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it_user815277 - PeerSpot reviewer
Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
I am confident in the tool's scalability because it easily deals with .NET Applets
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the PurePaths dashlet the most. This is mostly because as soon I open the PurePaths dashlet and sort by response time, there is the problem. Every time."
  • "I have never been more confident in a tool's scalability because I've seen how easy it is for it to deal with the .NET Applets."
  • "I would love to see a better data export, because AppMon's charting capabilities leaves a lot to be desired. You have about a 5,000 line limit. I would really like to see the ability to export, in Dynatrace and AppMon, in essentially in a nice format of whatever you want to whatever else."
  • "For AppMon, there is always room for improvement: charting, dashboarding, and user management."

What is our primary use case?

I mostly just onboard different applications in the company under the Dynatrace platform. Occasionally, they will have issues, then I use AppMon in order to tell them what the issue is. It usually is something simple: The URL, this particular service is slow, or your database is not responding correctly. 

It is performing well.

What is most valuable?

It is different for me than other users. I like the PurePaths dashlet the most. This is mostly because (and I can count a handful at times where this has not been this scenario) as soon I open the PurePaths dashlet and sort by response time, there is the problem. Every time.

If the PurePaths dashlet pulls up 750,000 PurePaths, I really only needed to know about seven or eight of them. Then, being able to look into the code-level dive about it, that is just a sanity check. Just to make sure that it is the same issue multiple times, not a random anomaly where everything else was crap.

Also Errors dashlet, I use that a ton.

What needs improvement?

I would love to see a better data export, because AppMon's charting capabilities leaves a lot to be desired. The dashboarding capabilities leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of times, for example, at my last company, they wanted Dynatrace data in addition to a bunch of other stuff dumped into one place. It was not just performance metrics. The CEO wanted his business metrics in the same place as the performance metrics along with a lot of other stuff. However, Dynatrace could not export this type of stuff. 

You have about a 5,000 line limit or you have to set up your CSV file just exactly. DC RUM can do it. It might take like an hour sometimes, but DC RUM can do it. I would really like to see the ability to export, in Dynatrace and AppMon, in essentially in a nice format of whatever you want to whatever else. That would be fantastic.

For AppMon, there is always room for improvement: charting, dashboarding, and user management. However, that is pretty much our fault with LDAP. The onboard process itself is a pain, even though we have scripted so much it, it is just very repetitive. There is a lot of alerts and things like that out-of-the-box that do not need to be there or that just do not do the right things.

For Dynatrace, I feel like it just needs a lot more technology support. I know they are trying to essentially get rid of AppMon and move toward the Dynatrace way of doing things. However, we are a multibillion dollar bank. We are not up-to-date. We are not going to be microservices for a long time. We are not going to be container for a long time, and we are probably one the most expensive clients that they have.

We are the ones who are going to drive a lot of the money factor so they need to have that. They need to have integration between the current set of tools so we have the ability to onboard five or six apps, then we'll also put the AppMon agent on it and show people the difference between it. It needs to be better integrated.

All of our team will go to a five minute sales meeting, if they were like, "Look, you can do this with a script." We are sold.

We do not want to do any of the regular AppMon stuff. However, when you have to convince the CTO that we are going to completely rip out the entire monitoring solution which we just spent the last 15 years trying to get a process set up for, and now we are going to redo it. That is not going to go over well. That is not a good conversation. 

You need to have that ability to do MQ. I don't care who uses MQ, but apparently we do. If you can't look into those messages, then you just lost a half of our organization which can't be monitored with it.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.
Buyer's Guide
Dynatrace
November 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With stability, I have never run into issues with Dynatrace causing an issue yet. 

I have run into AppMon causing issues. There have been a lot times when I have waited for a release. AppMon does the release, then it ends up taking down our application. Now, the fix is immediate, but I have already loss face. 

The last time, I took down the main application that lets you call tow trucks. It was just a monitoring loop, a simple thing. They fixed it in a patch. They knew about the issue and they told me immediately what the issue was. I got it fixed in 15 minutes. It took me six months to convince the team to install it in the first place and took me another seven for them to give me another shot at it. It was not a problem that showed up in QA, for whatever reason. So, I could not convince them that it does not exist anymore, because I could not show them any evidence that it existed in the first place. Let alone that I fixed it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have never been more confident in a tool because I've seen how easy it is for it to deal with the .NET Applets. That is a big problem in AppMon. Unless every single person is naming their Applets, the exact same way and following the exact same pattern, it becomes an issue. The new tool does not run into that at all. Similarly, you can script it so it just automatically blasts across the organization. As long as it has the PurePath capabilities, somebody who is running, for example, the actual web application that tells people their accounts, that might be a different, more in-depth use case for AppMon versus Dynatrace. So far, the scalability of the solution is phenomenal. 

