Fleet Data Management by Apica Revolutionizes Telemetry for Efficiency, Performance, and Adaptability

Apica, a leader in telemetry, data management, and active observability, is debuting Fleet Data Management, the “first mile” of the telemetry pipeline that standardizes data collection across large telemetry fleets with a dynamic, adaptable framework. Featuring seamless integrations and comprehensive observability, Fleet Data Management transforms traditional, static telemetry with extensive automation and customization capabilities. 

Today’s data collectors are managed by outdated systems that struggle to adapt to the rapid changes synonymous with modern, fast-paced digital environments, according to Apica. This dichotomy creates a multitude of challenges, including:

• Delays and missed opportunities for optimization 
• High costs and wasted resources on indiscriminate, irrelevant data collection
• Rigid configurations that lead to errors and poor performance
• Limited options due to vendor lock-in, preventing innovation and adaptability 
• Configuration drift and inconsistencies with heterogeneous fleets of data collectors

“The fact that these collectors have to be managed today in very ad-hoc ways—where there's no standardization…you have these hundreds, or in many cases, thousands of these data collectors that go out of sync or have configuration issues—you are, in effect, creating a big business risk for your company,” explained Ranjan Parthasarathy, chief product and technology officer at Apica. 

“At the end of the day, the data that these first mile collectors gather is what is used to power observability, and if these are not consistent—these are not managed and maintained in a way that you have high quality collectors with the right configurations at all times—you might have a great telemetry pipeline, observability platform, etc., in place, but the data then becomes suspect,” continued Parthasarathy. 

Apica’s Fleet Data Management solution is fundamentally designed to remediate these challenges, automating agent configurations, customizing data collection strategies, and scaling efforts based on real-time environmental factors, according to the company. Fleet Data Management delivers a centralized, hybrid management system that consolidates the management of both on-prem and cloud-based telemetry agents. By centralizing and simplifying control over agent configurations and software versions, errors are reduced, data collection is accelerated, and rolling out updates, patches, or new features is seamless. 

Key to Fleet Data Management is its wide array of agent support—including OpenTelemetry Collector, Fluent-bit, OpenTelemetry Kubernetes Collector, and Telegraf—ultimately avoiding vendor lock-in. These integrations—which fully support OpenTelemetry standards—adhere to a Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) strategy necessary for today’s diverse environments. 

“We have always maintained the philosophy that it is best for the end user if their data is actually free [and] not locked down. And that's the philosophy that we've applied to Fleet,” noted Parthasarathy. “[Our] approach to being vendor agnostic and avoiding lock-in…starts with the first mile. You have to have that consistent philosophy from the beginning all the way to the end.” 

Fleet Data Management also features an intuitive interface, aiding IT teams in their efforts to quickly adapt collector settings without extensive training or incurring additional risk, according to Apica. With dynamic scalability, Fleet Data Management ensures that resources are well optimized, increasing data collection during peak usage times and scaling back as needed. 

“[Fleet Data Management] is a very seamless insert into…day-to-day workflows, where, without being disruptive, it can suddenly improve [data collection] by multitude of factors—the quality of the data they collect, the control over the velocity of data that is being collected—[and you] really start to see benefits around cost reduction [and data quality],” said Parthasarathy. “There's nothing proprietary [that] we are distributing; we're just making the investment you already made much more valuable to you as an end user.”