Heartbeats, Inc. Publishes Case Study with Shannon, Inc.: Delegating 24/7 Monitoring Reduces Operational Load by 30–40% — Enabling Development Teams to Focus on Product Development

As businesses grow and development projects increase, it becomes increasingly difficult for development teams to manage infrastructure operations and maintenance internally. Relying solely on in-house staff for after-hours and holiday incident response inevitably impacts the ability to focus on core product development — a challenge faced by many companies.

Heartbeats, Inc. (Headquarters: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Masanori Fujisaki), a provider of full-managed services for server monitoring, maintenance, and operations, has published a case study on its collaboration with Shannon, Inc. (hereinafter, “Shannon”), a company that develops and provides solutions such as the marketing automation platform “SHANON MARKETING PLATFORM” under the mission of “Changing the world through reproducible marketing.”

View the case study

Read the full interview transcript

Background of Implementation

Growing Development Workload Increases Infrastructure Burden

Shannon faced the following challenges:

- Business expansion led to an increase in development projects, increasing the burden on the development team. - Insufficient resources could be allocated to core product development. - There was a need to strengthen specialized infrastructure operations.

“Handling incident response during nights and holidays solely with in-house engineers became a significant burden, negatively affecting the speed of our core product development. We couldn’t allocate sufficient time to keep up with new AWS services or security updates. This made us realize the need for a partner with deep infrastructure expertise,” recalls Mr. Nakayama, who oversees product management at the company.

Key Reasons for Choosing Heartbeats

Over 20 Years of Experience and 24/7 Human Monitoring with First-Line Response as Standard

“In addition to being a specialist in infrastructure operations, Heartbeats has supported numerous SaaS and web companies since its founding in 2005 — over 20 years of proven track record and reliability, which was a major deciding factor,” says Mr. Nakayama.

The inclusion of 24/7 human monitoring and rapid first-line response during incidents as part of the standard service was also highly appealing. By outsourcing infrastructure operations and maintenance to a specialized provider, Shannon believed it could create an environment where its development team could focus entirely on product development.

Results After Implementation

Reduced Operational Load by 30–40%, Enabling Focus on Product Development

The most noticeable benefit was the significant reduction in the burden of system monitoring and incident response.

With monitoring and reporting conducted 24/7 according to predefined rules, there is no longer a need to constantly check system status. Subjectively, operational load has been reduced by 30–40% compared to before. The development team’s workload has also decreased, allowing resources to be concentrated on core product development — a major achievement.

A notable incident occurred when unexpected traffic spikes at night caused a slowdown in service response. Heartbeats quickly detected the anomaly, called to report the situation, and performed a rapid recovery by restarting the server — all before customers noticed. This also led to a proactive improvement suggestion: increasing server capacity for future preparedness.

View the case study

Read the full interview transcript

Comments from Shannon, Inc.

For this case study release, we received the following comments from Shannon, Inc.:

— What factors were most important when selecting an outsourcing partner?

Mr. Nakayama:

“The most important factors were ‘technical expertise and track record’ and ‘quality of communication.’

Regarding ‘technical expertise and track record,’ we looked for deep specialized knowledge in specific areas. Since our internal infrastructure team is limited, having Heartbeats provide accurate advice on infrastructure configuration is extremely reassuring.

For ‘quality of communication,’ we evaluated whether they proactively propose improvements rather than being passive, and whether they can explain complex technical concepts in simple, understandable terms. Heartbeats communicates even complex topics in careful, clear language, making us feel confident in consulting them. When we make a request, we immediately receive a confirmation like ‘We’ll connect you with the responsible person,’ which builds trust through fast initial response and clear situational awareness.

Additionally, pricing transparency is a key evaluation criterion. Costs for server setup, test environments, and monitoring are clearly defined. Even before requesting a formal estimate, we can easily grasp approximate costs, enabling smooth internal budget planning and project scheduling.”

— In the past, Heartbeats supported the development of an internal system for a life insurance company using its strength in test-driven development. Could you share your evaluation of that project?

Mr. Nakayama:

“We centrally manage past incidents and complaints, and for this system, there have been no major failures attributed to system configuration. Although test-driven development was unfamiliar to us, we evaluate that it resulted in the successful construction and operation of a high-quality system.”

— What is your current incident response structure?

Mr. Nakayama:

“For incidents occurring at night or on holidays, we entrust Heartbeats with standard recovery actions such as server restarts. Only when engineer judgment or additional actions are required do we respond during business hours or the next business day. Compared to 3–5 years ago, we feel the number of cases requiring restarts has decreased. While it varies by customer, even frequent cases occur about once every three months, and for most customers, perhaps once every six months.”

Message on the Release

Heartbeats will continue to support partner companies in creating environments where development teams can focus on core product development. We will accompany Shannon’s business growth beyond infrastructure — including AWS cost optimization, enhanced security, and exploring AI-powered solution development.

Consultation Inquiry

About “Full-Managed Service”

A service that provides 24/7 monitoring and incident response, supporting stable infrastructure operations regardless of on-premises or cloud environments. Even with limited internal resources, companies can confidently outsource infrastructure operations and focus their efforts on feature development and releases.

Service Details

About “Development Services”

Heartbeats’ development services first implement tests tailored to requirements and specifications, including error scenarios. Development proceeds while checking the impact of modifications and new features, making it highly compatible with large-scale AI-driven development, CI/CD, and continuous improvement (feature additions, bug fixes), helping to reduce ongoing costs such as maintenance and new development.

We provide comprehensive support from CI/CD environment setup, code review, and operations (including application maintenance) to infrastructure.

Service Details

About Shannon, Inc.

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