How are customer service and support?

Anytime I can't find the answer immediately in docs or answers, I just open a ticket. They are very good about giving you a response. 

Initially, I am talking about two or three years ago, I think they did not have enough personnel staffed there. Therefore, it would take them maybe two or three days to get to your ticket. Now, it is maybe the next day you will have a pretty reasonable answer and that is provided you did exactly what it says in the support ticket. For example, make sure you upload your support archive. Otherwise, you will burn a day and they will send you an email requesting you just upload this. That is shooting yourself in the foot, and that is not their fault. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have previously used siloed monitoring tools. I have used SiteScope. My current company uses ITCAM. They are okay. They get the job done.

At my previous employment, we used SiteScope and that was quite literally the way that I thought about it in day-to-day life, if you do not really give a crap about it, just put SiteScope on it. However, if you actually need to know if it is working, it needs to have Dynatrace.

I was always pushing for that sort of thing. There is stuff like Wiley where you are not getting 100% monitoring. There is another tool, one is a very new company, and it seemed to get the job done but that was only because we were using Citrix Xenapp. It was specifically able to decode the traffic for Xenapp and XenDesktop, which was what we were looking at. Apart from that, I have never had a situation where I was like, maybe we should not put Dynatrace on this. I have never run into that. 

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial setup at my current company, but I was at a previous company.

For upgrading at my current company, that is in process. We are trying to figure out if it is better to blast it across the organization. We have five Dynatrace servers. They are all completely at capacity. They are all set at large. It is a really big deal for us to try to switch anything over. Right now, we are trying to figure out, do we just upgrade our collectors and hope for the best, or do we do it in QA and then in production? 

A lot of people do not run the right thing in QA. It is never the case that their QA is identical to production. So, is that a good indication? I have run into issues before when upgrading from 5.6 to 6.1 expecting that all the bugs were ironed out. That is when I took down that application. Now, I do not have confidence in this upgrade process.

For the Dynatrace Managed version, that setup process was incredibly easy. It took 15 minutes. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Just go with Dynatrace. Just start with Dynatrace. Do not go into AppMon. Start with Dynatrace, because AppMon is going to give you so much extra stuff that 99% of your user base will not need it, including yourself.

You don't need AppMon. I am a hardcore AppMon guy and I am still saying this. It is a lot nicer to be able to start with the Dynatrace solution, be able to script everything, and start integrating the new thing than it is to try to do the old tool set. 

What other advice do I have?

I started in the PDP program at Dynatrace. That was when they were still Compuware. Then they became Dynatrace, and I went to a different company, now I am at PNC. I have done the exact same thing for several years in different places.

In my current and previous positions, AI is not important when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems.

The previous company bought it, and they did not even set it up. I onboarded a bunch of apps. So, they were way too fledgling to try to start looking into it. 

What I would use AI for is if it could assist me in saying, "These are your common PurePath patterns." A lot of times in the ending part of an URL, they will have /apps, /data/, then they will put something lie the date or some big custom code. For example, we had one application for tow trucks, which would tell them the URL contained in PurePath, for the actual seven decimal place of the geographic coordinates of that tow truck.

This is not a good way to look at data. If the AI could tell me something about it, just mask it out, or just know this is the same type of data as these other ones and not worry about the extra text part of the piece. That would be the foremost use case for me. After that, I am not sure. 

I would need to use it a lot more to maintain my own trust factor in it before I would want to try to tell somebody that is asking me what the problem is. Just immediately saying AI says this. I do not have a high confidence enough factor in it, because I have never really used it.

If my organization had just one solution that could provide real answers, not just data, it would probably put me out of a job. Most of the time, when I get a ticket, they will ask me what the problem is. I will point out the problem, and it is something which is you need to code this better or you messed up these settings. Therefore, as far as helping me not have those mundane sort of tickets where I don't really want to waste my time with people. It is fine for the first few, but after the thirtieth or fortieth person, you tell them that you wrote this very poorly. It is better to just have some tool tell them that this is probably not the best way to do this.

That would be the initial benefit of the one solution. A part from that though, all I am doing is onboarding. The new Dynatrace already takes care of this. So, I am not really sure what my role would be afterwards. Right now, the APM is siloed off from the development teams. If you are going the full Dynatrace route with AI and getting the opportunity of the AIs already going to tell them what the issue is. Then, the APM team does not really need to exist anymore, apart from doing migrations.

