How Roambee Improved IoT Log Management with OpenObserve
Nitya Timalsina
March 13, 2025
7 min read
Roambee, a global leader in IoT-driven supply chain visibility, delivers real-time insights to businesses through an expansive network of sensors tracking shipments and assets. By early 2025, their platform was handling nearly a terabyte of logs daily—a threefold jump in just six months—reflecting their rapid growth in the logistics and manufacturing sectors. Yet, this expansion exposed critical weaknesses in their observability tools, including the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Prometheus, and Graphite. With limited storage, unreliable searches, and a fragmented toolset, Roambee struggled to maintain the efficiency and reliability that its clients depended on.
Enter OpenObserve (O2), an open-source platform built for high-performance observability, which Roambee first explored in late 2023 and fully adopted in mid-2024. Fast forward to March 2025, and OpenObserve now powers Roambee’s entire production log pipeline.
This case study examines how Roambee tackled its observability challenges, comparing past external and in-house approaches with OpenObserve’s game-changing effects on scalability, developer efficiency, and operational simplicity.
The Challenge: A Struggling Observability Framework
Roambee’s initial observability setup leaned on external tools like ELK, supplemented by Prometheus, Graphite, and Log Harvester. As their data volumes soared, these solutions faltered. The ELK stack, once capable of storing a month’s worth of logs, dwindled to just two days due to hardware constraints and rising ingestion rates. Even within this narrow window, searches were restricted to 5-10 minute intervals and failed 80% of the time, leaving teams without timely data. This unreliability drove developers to abandon the system, relying instead on DevOps to manually fetch logs—a process that consumed over half of DevOps’ time and delayed issue resolution significantly.
The complexity of managing multiple tools only worsened the situation. Each system handled a different aspect—logs, metrics, or live streams—creating operational overhead while shifting licensing models for tools like Elasticsearch added uncertainty. To cope, Roambee turned to an in-house workaround: compressing logs hourly and storing them in S3 for manual analysis with basic grep utilities. This approach preserved data but sacrificed speed and real-time access, critical for their IoT-driven business. For a company built on delivering immediate visibility, these shortcomings risked undermining service quality and client trust.
The Solution: Why OpenObserve Emerged as the Winner
Faced with these considerable challenges, Roambee evaluated three options:
- Sticking with external solutions like ELK;
- Refining their in-house S3 method; or
- Adopting OpenObserve.
External tools like ELK couldn’t scale or deliver instant access, falling short as data grew beyond 200-300GB daily. Meanwhile, Roambee’s in-house solution, while cost-effective for storage, lacked the real-time capabilities essential for monitoring live IoT streams, forcing teams into slow, manual workflows.
OpenObserve stood out as a game-changer. Introduced in late 2023, it impressed Roambee with its simplicity and performance, leading to full deployment by summer 2024. Unlike ELK, it scaled effortlessly to nearly a terabyte daily without performance hiccups. It also offered real-time streaming alongside searchable historical logs, addressing both immediate and long-term needs. Plus, its unified platform promised to streamline its toolset, reducing reliance on fragmented systems.
Shailesh Mangal, Roambee’s CTO, describes the shift to OpenObserve: “It worked so well that we couldn’t believe that something could be that simple and that easy, that works exactly how it is advertised, and that too in an open-source space.” OpenObserve’s open-source flexibility, backed by commercial support, sealed its place as the ideal monitoring solution for Roambee’s growing needs.
Implementation: A Smooth Transition with Room to Grow
Deploying OpenObserve was a breeze for Roambee. The platform integrated quickly into its production environment, rerouting its entire log pipeline to leverage its querying and streaming strengths. Mangal praises its ease: “You can get it up and running very, very quickly,” delivering immediate value. While logs took center stage initially, plans to incorporate traces and metrics signal deeper adoption ahead.
The rollout wasn’t without minor adjustments. Advanced features required some learning, and Mangal suggested enhancements like better documentation and hardware sizing guidance could ease onboarding. Collaboration with OpenObserve’s team, including hands-on support from its founder Prabhat, ensured the setup aligned with Roambee’s unique IoT demands, setting the stage for long-term success.
Results: Transformative Gains in Efficiency and Insight
OpenObserve reshaped Roambee’s observability landscape, delivering measurable improvements:
- Unmatched Search Reliability: Where ELK faltered with frequent timeouts, OpenObserve processed queries across days without a single failure, streaming results instantly as additional data loaded. Mangal notes, “In OpenObserve, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any time out... it is so well-designed that it doesn’t time out.”
- Developer Empowerment: Direct dashboard access eliminated DevOps dependency, cutting resolution times from days to minutes and freeing up over half of DevOps’ workload for strategic tasks.
- Scalability Proven: Handling nearly a terabyte daily, OpenObserve kept pace with Roambee’s growth, earning Mangal’s praise: “Today, I think we run our entire production logs through OpenObserve... it’s been a phenomenal journey so far.”
- Operational Simplicity: Consolidating tools like ELK and Log Harvester paved the way for the phase-out of Jaeger and Grafana, streamlining Roambee’s observability stack.
These gains bolstered system reliability and reinforced Roambee’s promise of real-time visibility to its clients.
External and In-House Solutions Versus OpenObserve
| Aspect | External Solutions (e.g., ELK) | In-House Solutions (S3) | OpenObserve |
|---|---|---|---|
| Log Storage | 2 days | Long-term in S3 | Extended, searchable |
| Search Reliability | 80% timeouts | Manual, slow | 100% reliable |
| Real-Time Access | Limited | None | Live streaming |
| Scalability | Capped at 200-300GB/day | Not scalable | 800GB/day; ready for terabytes and beyond |
| Ease of Use | Complex, tool-specific | Manual effort | Simple dashboard |
| Tool Integration | Fragmented (7+ tools) | Standalone | Unified platform |
What Other Companies Can Learn from Roambee’s Success
OpenObserve transformed Roambee’s observability from a liability into a strength, delivering seamless scalability, real-time insights, and a streamlined workflow. Mangal summarizes the impact: “It’s been a phenomenal journey so far.” For companies wrestling with data overload or tool sprawl, Roambee’s story highlights OpenObserve’s potential to redefine operational excellence.
Roambee’s journey offers actionable takeaways for businesses navigating data growth:
- Scalability is Critical: IoT and high-volume environments need tools that grow without breaking, as OpenObserve proved.
- Empower Your Team: Direct data access speeds up workflows and reduces bottlenecks.
- Streamline for Efficiency: Consolidating tools cuts complexity and costs, a lesson Roambee is still applying.
Mangal emphasizes:
“If you are not using [OpenObserve], you are making a mistake, no matter what you use today.”
In the near future, Roambee envisions a broader role for OpenObserve, planning to integrate traces and metrics to potentially replace Jaeger and Grafana. As their IoT network and client base grow, driving even higher data volumes, OpenObserve’s scalability remains a cornerstone. “The needs are increasing... the number of devices is what directly translated through the data that we collect, and that is multiplying,” Mangal observes, confident in OpenObserve’s ability to keep pace.
Ready to Transform Your Observability?
Whether you’re managing IoT sensor networks, scaling logistics platforms, or optimizing real-time data workflows, OpenObserve offers a powerful, cost-effective solution for logs, metrics, and traces. Get started today:
- Calculate Your Potential Savings → Contact us for a custom quote and an assessment of your potential cost reductions.
- Learn More About Our Platform → Explore how OpenObserve works for high-volume data environments.
- Request a Demo or Try OpenObserve → Experience the platform with your own data.
