Ankit Anand

Maintainer, SigNoz

About The Hindu

The Hindu, one of India’s most respected newspapers, has a rich history of delivering news to millions of readers. As the publication embarked on its digital transformation journey, ensuring the reliability and performance of its online platforms became paramount. The Hindu turned to SigNoz to monitor and optimize its complex, multi-SaaS services and cloud infrastructure.

The Challenge: Monitoring the Subscription-Based Service With Multiple Integrations

As one of the first newspapers in India to introduce a subscription service, The Hindu's platform team recognized the critical importance of maintaining a seamless and reliable user experience. Each subscription transaction triggers a series of 10 to 15 integrations across these systems, making end-to-end monitoring crucial.

They also needed a robust observability platform to monitor their multi-cloud infrastructure, which included a mix of Oracle Cloud, AWS, GCP, and an on-premises data center. SigNoz was chosen to provide end-to-end observability, helping The Hindu track every user transaction and optimize performance across their subscription-based service.

"We needed a reliable observability platform to monitor the entire user journey, especially after launching our subscription service. SigNoz gave us the visibility we needed to ensure everything worked seamlessly across our digital platforms."

— Poonkuyilan V, IT Infrastructure and Core Applications Lead, The Hindu

Chose SigNoz for Its Superior APM Visualizations and Detailed Performance Insights

"We integrated various APM products but didn’t get the same level of insights and traceability that SigNoz provides. With SigNoz, we can identify and resolve issues faster, optimizing our applications for better performance."

— Poonkuyilan V, IT Infrastructure and Core Applications Lead, The Hindu

When evaluating observability tools, The Hindu ultimately chose SigNoz APM over various APM for several key reasons:

Superior Visibility with Spans:

SigNoz provided more detailed and actionable insights into their application performance compared to other APM products. This was crucial for The Hindu’s complex infrastructure, where understanding the root cause of issues quickly is vital.

Enhanced Traceability:

With SigNoz, The Hindu could track and optimize end-to-end transactions more effectively, particularly within their subscription-based service. This allowed them to identify unnecessary API calls and optimize the overall performance of their applications, something they struggled to achieve with other tracing tools.

Open-Source Alignment:

SigNoz’s open-source nature offered greater flexibility and control, aligning with The Hindu’s commitment to using open-source solutions across their IT infrastructure.

Why SigNoz APM Outshines Other APM tools

The Hindu had previously experimented with other APM products but found it lacking in comparison to SigNoz.

"We tried out other APM products but didn’t find it as effective as SigNoz. The visibility and insights we get from SigNoz are far superior, especially in identifying unwanted calls and optimizing application performance."

— Poonkuyilan V, IT Infrastructure and Core Applications Lead, The Hindu

SigNoz provided better traceability, allowing The Hindu to detect and eliminate unnecessary API calls, thereby improving overall system performance.

Quick Adoption among developers due to OpenTelemetry

One of the key advantages of SigNoz is its seamless integration with OpenTelemetry, an open-source observability framework. OpenTelemetry makes it straightforward to instrument applications for monitoring, providing standardized APIs and libraries that work across various programming languages. This compatibility ensures that teams can quickly get started with SigNoz, effortlessly collecting logs, metrics, and traces from their applications without the need for complex configurations.

"SigNoz’s integration with OpenTelemetry made it incredibly easy for us to get started. We could quickly instrument our applications and begin collecting the necessary observability data without hassle." — Poonkuyilan V

Centralized Observability on Kubernetes with SigNoz

The Hindu recently expanded its use of SigNoz by fully implementing it within its Kubernetes environment. They use Oracle Cloud OKE service for Kubernetes which is quite unique. Recognizing the need for a unified observability platform, they decided to utilize SigNoz as the single source for logs, metrics and traces across their Kubernetes clusters. This implementation allows The Hindu to monitor pod resources, node health, and application logs, all from a single, centralized dashboard.

"For our Kubernetes environment, we chose SigNoz as our end-to-end monitoring platform. It allows us to monitor everything from pod resources to node health and even logs and traces, all from a single dashboard."

— Poonkuyilan V, IT Infrastructure and Core Applications Lead, The Hindu

By centralizing its observability with SigNoz, The Hindu is able to gain comprehensive insights into its infrastructure, ensuring that all components work together seamlessly.

Using SigNoz in the Staging Environment to improve reliability

Before deploying any new services or updates to production, The Hindu team leverages SigNoz in their staging environment to ensure everything functions optimally. By setting up logs, metrics, and traces within SigNoz, the team can thoroughly monitor new developments and detect any potential issues early in the process. This proactive approach allows them to fine-tune performance and ensure that new features or updates are fully optimized before going live.

"In our staging environment, we use SigNoz to monitor traces and metrics before any service goes into production. This helps us ensure that everything is running smoothly and gives us confidence that our updates are ready for deployment."

— Poonkuyilan V, IT Infrastructure and Core Applications Lead, The Hindu

This practice not only helps in identifying and resolving issues but also ensures that the transition to production is seamless, minimizing the risk of disruptions and maintaining the high standards of performance that The Hindu is known for.

Faster Incident Resolution and Improved Performance

SigNoz has proven invaluable in helping The Hindu address real-time issues efficiently.

"Recently, we configured alerts for pod restarts and were able to quickly identify and resolve the root cause before it escalated. Additionally, SigNoz’s tracing capabilities helped us spot unwanted calls to third-party systems, allowing us to optimize our applications."

— Poonkuyilan V

These capabilities have not only improved the reliability of The Hindu’s platforms but have also enhanced the user experience by ensuring smooth and uninterrupted service.

A Trustworthy Partner in The Hindu’s Digital Transformation

SigNoz has become an integral part of The Hindu’s digital operations, providing the tools necessary to monitor and optimize their complex, multi-cloud environment. With its feature-rich platform, open-source nature, and cost-effectiveness, SigNoz has empowered The Hindu to deliver a seamless digital experience to its readers.

"SigNoz has been a reliable partner in our digital transformation, offering us the control and insights we need to ensure our platforms are always performing at their best."

— Poonkuyilan V