Recently we’ve been covering some of the main reasons why machine creators should upgrade their telemetry stack — issues such as painful software releases, key engineer bottlenecks, and skipped data reviews. For many companies, these problems surface again and again until it becomes clear that better tools are needed.

If you’re struggling with outdated systems that don’t provide adequate visibility into your operational hardware, you might have already started looking for a solution. When arriving at this pain point, many companies lean toward building an in-house telemetry stack.

Despite all best intentions, there are multiple problems with this approach. Telemetry systems are critically important, and using an in-house team to build one fritters away your team’s talent and capital. It’s not a core competency, and most in-house systems don’t scale as you grow.

The trouble with building an in-house system

Building a telemetry stack in-house requires months or years of work, not to mention spending millions of dollars.

After aligning your organization behind the need for a new system, you’re likely going to spend an inordinate amount of time dedicated to building and maintaining a solution. This will involve hiring and/or reallocating significant resources, followed by the lengthy process of actually doing the work.

At the outset, building an in-house stack might make sense. It might even seem easy to get started with open-source tools designed for application performance monitoring or loT use cases. But the reality is that you’ll end up with a system that struggles when you need it the most.

Most companies construct their in-house system to specifically address the problems they have today, without considering those they’re going to face tomorrow. Hardware sensor data is so fundamentally different that your tools won’t scale if they’re optimized for other use cases. We’ve seen this trend play out across our customer base and the result is almost always the same.

The open-source tools that are commonly used to cobble together in-house systems weren’t built to handle high cardinality, high frequency data.

Though it may seem like a small initiative at first, an in-house system will continue to consume more and more resources, without giving you an equal or greater return on your investment. At some point you’ll probably need to replace it with another in-house system, perpetuating a vicious cycle only worsened by a sunk-cost mindset. If you currently have four engineers trying to maintain a legacy tool that falls over at mission critical times, this all might sound too familiar.

The open-source tools that are commonly used to cobble together in-house systems weren’t built to handle high cardinality, high frequency data. Aggregating the “store-brand” versions of Sift’s core capabilities leaves companies with a shaky foundation for all of their development, production, and operations.

But do we really need a telemetry stack?

An advanced telemetry stack isn’t a “nice thing to have,” it’s a foundational mission critical system that could make all the difference between failure and success. But just because it’s mission critical doesn’t mean you should build it in-house, especially if it isn’t a core competency. Mission critical tools should be built by experts, who have the background and experience to make sure they operate smoothly when the stakes are high.

World class hardware requires world class software, especially if you want to build, scale, and get your product to market.

It’s common to assume this problem should be solved with a team of engineers devoted to creating internal tools. Why would you invest their time into scaling databases when they should be working on the core engineering challenges that matter most to your company? If you’ve diverted resources to building these internal tools and they aren’t implemented properly, they can introduce risk into your mission. These point-in-time solutions break at the worst times and end up costing much more than you initially anticipate.

World class hardware requires world class software, especially if you want to build, scale, and get your product to market. Without it, your company will be too distracted with failures and escalating costs to even compete.

Let’s be honest — quality engineers are a scarce resource. You need to keep your highly capable teams focused on driving business outcomes, not reinventing the wheel. Building an in-house system is a waste of over-qualified engineering hours, not to mention a serious risk for staff attrition. Once a good-enough solution is created it usually gets put on a shelf.

Stop feeding the money pit

There is a simple answer to all of these issues: Sift.

Investing in a telemetry system shows your team, your shareholders, and the outside world that you serious about using best-in-class tools to systematically find and eliminate risk. Throwing away money and talent on an in-house system that won’t scale defeats the purpose. With Sift, you’re hiring domain experts who have solved these problems in the most mission critical environments (SpaceX, Google, Palantir, etc.). We think about telemetry all day and we’re mission-driven, just like you.

It’s the only observability stack that mitigates risk, automates your data review, and gives you full visibility into your operational hardware.

Sift has done all of the heavy lifting for you, providing the tools your company needs at a fraction of the cost to build an in-house system. It’s the only observability stack that mitigates risk, automates your data review, and gives you full visibility into your operational hardware.

By investing in tried-and-true solutions to address your telemetry issues, you can validate your mission with the world’s most robust set of standards, created by leading experts with experience sending human-rated rockets into space, operating fleets of satellites, and optimizing telemetry stacks. (And your engineers will thank you.)

You don’t need to dig a money pit of cloud spend, wasting your resources on wrangling data pipelines. Let Sift handle it, and refocus your team’s time and energy on getting your hardware to market.