Most important criteria when working with a vendor: That initial pairing of sales versus FTS. If I could reach out to them and get answers within a day, or better yet, within an hour. That is one of the best things because a lot of times that initial conversation can get derailed so quickly. You are not going to get more than five or ten minutes to pitch it to your boss. They are always at meetings. For example, my boss, at my previous place, I would be able to sit with him and talk to him about this thing. Then he would get, maybe, five minutes a week of his bosses level. That is the person who is going to sign the paycheck. 

Therefore, when he goes to a meeting, and it is a week later, he gives the spiel and has it all ironed out. Then, his boss asks him, "What about this?" Now, he does not know the answer, and I can't get the answer, then I need to get somebody on the phone stat to give him an answer. Otherwise, we have to wait another week. That is a big deal for us to have that communication open. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user520278 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It is limitless when it comes down to being able to scale up or even scale back
Pros and Cons
  • "It allows you to better utilize and focus your talent, and tell management that you are not only looking at problems, but how you can ultimately make the product better for the end user."
  • "It is limitless when it comes down to being able to scale up or even scale back, if we need it to."
  • "We have not had any stability issues with it at all. This has been the most stable solution that I have worked with."
  • "I was hands on in the setup of the solution. Initially, it seemed a little daunting."

What is our primary use case?

We are using AppMon UVM and Dynatrace synthetics, which we recently implemented. We are looking forward to using the new releases of Dynatrace in the future, where the use cases then will look at the following:

  • User actions
  • Analyzing PurePath to see what the user is doing.
  • Transactions on our website since we have an eCommerce website.
  • Availability and response times
  • Drill down to see if there are any issues
  • Gather old clients.

How has it helped my organization?

Being able to identify quickly what the problem is. It allows you to better utilize and focus your talent, and tell management that you are not only looking at problems, but how you can ultimately make the product better for the end user.

Business Case: In our implementation, AppMon and UVM are fairly infantile. The implementation was less than six months ago which means that we have been able to scale down some of our infrastructure. Not needing as much infrastructure to run compared to what we have been running in the past. From this perspective, it has been cost effective in allowing us to scale down infrastructure.

It allows us to make better business decisions based on what we are seeing, not what our customers were telling us was going on, but what we are actually seeing. Using this, I have been able to identify what the customers are experiencing. It allows us to optimize our site, our eCommerce solution, to better suit the needs of our customers. We can actually see what they are seeing and almost feel what they are feeling, because of the eyes that we have into their experience. It allows us to better code and better develop, allowing us to be able to optimize our website based off what we are seeing the customers truly experiencing.

What is most valuable?

The ease of use. Being able to readily identify a problem and be able to get someone there to fix or manage it properly and quickly. Our eCommerce website deals with users and time is critical. One of the best things, we are able to identify problems quickly and are able to resolve them.

What needs improvement?

They have had years developing this technology. When we go through it and we use it on a day-to-day basis, we see some things and think, "Hey, if they just had this, man this application would be a lot better." Then, in the next release, it comes out and it happened. We are using AppMon 7.0.15 right now, so AppMon 7.1 is coming out. Everything that I have identified in the version that I have as needing to be improved/fixed has already been addressed in the newer versions. Therefore, I can't think of anything that they have not addressed.

One of the things that find to be a challenge is I tell everybody that you almost have to be a private investigator to try to figure out what it is you want and how to get it. What I would have wanted was a solution that makes that process less cumbersome. 7.1 has already identified that. The Dynatrace solution has already identified that because of the way that PurePaths were looked at in Dynatrace compared to what they were looked at in AppMon. That would have been the one thing that I would have said, "If this product could be better, it would be from that perspective," but they have already identified it. They have already come up with the solution because I was not the only one that thought of that. Other people have thought of that using it, and they said, "Okay, this was a gap in Dynatrace, that gap has already been closed." That was the one thing that I had and they have already identified it.

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not had any stability issues with it at all. This has been the most stable solution that I have worked with. I have been in IT for over 22 years and the solution that we have implemented here in the last six months has been the most stable solution that I have worked with in all my 22 years in IT.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is limitless when it comes down to being able to scale up or even scale back, if we need it to. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I have definitely had to use technical support. The technical support team, customer service team, and Dynatrace altogether have been the best team that I have worked with industry-wide. Whenever I have a problem, most of the time they are hounding me for more feedback on the problem than me having to hound them. They have been great. I have a monthly call with technical resources, and I also have sales resources on a monthly call. Whatever our need is, they are there to help us, hold our hand, and walk us through it. It has been amazing.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used siloed monitoring tools in the past. I will not mention any particular names, but the challenges have been that they are silos. It does not give you a holistic view of everything that is going on in your application as compared to a solution like Dynatrace which allows you to see from start to finish. With Dynatrace, you get a complete holistic view of the application, and it helps you not point fingers, but be able to identify visible problems.

