Unifies monitoring for 150+ applications
KVK consolidated disparate logging and monitoring tools into a single Elastic platform, securing full visibility across its complex IT landscape.
Empowers 40+ development teams
By moving to a self-service model, KVK gave autonomous teams direct access to the data they need to optimize performance without operational bottlenecks.
Shifts from reactive to proactive
The transition to full-stack observability fostered a cultural shift, enabling engineers to detect and resolve anomalies before they impact Dutch entrepreneurs.
Kamer van Koophandel (KVK) standardizes on Elastic to break down data silos, achieving full-stack observability that empowers agile teams and secures the digital backbone of the Dutch business community.
As the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce, KVK manages the country's official Business Register and provides essential information, advice, and support to entrepreneurs. Serving as the central hub for Dutch businesses, KVK ensures that vital data is secure, accurate, and accessible.
To support its ongoing digital transformation, KVK needed to modernize the management of its 150 business-critical applications. The organization faced challenges with fragmented data and legacy systems, prompting a strategic move to place Elastic Observability at the core of its IT operations.
Breaking down data silos
Prior to adopting Elastic, KVK operated within a fragmented monitoring landscape. Different teams relied on separate tools for logging, metrics, and application performance monitoring (APM). This lack of cohesion meant that when incidents occurred, engineers had to manually correlate information across isolated systems, slowing down diagnosis and resolution.
This reactive approach created bottlenecks, as development teams often relied on a central operations group to retrieve logs or investigate performance issues. KVK needed a solution that could integrate these distinct data streams into a comprehensive, end-to-end view of the technology stack.
Jasper Hieselaar, transformation and observability architect at KVK, notes the difficulty of the previous environment. "Before Elastic, we had a classic case of siloed tools. A developer might see an issue in their application log but couldn't correlate it with infrastructure metrics or a related service trace without a lot of manual effort. It was a significant barrier to resolving issues quickly."
Full-stack observability with Elastic
KVK chose to standardize on the Elastic Observability platform to ingest, store, and analyze logs, metrics, and traces within a single, scalable solution. This consolidation was critical to KVK’s strategy of building a unified observability practice.
The implementation began by centralizing log data, leveraging Elastic’s indexing capabilities to allow instant querying for troubleshooting. KVK then integrated APM and infrastructure metrics using Elastic Agent, providing deep context for every transaction.
This unified approach allows development teams to seamlessly correlate application traces with system-level metrics. If an application experiences latency, developers can use Elastic APM to identify the specific service at fault, examine related logs for errors, and check infrastructure metrics for resource contention — all within one interface.
"Our main goal was to empower our teams. We wanted to give them the tools to analyze their own applications and take ownership of performance. Elastic provided that unified platform, bringing logs, metrics, and traces together so teams could finally see the full picture."
Fostering a culture of ownership
By implementing Elastic Observability, KVK has transformed its operational culture. The organization has moved from a reactive model to a proactive one, where 40+ agile development teams now have the autonomy to monitor and optimize their own services.
With a single source of truth, teams no longer wait for central operations to investigate incidents across applications, infrastructure, and network operations. This self-service capability, coupled with AI and machine learning, has accelerated incident resolution and reduced operational overhead. Teams can now set up sophisticated alerts based on correlated data, catching anomalies early and ensuring higher stability for end users.
"The biggest win for us has been the shift in mindset," says Hieselaar. "Our developers now think in terms of observability.”
"They have the data at their fingertips to understand how their code behaves in production and can resolve issues much faster with the help of AI. Elastic has been instrumental in making that cultural shift happen."
Future-proofing digital services
With a resilient foundation built on Elastic, KVK is well-positioned to continue its digital evolution. By removing the friction of disparate tools and empowering teams with actionable data, the organization ensures that it can continue to innovate.
