FieldEx boosts efficiency & security with Datadog platform
FieldEx, a Malaysian B2B SaaS startup serving organisations in Asia-Pacific and Africa with equipment tracking, inventory management, job assignment, maintenance scheduling, and repairs through a single platform, has reported a significant boost in operational efficiency and a reduced risk of downtime following the deployment of Datadog's monitoring and security platform.
The company, operating across sectors including construction, telecommunications, and financial services, experienced rapid growth that intensified strain on its systems and underscored the need for a robust observability solution to assure reliability and pre-empt issues before they affected services. With Datadog, FieldEx achieved a 30 per cent uplift in operational efficiency and saw measurable improvements in the speed of issue detection, acknowledgement, and resolution.
Identifying the need
FieldEx Chief Architect and Security Officer Vijay Dharmaraj explained that the company's rapid expansion increased both data complexity and the risk of outages. "Our rapid expansion led to a surge in traffic, data complexity and ultimately the risk of downtime. Disruptions, even for a minute or two, impact our customers' mission critical operations," he said. "We recognised we needed a modern observability solution that could help us maintain customer trust, ensure service reliability, and proactively identify issues before they impact end users. This is where Datadog fits in beautifully – it caters to both our platform uptime target of 99.9 per cent availability, and provides deep insights that allow us to finetune the system and strengthen both our platform reliability and our overall cybersecurity posture."
The platform processes more than 15 terabytes of data per week as a result of FieldEx's user growth. Following the transition to Datadog, the startup streamlined system monitoring, enhanced stability, and automated incident alerting, alleviating the monitoring burden previously carried out manually by its engineers.
Operational gains
"This stability and real-time visibility have directly improved customer trust and accelerated our Go-To-Market strategies," said Dharmaraj.
With Datadog, mean time to detect issues improved by 92 per cent, dropping to less than two minutes. Mean time to acknowledgement fell by 75 per cent to 10 minutes, while mean time to resolution decreased by 56 per cent to 42 minutes. FieldEx reported that these gains allowed engineering teams to refocus on product development and market initiatives, rather than monitoring tasks.
Initially adopted by FieldEx's security team, the Datadog platform is now used across engineering and quality assurance departments, equipping them for system validation and troubleshooting. The adoption of Datadog Workflow Automation, integrating tools such as email, Slack, and PagerDuty, has streamlined incident response. Application Performance Monitoring (APM) has revealed system performance bottlenecks, providing actionable insights to address these issues.
Dharmaraj emphasised the additional value brought by Datadog's security tools: "Datadog's Security Analytics Indexed Logs alongside Sensitive Data Scanner reinforce FieldEx's layered cybersecurity defence by delivering real-time threat detection, identifying sensitive data exposure, and supporting both data loss prevention and regulatory compliance."
Security and visibility
Operating in multiple markets, FieldEx required 24/7 oversight. "Previously, engineers relied on DevOps to access and relay production metrics," said Dharmaraj. "Datadog not only democratised access to critical operational data, but also enhanced our security posture by eliminating the need for direct system logins – giving our team secure, real-time visibility into vital production metrics and logs."
With automated monitoring in place, FieldEx engineers have shifted from manual, routine checks to more strategic projects, resulting in an improved focus on developing new features for customers.
Dharmaraj likened the enhanced monitoring capability to a supervisory role over the company's technical infrastructure: "Datadog brought in a 'watch-tower'-like visibility across FieldEx's server infrastructure, instilling a deep sense of operational stability as every inch of the overall system is being monitored and anomalies instantly flagged."
"It's a fantastic tool that knows every moving part in your infrastructure," he said. "It alerts you in advance and helps you to get to the bottom of the issue at lightning speeds."
Future plans
Looking ahead, FieldEx intends to further leverage Datadog's platform by integrating On-Call, Real User Monitoring (RUM), and exploring other advanced features from the suite.
Rob Thorne, Vice President for Asia Pacific and Japan at Datadog, noted the demand for cohesive oversight amongst fast-growing firms. "FieldEx's rapid expansion has resulted in a challenge common to successful start-ups: complexity at scale. Deploying the Datadog platform has granted FieldEx a comprehensive observability strategy through a unified dashboard, helping it create stability and cohesion through real-time visibility, and simultaneously supporting its security posture. The company can now understand its expanding technology footprint and resolve issues before they are felt by its teams and customers."