How was the initial setup?

I was hands on in the setup of the solution. Initially, it seemed a little daunting. Once we started working with it, it was a very easy solution to implement and put in place.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The vendor that we brought in to help us move our platform from Legacy to NextGen was using Dynatrace in their dev testing. So, just for amount of consistency, we continue to use Dynatrace, and we can see why they chose Dynatrace to use as their dev testing. It was the best tool out there. I do not know what tools they have considered in the past, but I know that was the one that they brought to the table and it has proved to be a valuable tool for us.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend to give Dynatrace a call if you are looking for an APM solution.

AI is the solution of the future. I say the future but actually right now moving into the future. It is interesting looking at some of the applications using AI to solve problems, like betas, and being able to integrate that with Alexa for things like adding voice control to identify and solve problems. I think going forward it will be the way that IT works.

It would be invaluable to have one solution which would allow you not only to gather data, but to be able to make intelligent solutions based off of that data. It would be industry changing.

Most important criteria when selecting an APM solution: Cost is one of them, but we also needed something that did not just collect data. We needed something that provided a true benefit. If I am going to spend my day focusing on what a user is doing and what is that user's experience like on my website, then I need a application that can go and figure out the things that I am not seeing and what I am missing, so the tool that I am using provides the information right now. What I have seen from Dynatrace is that it takes that to a totally different level.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Buyer's Guide
Dynatrace
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dynatrace. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user815403 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Analyst Senior at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dashboards have been eye-opening for management, allowing them to see the problems
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboard gives us something to show managers and our business where the problems are. That's really been eye-opening for them. They can see, yes, this tool has been a good investment. They can see where the problems are and how we can take advantage of it for making those necessary corrections."
  • "I think the design is pretty scalable. It's pretty easy to add additional nodes if we need to. Also, it's easy to migrate changes from one environment to another."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our company primarily uses the AppMon product and we have it divided up in different business units: line support, corporate systems support in our organization. We primarily use it to monitor internal HR applications, enterprise document applications, anything that involves Java, database SQL. We're trying to monitor and make sure that we're tuning performance.

    We have an initiative going on this year, high-availability, so we're trying to get as many applications in our organization to be monitored through this tool as, much as possible, to make sure they're all running most efficiently and performing the way that the management would expect.

    So far it's going well. Quite a learning experience for us.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The dashboard gives us something to show managers and our business where the problems are. That's really been eye-opening for them. They can see, yes, this tool has been a good investment. They can see where the problems are and how we can take advantage of it for making those necessary corrections, so it's been helpful to us.

    What is most valuable?

    I like the end-to-end monitoring - we can see. Also the user experience, that's been really helpful for us because a lot of times things just aren't detected and I hear from the users. This isolates some of the issues from their experience, so that's definitely been useful for us. 

    We're also starting to learn some of the Synthetic monitoring, hoping to do some performance testing in the future.

    What needs improvement?

    We'd like to see them continue to develop the AI, what they introduced today here at the Perform 2018 conference, with the whole Synthetic monitoring. I'm glad that they're starting to merge a lot of the tool-sets into one to make it easier.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    There's definitely been some challenges around stability, as far as PurePaths sometimes. Also the history, we've got so much data being built. We have to be careful to keep a short amount of history available to our users, so it's been challenging.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I think the design is pretty scalable. It's pretty easy to add additional nodes if we need to. Also, it's easy to migrate changes from one environment to another. That makes it so you can scale it. I think it's met our expectations for scalability.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I personally have not used tech support, but we have other people on the team that do engage with the vendor more avidly and they've said that support has been pretty adept at meeting their needs, time-wise. We're pretty pleased so far with the way the vendor has handled problems we've proposed to them.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We've used SiteScope for monitoring a lot of our web applications. I know we've used Tealeaf and Splunk. They're great tools but there's quite a learning curve there. 

    This one, Dynatrace, seemed to be a little bit more straightforward. It's certainly more robust in what it can do as far as the end-to-end monitoring. You can also see how big these conferences are, like here at Perform 2018. There are a lot of other users for networking who are familiar with this tool, so that's helped us adopt it a little bit more easily and to push that incentive towards our directors.

