A Swiss tax authority is modernizing the supervision of its business applications in order to improve the performance and stability of the services used every day by more than 400 employees. Recurring slowness disrupted internal processes, technical visibility remained partial, and the existing supervision provided only a limited understanding of environments. Qim info stepped in to deploy anobservability solutioncapable of shedding light on performance, speeding up incident analysis and reinforcing the stability of applications at the heart of tax processing.
His priorities:
- Get a complete view of application behavior.
- Modernize supervision, which has become too segmented.
- Rely on a scalable, transparent architecture.
- Instantly analyze critical incidents.
Technical context of business applications
The assignment will take place within a cantonal tax administration responsible for managing a large volume of data and ensuring the continuity of essential services linked to the processing of tax files. In this sensitive context, the performance of applications and the availability of systems represent major challenges in guaranteeing the quality of service provided to taxpayers.
To find out more, read our article : Performance Testing: how to evaluate the performance of your web applications.
The challenges of tax applications
Between ten and fifteen applications structure the activity of our tax teams, whether it’s processing tax returns, managing internal exchanges or monitoring ongoing files. More than 400 employees log on every day. The ecosystem is based on a heterogeneous architecture, which complicates supervision and increases the risk of incidents that are difficult to detect.
Limited supervision: visibility and slowness in production
Slowdowns regularly occur in production, directly impacting service quality and team productivity. The tools in place offer too partial a view: supervision is limited mainly to the infrastructure, and does not allow analysis of interactions between applications. Without correlation between metrics, logs and traces, investigations become long, uncertain and often ineffective.
Data unification for effective observability
Technical managers want to transform their supervision model to:
- Gather all relevant data.
- Identify anomalies faster.
- Better understand application behavior.
The aim of this development is to anticipate incidents rather than suffer them, and to provide long-term security for the continuity of taxation services.
Application observability: principles and benefits
Observability enriches application supervision by bringing together metrics, logs and traces to provide a clear vision of how systems function. This approach is becoming essential in modern architectures, where complexity is increasing and data volumes are multiplying.
Organizations that adopt it are seeing a better understanding of application behavior, faster incident resolution and more effective coordination between technical teams. Observability thus transforms the way environments are analyzed, providing a precise and continuous reading of what is actually happening in applications.
Its major contributions:
- Rapid diagnosis, with analyses in minutes.
- Continuous visibility, even in complex environments.
- Enhanced user experience, thanks to improved stability.
- Cost optimization through more efficient use of data.
Observability provides an immediate understanding of application behavior and supports more informed operational decisions.
More about the department Performance & Observability department.
Deployingmodern, scalable observability
To meet the challenges faced by this tax authority and re-establish a reliable understanding of its business applications, Qim info offers a step-by-step approach focusing ondata analysis, linking technical indicators and application stability.
Integration of Grafana for centralized supervision
Qim info deploys an open source architecture based on Grafana, chosen for its modularity, transparency, and ability to bring together metrics, logs, and traces without licence costs. Grafana centralises data from various technical sources and transforms it into clear visualisations. This solution is essential in critical environments for monitoring performance, analysing application behaviour and speeding up diagnostics.
Grafana becomes the central platform for the technical team, who use it on a daily basis to:
- Consolidate technical information.
- Visualize performance via easy-to-read dashboards.
- Correlate events across the stack.
- Immediately detect abnormal behavior.
Pre-production application performance testing
Each new application version is now tested in pre-production using advanced supervision. This stage quickly reveals performance variations and enables anomalies to be corrected before going live. Teams are thus able to secure their deployments and gain in confidence with each update.
Proactive detection of technical faults
Thanks to Grafana’s automatic correlation of metrics and traces, teams can quickly identify areas of slowness or unusual load peaks.
Rapid diagnosis of production performance
Qim info carries out a Rapid Performance Diagnostic (RPD) based on data consolidated in Grafana. This targeted analysis reveals several critical anomalies and precisely identifies their causes, accelerating their resolution and reinforcing the stability of the environment.
Results thanks to observability
Unified observability quickly brings tangible results, both for technical teams and business users. Data consolidation in Grafana improves understanding of application behavior and accelerates decision-making.
Mean time to resolution (MTTR) reduced by 50%.
MTTR (Mean Time To Repair), which measures the average time needed to diagnose and resolve an incident, is halved. The automatic linking of metrics, logs and traces makes it possible to understand in a few minutes what previously took several hours. This rapidity reinforces the continuity of services used on a daily basis by tax teams.
Over 100 servers monitored in real time
Grafana now centralizes the monitoring of over 100 servers, providing a clear, structured view ofthe entire application park. Dashboards make it easy to analyze behavior, prioritize actions and track performance. Teams now have access to a tool adapted to a demanding multi-application ecosystem.
Analysis and resolution of critical incidents
Three major incidents, previously difficult to interpret, are analyzed and resolved with a precise understanding of their root cause. This visibility reduces the risk of recurrence and improves environment stability over the long term.
To find out more here best practices and tools for improving the performance of your web applications.
Qim info expertise in supervision and observability
Qim info modernizes application supervision in sensitive environments thanks to recognized expertise, mastery of market-leading solutions and support tailored to each organization.
20 years’experience in application performance
For over twenty years, our experts have been working on critical architectures where reliability, visibility and rapidanalysis are essential. This experience enables us to effectively address the technical challenges of modern systems.
Mastery of the best monitoring solutions
Qim info deploys the most powerful tools on the market, taken from the Gartner quadrant , including:
- Grafana Labs.
- Dynatrace.
- Elastic.
- Splunk.
This versatility guarantees an objective recommendation tailored to each customer’s context.
Tailor-made support for your observability projects
Qim info consultants provide comprehensive support throughout the observability lifecycle. They intervene for:
- Select the most appropriate solution.
- Deploy the tool and integrate data sources.
- Design readable, operational dashboards.
- Structure alerts and improve investigation workflows.
- Empower teams through targeted coaching.
The aim remains the same: to provide lasting visibility, improve stability and accelerate understanding of application behavior.
Qim info, your strategic partner for application observability
Observability improves service reliability, speeds up diagnostics and enhances system performance. Qim info supports organizations in this transition by providing solid expertise and proven methods for structuring modern, sustainable supervision.
Do you want to boost the performance of your applications over the long term? Contact our experts.
FAQ on application observability
What is the definition of IT observability?
Observability refers to the ability to understand the internal state of a system by analyzing its outputs, such as metrics, logs and traces. It provides a continuous and accurate reading of application behavior.
What are the three pillars of observability?
The three pillars are:
- Metrics (quantitative performance indicators).
- Logs (textual event logs).
- Traces (detailed path of a request through the systems).
What is application monitoring?
Application monitoring, also known as Application Performance Management (APM), refers to all practices aimed at continuously monitoring the performance, availability and smooth running of applications. It is based on the collection of technical data, such as RAM and CPU usage, and the status of physical and virtual servers, and relies on regular testing to guarantee optimal user experience.
What is an application performance monitoring program?
It’s a set of tools and methods used to measure, analyze and improve application performance, quickly identifying friction points and ensuring optimal user experience.
