Case Study: Macmillan Learning achieves 10x application performance and 67% reduction in MTTR with IBM Instana

Macmillan Learning Achieves 10x Application Performance

Macmillan Learning, the 175‑year textbook publisher that supports 2.5 million students with an always‑on digital learning platform, faced a challenge when migrating to a container‑based architecture: their legacy monitoring (New Relic and homegrown tools) lacked container‑native visibility and high‑resolution data. Macmillan turned to IBM Instana for a self‑configuring, container‑native monitoring solution that could automatically discover containers and provide the fine‑grained telemetry they needed (1‑second data granularity).

IBM Instana was deployed in under four days to monitor every container and the full technology stack, and Macmillan used the Instana SDK to extend tracing across services. The result was measurable: a 10x improvement in application performance (notably the Gradebook), mean time to respond fell from six minutes to two minutes (a 67% MTTR reduction), and the platform is now actively used by roughly 200 developers to diagnose and optimize services.

Macmillan Learning

David Merryweather

Vice President of Infrastructure and Site Reliability