Enables rapid scaling to meet business growth goals
Solves customer issues online in minutes
Frees up engineer time to focus on innovation
Reduced trace volume by 80% without impacting the ability to troubleshoot
Dandy uses Google Cloud and the Chronosphere Observability Platform to accelerate growth and deliver uninterrupted digital services to dentists.
Dandy uses Google Cloud and the Chronosphere Observability Platform to accelerate growth and deliver uninterrupted digital services to dentists.
Taking a seat in the dentist's chair is more comfortable these days. Intraoral scanners can examine teeth instead of those cumbersome physical molds of yesteryear, making it easier and less invasive to capture digital impressions. The high-quality scans also speed up the process of creating crowns, dentures, implants, and other dental fixtures.
The experience is more pleasant for patients and streamlined and cost-effective for dentists, due in large part to digital pioneers like Dandy. The fast-growing startup provides dentists with free scanners and offers a complete service that includes dental software and associated training. The company's labs create dental fixtures and products a lot faster than other more traditional options.
Jack Pierce, Senior Software Engineer, Dandy, says, "From day one, we set out to work with technology partners who aligned with our vision to improve patient and dentist experiences. From an engineering standpoint, this includes being able to monitor Dandy's infrastructure so our team can innovate quickly with minimum interruptions to address technology issues."
Dentists are keen to improve patient care and recognize the value of Dandy's solutions. But the demand from dentists presented its own challenges for Dandy in terms of network scalability and monitoring. To address the challenges, Dandy set out to replace its original cloud solution with a platform that could handle its rapid growth. It also required an observability solution that engineering teams could use easily and reliably.
Painless migration to the cloud
Google Cloud offers tools for everything we need. Instead of going through lengthy, costly processes to onboard another SaaS solution, we just go through Google Cloud, or spin up the open-source dependency in one of our (GKE) clusters.
Jack Pierce
Senior Software Engineer, Dandy
Pierce and his team chose Google Cloud because of its competitive cost, scalability, and support. "As well as integrating with our Google Workplace environment, it meant that we had one platform for identity and access management, web services, storage, and load balancing," says Pierce. "The Google Cloud team understood the pressures of a startup and the strains this can put on the business. We knew they had our back."
Google Cloud offers Dandy all the services and tools it needs on a unified platform. Dandy uses Artifact Registry to manage container images and language packages, Google Cloud Storage for caching, CDN and digital asset storage, and BigQuery and Looker Studio for data warehousing, analytics, and visualization.
Cloud SQL and Spanner are also critical components of its database environment. Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) orchestrates containerized applications while Pub/Sub ensures trouble-free data ingestion and Secret Manager protects sensitive data. Cloud Memorystore minimizes latency, while Identity Platform ensures that applications are only available for approved users.
"Google Cloud offers a tool for everything we need. Instead of going through lengthy, costly onboarding processes for another SaaS solution, we just go through Google, or spin up the open-source dependency in one of our GKE clusters," says Pierce.
Drilling into detail
Alongside Google Cloud Logging, which records specific system events, Dandy needed a dedicated observability solution to monitor tracing and metrics and further improve the quality and reliability of its software service.
Choosing Chronosphere, a Google Cloud partner, was a clear decision. "Chronosphere is built from the ground up to work with Google Cloud. We can get all our Google-native metrics into Chronosphere, and engineers no longer need to jump back and forth between tools."
Chronosphere's pricing model proved more flexible than other observability solutions. Instead of pricing based on the host or virtual machine, they only charge for the useful data that Dandy chooses to retain.
Chronosphere is built from the ground up to work with Google Cloud. We can get all our Google Cloud native metrics into Chronosphere, and engineers no longer need to jump back and forth between tools.
Jack Pierce
Senior Software Engineer, Dandy
Chronosphere gives us granular control over what telemetry is ingested, how it is sampled, and how it is persisted. Through their tools, we have confidence that we'll only pay for what we need —no matter how our platform changes.
Jack Pierce
Senior Software Engineer, Dandy
"Chronosphere gives us granular control over what telemetry is ingested, how it is sampled, and how it is persisted," says Pierce. "Through their tools, we have confidence that we'll only pay for what we need—no matter how our platform changes."
As an engineer, Pierce was impressed by the ease of use and flexibility of Chronosphere. "It's not filled with features that we don't need, and the dashboards are really intuitive," he says. "Everyone benefits from insights into our environment and can see how their systems are performing."
In the first few months of using Chronosphere, Pierce and his team identified and fixed a 'long tail' of legacy issues which boosted overall performance. "Google Cloud has made our infrastructure much more stable and, thanks to Chronosphere, we have seen a big decrease in incidents," says Pierce.
For example, a dentist was having difficulty because the patient name mistakenly contained a forward slash. The Dandy team reached out to the dentist, sanitized the name, and enabled them to continue scanning. "What used to be a help desk ticket was instead seamlessly resolved within minutes," says Pierce.
Fit for the future
Pierce also reserves praise for the Chronosphere Customer Success team. When they started, Chronosphere set up dedicated interactive sessions where Dandy engineers could learn more about the platform. They also studied the company's observability objectives and engineering goals to push us toward Dandy's performance targets.
As a fast-moving start up, Dandy was impressed by the pace of innovation set by Chronosphere. Pierce says that every couple of weeks brings a new improvement to the solution. "One week it was a new menu bar, the next it was a new trace explorer. I'm always excited before our weekly syncs because I want to know what kind of enhancements are coming our way," he says.
Best of all, Dandy is now equipped to meet fast-growing demand for its ground-breaking digital dental services. By the end of 2024, 75 percent of US dental practices will have adopted a digital model for check-ups, scanning, and fixture manufacturing. "There are more than 180,000 dental practices in the US," says Pierce. "With Google Cloud and Chronosphere, we are well positioned to rise up to this opportunity while providing vastly improved patient and dentist experiences."
Dandy, the digital dental lab, empowers thousands of dental practices with innovative technologies to advance patient care and revolutionize the way they scan, order, and manage casework. With Dandy, clinicians have delivered happy smiles to over 1.5M patients with enhanced control and predictability.
Industry: Healthcare
Location: United States
Products: Google Cloud, Artifact Registry, Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Looker Studio, Cloud SQL, Spanner, Google Kubernetes Engine, Pub/Sub, Secret Manager, Cloud Memorystore, Identity Platform
About Google Cloud Partner- Chronosphere
Chronosphere is the observability solution built for control. With Chronosphere, customers can focus on the data and insights that matter, remediate faster, and optimize costs.
Visit: https://chronosphere.io
