Cloud Automation and Incident Management with Shoreline.io VP of Product Marketing

In this latest installment of Channel Insider: Partner POV, host Katie Bavoso sits down with Kristine Newman, the Vice President of Product Marketing at Shoreline.io, a startup focused on simplifying the complexities of managing cloud operations by providing real-time automation and control.

This discussion provides insightful takeaways for professionals in the IT channel, focusing on the practical applications and benefits of automated incident remediation and cloud infrastructure management.

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The genesis and philosophy of Shoreline.io

Founded by Anurag Gupta, a former AWS specialist, Shoreline.io behaves like an automated digital assistant aiming to streamline cloud management. It offers automated incident remediation and resolution by integrating with existing observability tools and alert systems. “We work with DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams, the folks that keep the production infrastructure up and running, prevent outages… enable them with automation,” says Newman.

The primary advantage of Shoreline.io’s solution lies in its efficiency in resolving incidents quickly.

Understanding the need for automation in cloud operations

Cloud operations have become increasingly complex, often involving hundreds of applications running simultaneously. DevOps and SRE teams are tasked with maintaining the production infrastructure, preventing outages, and ensuring smooth operations. Newman highlights that many processes in these environments remain manual despite the availability of tools for observability, alerting, and communication.

“Many times, a lot of those processes are manual, and there’s an element of we simply don’t trust automation to handle some of the problems in production systems because they’re so critical to these companies,” Newman explains.

Cloud service outages can be extremely costly, both financially and reputationally. Major incidents, such as those experienced by airlines or social media platforms, can lead to millions of dollars in losses. The fear of automation-induced errors often deters teams from fully leveraging automated solutions.

Shoreline.io’s solution mitigates these risks by automating routine tasks and known issues, thus allowing teams to focus on more complex tasks.

Shoreline.io’s approach to automation

By integrating automated incident remediation, reducing resolution time, and building trust in automation, Shoreline.io provides a comprehensive solution that bridges the gap between observability and actionable responses.

Automated incident remediation

Shoreline.io aims to bridge the gap between observability and action by offering automated incident remediation and resolution. The platform integrates with tools like Datadog for observability and PagerDuty or ServiceNow for alerting, creating a workflow that addresses incidents efficiently.

While many organizations primarily rely on observability tools, these solutions only help identify problems but not necessarily resolve them. Newman explains, “Observing incidents is great, but at some point, you have to do something about them.”

This proactive approach transforms how teams handle alerts, enabling them to resolve issues before they escalate and require extensive human intervention.

Reducing resolution time

One of the most significant benefits of Shoreline.io’s platform is the reduction in incident resolution time. By automating routine and well-known fixes, Shoreline.io helps teams resolve incidents much faster than manual methods would allow.

​​Newman highlights the remarkable boost in efficiency of their solutions, citing an example where they reduced a client’s resolution time from hours to minutes.

Building trust in automation

A significant barrier to automation in cloud operations is the lack of trust. Many teams are hesitant to fully automate incident resolution due to the critical nature of their systems. However, as Newman explains, Shoreline.io’s approach is to automate repeatable processes and known issues, reducing risk rather than increasing it. By automating these tasks, companies can mitigate security risks associated with manual interventions and prevent outages caused by human errors.

Scaling without increasing headcount

Newman emphasizes the importance of scalability in modern cloud environments. However, the IT industry faces a talent shortage, making it difficult for organizations to scale their operations by merely hiring more personnel.

Bavoso points out the limitations of relying solely on hiring more staff to manage growing infrastructures, especially given the current talent shortage in the IT market. “You can’t scale with people in this day and age,” she says.

Traditional scaling methods that increase headcount are no longer viable due to the shortage of talent in the IT market. Automation provides a solution to this problem by enabling companies to handle more complex and larger-scale operations without the need for proportional staff increases. This approach addresses the talent shortage and ensures that existing teams can manage growing workloads effectively.

Real-world impact: customer success story with Razorpay

One of the standout success stories for Shoreline.io is its partnership with Razorpay, a leading payments aggregator in India that processes about $100 billion annually.

The challenge was to conserve resources and mitigate the risk of outages, which could be catastrophic for a payment processor. “We were able to move this from 7 hours to 5 minutes for certain incidents,” Newman details, highlighting the significant improvements in Median Time to Resolve (MTTR). This results in a 20-25% productivity boost for each DevOps team member.

The implementation of Shoreline allowed Razorpay to automate the incident response process, dramatically improving its operational efficiency. The automation ran a runbook that checked different systems and understood the historical reasons for incidents, thus providing a comprehensive debugging script.

Shoreline.io cloud partners

Partners play a crucial role in Shoreline.io’s go-to-market strategy. The company collaborates with major cloud providers like AWS, GCP, and Azure to offer tailored solutions for fast-growing companies. While Shoreline.io is still in the early stages of evolving its channel partnership strategy, the company sees immense potential in collaborating with VARs, MSPs, and other channel partners.

Newman notes, “We are absolutely looking for folks to work with in this space. Shoreline is the type of technology that would really work well with a channel partner.”

Explore the rich dialogue in the podcast or video above with Katie Bavoso and Shoreline.io’s VP of Product Marketing, Kristine Newman. Like and subscribe for more captivating interviews, special episodes, and fantastic opportunities!

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