In 2013, a FinTech company was founded to offer a commission-free investing app that made trading so easy, it unleashed a new generation of investors who could buy and sell stocks without using or paying a broker. Before partnering with Chronosphere, the company ran observability in-house using Grafana Mimir. The solution was not only expensive, but was also plagued by availability issues and was prone to hours-long downtime episodes.
Over the past two years, the company has seen popularity of its trading platform skyrocket: Membership reached tens of millions and it saw an 80% increase in month-over-month usage. Their users, who execute trades throughout the day and tee them up the night before, are so passionate about freedom to buy and sell stocks that their expectations of uptime are the same as essential utilities – electricity, water, and the ability to trade should be always-on. “When money and regulatory bodies are involved, the reliability stakes are even higher – we needed to eliminate all barriers for customers to trade on our platform,” said a Senior Staff Engineer who also founded the observability practice.
