Pepper
Visibility and control over critical third-party applications
Executive summary
Industry: Financial services and asset management
Environment: On-premise Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Azure
Challenge: Limited visibility into the performance of a critical third-party application.
Goal: Identify bottlenecks, optimize processes and provide objective information for decisions.
Result: Immediate detection of performance problems, shorter diagnosis times and greater control over the technology platform.
The client
Pepper Spanish Servicing is a financial services and asset management organization operating on on-premise Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Azure.
Its growth, new portfolios and constantly evolving operations required a robust technology platform capable of guaranteeing high levels of performance and availability.
“Our business is focused on providing an excellent service to our customers. This requires a constant commitment to quality, innovation and continuous improvement of our infrastructure and systems.”
The challenge
Pepper's technical team manages the database servers and infrastructure supporting its corporate systems, both locally and in Microsoft Azure. However, the main business application was not developed in-house, which made performance problems difficult to identify and objective information difficult to share with its providers.
The organization needed to guarantee availability close to 99.99%, keep maintenance within short operational windows, minimize business impact, analyze historical performance and provide technical evidence to third parties.
“We knew our need could not be solved simply by adding more resources. We needed to understand exactly what was happening inside our databases.”
The solution
After evaluating different tools, Pepper selected Four9s as its monitoring, observability and advanced analysis platform for Microsoft SQL Server.
From the first proof of concept, Four9s provided visibility that had not previously existed, covering real-time behavior and historical activity. Second-by-second observation exposed anomalous processes, consumption patterns and precise information for collaboration with external development teams.
Key capabilities included:
- Real-time monitoring with second-level resolution.
- Detailed historical analysis.
- Identification of high-impact queries and processes.
- Correlation between system metrics and business activity.
- Integrated database administration and analysis.
“As soon as we started Four9s, we detected activity peaks in specific processes, located them quickly and worked with our provider to implement improvements.”
Results
Four9s gave Pepper much more precise control over its critical systems. Technical teams can identify bottlenecks, analyze historical incidents, validate changes before production, optimize maintenance, collaborate efficiently with development providers and reduce diagnosis and resolution times.
Objective, actionable information enabled a shift from reactive management to continuous, data-driven improvement.
Business impact
Because application availability and performance directly affect the service offered to customers and investors, Four9s has become a strategic tool for daily operations. It provides the visibility needed to anticipate problems, minimize operational risk and meet required service levels.
“From the first minute we could see the value Four9s brought to our organization. Today we have more information, more analytical capacity and greater peace of mind managing our critical environments.”
