Lightrun

Lightrun is a developer observability platform that enables real-time debugging and monitoring of live applications. Founded in 2019 by Ilan Peleg and Leonid Blouvshtein, the company offers a solution that allows developers to add telemetry to running applications without requiring code changes, redeployments, or restarts. Lightrun's platform consists of three main components: a management server, a proprietary Java-based agent that runs on application servers, and an IDE plugin and command line utility. The platform supports dynamic insertion of logs, metrics, and snapshots into code, allowing developers to debug production issues more efficiently.

Lightrun's technology works by allowing developers to inject logs, capture snapshots, and add metrics to live applications on-demand. This approach shifts observability "to the left" in the development process, enabling developers to define what data should be generated by their applications at runtime based on application state and context. The platform integrates with existing tools and services, including popular IDEs and observability platforms, to fit seamlessly into developers' workflows.

The company claims that its solution can reduce mean time to recovery by up to 60% for its customers. Lightrun offers both cloud-based and on-premises solutions to cater to different customer needs. The cloud version is a managed SaaS platform, while the on-premises solution is designed for ISVs to use in customer support of on-premises deployments.

As of May 2021, Lightrun had raised a total of USD 27 million in funding, including a USD 23 million Series A round led by Insight Partners. The company has been recognized in the industry, being named a 2022 Top LinkedIn startup and a 2021 Gartner Cool Vendor in Observability.

Key customers and partnerships

Lightrun's customer base includes Fortune 500 companies as well as small and medium-sized businesses across various industries. One of its notable customers is Taboola, a high-scale content marketing site, which has provided Lightrun the opportunity to demonstrate its ability to operate at scale across thousands of servers.

Taboola reported significant improvements in their development process after implementing Lightrun, stating that they were able to shorten their development process by skipping iterative deployment cycles when adding logs and metrics.

Lightrun has also developed integrations with several popular tools and platforms to enhance its offerings. These integrations include Datadog, IntelliJ IDEA, Logz.io, Prometheus, Slack, and StatsD, allowing customers to incorporate Lightrun's capabilities into their existing technology stacks more easily.