Pivoting is a sports term that means "shifting an axis" and derives from the word pivot, which refers to rotating one foot on an axis in ball games such as basketball, handball, and badminton. In the business world, pivoting holds a distinct meaning. If you're involved in running a business or working in a startup, chances are you've come across the term pivoting before. It's a popular strategy employed to redirect an existing business idea when the market isn't performing as anticipated.
This is precisely what happened with RiseEnM, a client of WhaTap's Startup Package. RiseEnM previously operated Rise, a service that consolidates over 40 live commerce platforms to provide users with a centralized experience. Building upon their expertise in operating the Rise service, coupled with AI technology and vision technology, they are now developing “turnup”. This new service aims to offer users video or image-based product information along with purchase details.
At present, the turnup service is in the beta testing phase, preparing for its official launch as per the predetermined timeline. Recognizing the importance of stability during the development of a new service, RiseEnM chose to implement WhaTap's monitoring solution. To gain insights into their experience, we interviewed Yoo Won-geun, a member of RiseEnM's development team. Yoo shared their positive feedback on WhaTap's ability to swiftly address errors, effectively manage performance, and explained why they highly recommend the startup package. 😊
"I used to hold the misconception that domestic SaaS services lacked the capability to implement features as effectively as foreign services. However, my experience with WhaTap Monitoring has completely shattered that prejudice. With WhaTap, it's effortless to discover and utilize the necessary features, significantly reducing the entry barrier for monitoring purposes. The platform proves to be user-friendly, catering not only to development tasks but also to UI/UX improvement work"
- Wongeun Yoo, RiseEnM Development Team -
Introduction: Introducing Our Customers and Infrastructure
Please tell us about RiseEnM and your role in the company.
RiseEnM is a platform service that brings together over 40 platforms into a single, unified app called 'Rise.' Our primary focus is on curating information and utilizing AI technology to provide real-time recommendations for live commerce. This is achieved through the implementation of Rise scanner bots, user-specific recommendation algorithms, and live commerce-specific data.
As an early stage startup, RiseEnM currently comprises a team of 6 employees. While my primary role lies within the development team, I also contribute to various other tasks such as design and marketing in addition to my development responsibilities.
How is RiseEnM's IT infrastructure environment organized?
At RiseEnM, our IT infrastructure is organized to cater to the different services we operate. Even within a single service, we utilize different cloud platforms for specific purposes. For our Rise service, we employ AWS in conjunction with NAVER CLOUD. As for the Turn Up service, currently in development, we utilize Azure along with NHN Cloud.
I'm curious about your background and how you came to choose WhaTap for RiseEnM.
Initially, we explored various overseas monitoring services, but we encountered some challenges. One service had small and unreadable text sizes, while another shortlisted service had an overwhelming number of features in its user interface, making it less accessible.
All of the monitoring services we initially considered were available only in English and lacked Korean support. Although developers and engineers assured me that language restrictions were diminishing, I personally felt uncomfortable not being able to review the service introduction page and pricing policy in Korean, which led me to eliminate them from the shortlist.
One day, while commuting home from work, I noticed a WhaTap Subway advertisement at Yangjae Station. Intrigued, I looked up WhaTap Labs and was impressed to discover that it was a monitoring service provided within Korea.
From your perspective as a service developer, how frequently do you utilize WhaTap monitoring?
As an early-stage startup and pivoting service, it is crucial to ensure the continuous operation of the existing service. However, since I am primarily focused on developing new features, I devote more time to coding than monitoring. Despite this, I always keep WhaTap Monitoring open in a browser tab to regularly check performance and occasionally glance at it to identify any potential issues.
Challenge: Experience with WhaTap
Did you have any concerns or face challenges before implementing WhaTap? Please share any difficulties you encountered during the actual implementation.
When it came to implementing WhaTap, we did encounter some initial concerns and faced a few challenges. One of the main difficulties we experienced was related to installing database monitoring in a different manner. Although it took us some time to apply managed monitoring, such as AWS Elastic Beanstalk, we were able to overcome this hurdle by carefully following the installation guide provided in the WhaTap documentation and YouTube channel. Overall, while there were a few minor obstacles, we were able to navigate through them successfully.
In your opinion, what are the advantages of WhaTap compared to the monitoring services you used before?
Before using WhaTap, we had a prejudice that domestic SaaS monitoring services might not offer the desired features preferred by developers and engineers. As a result, we often leaned towards overseas SaaS services. However, our experience with WhaTap proved us wrong.
When comparing WhaTap to offshore monitoring services, we discovered significant advantages. While offshore services might provide a wide range of features, it can be challenging to locate and become familiar with them. Additionally, the language barrier posed difficulties, requiring extra time and resources to find and utilize the desired features effectively. On the contrary, WhaTap impressed us with its accessibility and user-friendliness.
It was remarkably easy for our team to find and utilize the features we needed, without any language barriers hindering our progress.
What screens and features do you frequently utilize in WhaTap?
The most commonly accessed screens in WhaTap are the project list view and the flex board. While exploring different features to become acquainted with the dashboard, I found the flex board particularly convenient. This feature allows me to freely place key metrics for monitoring applications, servers, and databases on the dashboard. It eliminates the need to check individual monitoring projects, enabling me to quickly assess performance metrics. I consider this one of my favorite features due to its ease of setup, even without referring to the guide documentation. The flexible templates also allow me to customize and add metrics according to our specific requirements.
How has WhaTap contributed to improving your service?
WhaTap has proven invaluable in tracking deployed server logs and monitoring traffic. Once I have automated deployment and testing, my focus often shifts towards bug fixes and development rather than server-related tasks. Having access to information such as SQL queries has been particularly helpful in debugging errors that occur in the production environment.
Just recently, I encountered a slow query issue through WhaTap, which was unexpected. High processing times can significantly impact performance, so identifying and addressing the slow query promptly was crucial. With WhaTap, I was able to minimize the time gap between identifying the slow query and resolving the issue, leading to improved service performance.
Management: Review of WhaTap Customer Support and Startup Package
“Monitoring is essential for startups that need to try things out and build services quickly.
The WhaTap Startup Package is a great promotion for such startups as it lowers the barrier
to entry at a reasonable cost.”
I understand that you are currently pivoting from a Rise service to a Turn Up service. Why do you recommend monitoring for startups undergoing such transitions?
For startups actively exploring multiple product ideas or business models and pivoting quickly in the market, the speed of development is crucial.
While you need to continuously develop new features, resource constraints, particularly a shortage of manpower, can make it challenging to allocate time and resources to operations once the server is set up
In order to address this challenge, we decided to adopt WhaTap. By leveraging WhaTap's monitoring capabilities, we were able to streamline our operations and focus primarily on development tasks. This allowed us to reduce unnecessary work and maintain stable operations during the transition. From our experience, we are convinced that WhaTap is the ideal choice for startups like us that need to create new services and business models while keeping development speed a top priority.
I see that you are using the WhaTap Startup Package promotion service at RiseEnM. I'm curious why you recommend the Startup Package to early stage startups.
As a small startup, I was most worried about the cost as much as the manpower, but the fact that WhaTap Startup Package provides a monitoring package at a reasonable price made me apply for it without hesitation.
As a startup, the infrastructure environment changes depending on the direction of service development, and sometimes the application language changes. In some cases, the service environment may change, so there is a burden of fluctuating rates. However, I was pleased to see that the Startup Package promotion is available at the same rate every month
You can use all the services without any restrictions for a year, so if you can afford the initial cost, WhaTap Startup Package is a must.