Epsagon Inc. thinks that it has found a better way to track down issues in software container and serverless computing environments.

The New York-based startup, which entered the spotlight today after announcing that it has raised $16 million in funding, provides a monitoring platform focused specifically on modern cloud workloads.

The platform collects data about applications using an agentless technique that doesn’t require installing any software in a company’s cloud environment. There’s no query language to learn or special configuration requirements either, which Epsagon says brings down setup times to a few minutes.

Once the platform is up and running, it generates a real-time visualization of the components that make up a cloud application. Epsagon maps out virtual machines, containers, serverless functions running on AWS Lambda and any external cloud services an application may rely on for features such as payment processing. 

Epsagon displays all these components in a single view (pictured below) as clickable icons that administrators can tap to bring up the performance data associated with the selected item. For instance, a user could click the icon for an application’s Redis database to see if it’s suffering downtime. The idea, according to the startup, is to let administrators simply jump to the system logs of a malfunctioning system instead of having to manually search through their log repository. 

It’s a simple approach but one that Epsagon says can make a big difference for engineering teams. According to the startup, its platform reduces troubleshooting times by as much as 95% in some cases.

Epsagon will use the new $16 million in funding to add more time-saving features to the solution. Already, the startup provides limited automation through an alerting tool that administrators can configure to notify them of specific application-related events. Epsagon Chief Executive Officer Nitzan Shapira (pictured, right, with co-founder Ran Ribenzaft) told TechCrunch that the next step will be adding features that can help with “advanced monitoring, identifying different problems and troubleshooting.”

Shapira plans to double the startup’s 25-person team to support the engineering roadmap. Epsagon will probably be hiring more customer service representatives as well. The startup claims to have quadrupled its client base in the past 12 months. 

Epsagon’s backers include Lightspeed Venture Partners, StageOne Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners, which led today’s round. The startup has to date raised a total of $20 million in outside funding. 

Photo: Epsagon