Humio at On the Dot: Full visibility with high-performing and flexible log management

While the world of modern application development moves pretty fast, there is an industry that needs to move even faster. And we all agree — it’s the delivery service industry.

Whether we are waiting for our food order or hoping those new loafers get to us before the important dinner tonight, same day delivery has become a major part of our shopping experiences. Luckily, the folks behind On the Dot, a service that helps retailers in the UK get their products to customers as quickly as possible, is on the case!

Logistically, this is no easy task. The engineers at On the Dot, led by Alex Tasioulis, took a full stack approach to solve the technological problem. Adopting various technologies, with a need to focus on both web and mobile development, they attacked the issue of bringing moving targets like couriers together with retailers. On the Dot focuses on exposing an API and a management console for scheduling while couriers connect via a mobile application that tracks location and proximity to shops and delivery locations.

“It’s important to have full visibility over our entire architecture, as any potential errors in our systems could result in delayed deliveries,” Alex points out while discussing the importance of monitoring the tech stack during both development and in production. “We needed flexibility in a monitoring solution that we could rely on.” This led them to Humio.

The main reasons Alex and his team chose Humio as a monitoring and logging solution is threefold. When they first began taking a look at options, it became clear that other solutions were using the same answers — mostly the ELK stack. Humio offered something new with new querying technology and developer friendly integrations.

After looking at the other options and Humio, it was clear that Humio came first when it came to performance and flexibility. Add to that the excellent User Interface, and Humio came out as the clear leader to give the On the Dot team the information and analytics needed to build an amazing, complex application.

But Alex picked Humio over other opportunities not just for design reasons. Flexibility was key, an important part of the On the Dot ecosystem, so a logging and analytics solution that is just as flexible fit the bill. With this flexibility came huge performance increases over things like running the ELK stack.

The On the Dot development team liked the syntax and the overall frontend, so they were encouraged to actually look at logs more, and therefore improve their logs so it’s now something they actually like looking at. Developers were able to understand their own logs better, making integration with the routine easier and more forward looking. The team took more value out of the logs thanks to being able to visualize them better. As Alex says, “Improved logging structures led to better troubleshooting experience”.

With the speed of delivery necessary to make a delivery, especially in constantly moving cities like London, Alex’s team ensures that all their systems continue running without errors, so that all their users get what they need when they need it. Humio, on the other hand, helps to ensure the On the Dot engineers get what they need when they need it.