexpected that will threaten to
break your service. (That might be when your customer
needs you most.)
Loggly Problem: “Noisy Neighbors” with Spikes in Log Volumes
• Application on fire
• Log management configuration problem
• Other human error
• Spikes can last a long time

10. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
§ Have processes for managing
out-of-policy activity
§ Set up metrics and alerts that let
you know about unexpected
behavior before it sparks a fire
Avoiding Mistake #2

11. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
“Governance is
Marketing’s problem.”
Mistake #2

12. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
If it affects the customer experience of your
service, it’s Engineering’s problem too.
Reality #3

13. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Build a governor that sits on top of platform and
“watches” what’s going on – across tenants
Avoiding Mistake #3
SaaS Engineering = Developing service, running service,
and governing service
Identify out-of-
policy behavior
Segregate
misbehavior to
eliminate impact on
other customers
Inform the
right people

14. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
“We don’t need
operations automation.”
Mistake #4

15. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
SaaS Operations team needs to be much more
than sysadmin.
Reality #4

16. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Avoiding Mistake #4
End-to-end automation, from deployment
to ongoing monitoring.
Alerts to
DevOps when
set thresholds
exceeded
Monitoring
KPIs on
individual
process
performance
One-click
capacity
addition
One-click
deployment

17. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
“We don’t need to build
an immutable store.”
Mistake #5

18. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Data corruption happens.
Reality #5

19. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Avoiding Mistake #5
Maintain a separate store of clean, unmodified
customer data.
Recover
Re-
process
Data
coruption

20. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
“Operational metrics are
optional; let’s just build them
after we get the product out
the door.”
Mistake #6

21. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
You have to see issues coming, or your first
misstep could be your last.
Reality #6
“Did not use it”
“No need at the moment” “Too expensive”
“Do not use”“Did not use it yet”
“Not enough return on investment”
“Not using the product”
“Not meeting my needs”
“It wasn’t the right fit for me”
“Not what I currently need”
“Never used it – just signed up for free trial to check it out”
“Did not use”

22. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Avoiding Mistake #6
Instrument your application to measure every key
process and track the application’s health on
operational dashboards.

23. | Log management as a service Simplified Log Management
Log Management is Our Full-Time Job.
It Shouldn’t Be Yours.
About Us:
Loggly is the world’s most popular cloud-based log management solution, used by
more than 5,000 happy customers to effortlessly spot problems in real-time, easily
pinpoint root causes and resolve issues faster to ensure application success.
Unless You Want it to Be (Join us!)
Check out our career page to see if there’s a great match for your skills!
loggly.com/careers.
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