Match.com Finds Love In The Cloud with Splunk AppDynamics

Key Challenges

Match.com needed to develop a complete picture of cloud-native and on-premise applications and infrastructure, maximize AWS platform advantages, and minimize the effect of latency on performance.

Key Results

Now Match.com has a single pane of glass for application and infrastructure performance. They can test infrastructure changes before going live and address bottlenecks that previously went undetected.

Every decision at Match.com is made with the same goal in mind — to help customers spark meaningful connections.

From the flagship website, Match.com, to its stable of Match Affinity apps, a healthy IT infrastructure is key to bringing people together no matter which services they use. “Whether we’re building a new app, writing code, or migrating our infrastructure to the cloud, our customers trust us to deliver a safe and user-friendly service that’s available when they need us,” says Garrick Linn, Architect of Operations at Match.com.

When Match.com decided to leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support elements of its Match.com services, such as Match Affinity apps, it needed to maintain this high standard of service throughout the migration and beyond. This was a tall order for a company that had built up a complex web of processes and systems over the years, each of which plays a crucial role in making its platform run.

“We call the flow map behind our infrastructure the Death Star, as gloomy as that sounds, because there are so many people, applications, and interlinked systems involved. And because its circular layout literally looks like the Death Star,” says Linn. “When we decided to migrate to AWS, we needed a way to see across all of these points of intersection and drill down into specific processes to keep performing at a high level.”

Outcomes

Improved application performance, overcoming latency introduced by Cloud migration
Scaled application performance to better handle 30-40% spikes in demand
Eliminated performance bottlenecks through better full-stack observability across apps, services, and infrastructure

Using “The Force” of AppDynamics to connect the dots

With AppDynamics, Match.com gained the visibility it needed across its Death Star of applications and services to ensure a smooth and successful cloud migration. Not only did Linn and his team migrate and modernize their platform, but they also gained insight that helped Match.com improve the performance of the applications and services behind its Match.com Affinity services.

“There were clearly a number of advantages to the cloud infrastructure model but deciding when and what to migrate also required us to rethink how we manage everything happening under the hood,” says Linn. “AppDynamics provided a critical high-level view of our infrastructure which helped provide context and hard data to help inform every decision we made.”

The ability to scale infrastructure quickly was a key consideration for Linn’s team, which relies on many infrastructure vendors and coding tools. With AppDynamics, all these instances now report accurate telemetry back to the controller in real-time. AppDynamics has now been slipstreamed directly into Match.com’s deployment process for new services, helping the team better understand how these new services interact with other aspects of their IT environment.

Whether we’re building a new app, writing code, or migrating our infrastructure to the cloud, our customers trust us to deliver a safe and user-friendly service that’s available when they need us.

Garrick Linn Architect of Operations, Match.com

Latency? What Latency?

When Match.com first began migrating applications to the cloud, AppDynamics helped Linn and his team iron out the wrinkles of moving to AWS data center in Virginia.

With AppDynamics, Linn and his team were able to anticipate the knock-on effect of that latency on Match.com’s other processes and adapt their approach to minimize the impact. In fact, the team has since reduced latency by a few milliseconds and hopes to continue uncovering new efficiencies.

AppDynamics has also improved Match.com’s performance during peak demand periods. For instance, traffic tends to spike on Sunday evenings when customers are at home and setting up new connections for the week. Match.com also experiences seasonal spikes ahead of the holidays, as well as daily spikes in the evening, some of which come with a 30-40% boost in traffic.

Faster infrastructure drives faster services

Match.com’s cloud migration with AppDynamics has opened up countless opportunities to further improve its application and infrastructure configurations. Linn and his engineers continue to operate under the mantra of putting customers first, and today they are in a better position than ever to streamline the platform behind Match.com’s numerous services and mobile apps.

“We care about the customer experience from the back office to the front lines, and for my team that means working towards metrics that directly influence the quality of experience Match.com delivers,” says Linn. “In AppDynamics, we’ve gained a more complete view of the infrastructure that governs our performance, helping us to build better connections between our systems behind the scenes so we can continue to spark real-life connections for the millions of people who use our services every day.”

In AppDynamics, we’ve gained a more complete view of the infrastructure that governs our performance, helping us to build better connections between our systems behind the scenes so we can continue to spark real-life connections for the millions of people who use our services every day.

Garrick Linn Architect of Operations, Match.com