    SiteScope is limited. It doesn't do Angular apps as much. It doesn't do single-page apps, so it's more just one web page; it's easier to write scripting for that. But when you have something that goes through a whole set series, it's been challenging. With Dynatrace it has been a little easier to monitor those types of situations. That's the primary reason.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    I would like to see them improve on their licensing and the cost. It's been a challenge for us because the way they have it broken out right now, you have to buy it by units. It's hard for us to know where to put those units because our company is broken up into all these different business units, so it's been challenging in that sense. I just would like to see them improve that model a little bit.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    I wasn't really involved in the process, but when we saw what the tool is capable of, it certainly went to the top pretty quickly. It has met most of our expectations since we purchased it. 

    I do believe that they evaluated one other vendor, product but I don't remember who.

    What other advice do I have?

    When it comes to the nature of digital complexity, the role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance is certainly a big thing going on right now. It's very important to us. I want to make sure that there's not only learning when there are issues, but also that there is taking action automatically to correct it. That's where the intelligence is at, and once you program it in, it knows how to fix the issue and you don't have to troubleshoot and find out what the issue is. That's a big initiative that's going on, it's very important to us, this AI.

    In terms of one solution that could provide real answers, as opposed to just data,
    any solution that could tell us, definitely, when there's something going on across our organization - not just in one area, one department - something that could tell us from each point when there's a communication such as sign-on; we want to know if it's something with the network, it's something with the area that supports that application, or if it's something on a host server. Something that tells us, all the way across the board what the issue could be. That's what we're driving towards.

    I'd rate Dynatrace about a nine out of 10. There are some things that they need them to improve upon, but they are pretty close to the top.

    Talk with them, go out and seek, look at all the options you have. Make sure that you talk with your business and discuss what is most important when you're looking to invest toward performance issues. Look at a tool that spans across the company, that can meet multiple areas of needs, not just your own.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1284711 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Presales Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    Fully automated solution, so it's easy to use when it comes to deployment but the solution could extend the visibility to cover more infrastructure monitoring capabilities
    Pros and Cons
    • "It has AI capabilities for anomaly detection. Also, they are a fully automated solution, so it's easy to use when it comes to deployment."
    • "It would be good to extend the visibility to cover more infrastructure monitoring capabilities and more network performance capabilities."

    What is our primary use case?

    Dynatrace is doing it very well. It offers the customer a holistic view of the application or website, starting from the front-end services to the back-end services. Mainly, they are focusing more on application performance. 

    For sure, they have it for server monitoring and network performance monitoring, but mainly they are focusing on application and AI capabilities when it comes to application performance monitoring.

    They are very good when it comes to APM. 

    What is most valuable?

    It has AI capabilities for anomaly detection. Also, they are a fully automated solution, so it's easy to use when it comes to deployment. In general, they have root cause analysis, monitoring the components, and monitoring the application. They use information to connect the issues, detecting problems, and finding LiveOps analysis.

    What needs improvement?

    It would be good to extend the visibility to cover more infrastructure monitoring capabilities and more network performance capabilities.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using it for five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is a stable product. 

    Moreover, there is a support team. Honestly, they are doing very good when it comes to communications and documentation, so you can easily troubleshoot and diagnose issues.

    You can also easily reach out to their support team. For the components themselves, it's quite stable. There aren't many parts when it comes to Dynatrace components or the platform itself. So, it's the best solution.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten because it is an agentless solution. It is scalable; you can deploy the agent wherever you want. 

    We have Enterprise businesses as our clients. It can be offered to small businesses, but it would be pretty expensive. Technically, there is no problem with that. But, it's all about the cost or the price.

    How are customer service and support?

    We can reach out to them directly through chat services within the platform itself, or we can contact their partners globally. Dynatrace would be able to help you directly, and also let you contact the enterprise support team. So, it's quite good when it comes to support.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    How was the initial setup?

    I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy. 

    It is fully automated, so it was easy. 

    The deployment model can be both on-premises and on the cloud. 

    The deployment depends on the component. Overall, it can be done in less than one hour, or two hours maximum; you will be able to finish deployment when it comes to the main components, like the analysis server or admin server. But when it comes to agents, it depends on the customer's environment. It may take hours or weeks. So, it depends on the prerequisites and the customers themselves.

    What was our ROI?

    The cost savings can add because they are focusing on the end-user experience. Currently, all businesses are all about the user experience. So once you have such a tool, you just want to make sure that users are satisfied. 

    When they are satisfied, you will gain benefits. So when it comes to return on investment, by keeping your customers satisfied, it's worth it to invest in such a tool. It gives you clear visibility of the user experience or user behavior so you can improve your business.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    It's not cheap, for sure. Dynatrace targets enterprise customers, banking, government entities. So for sure, it's not cheap, and it's a little bit expensive. So, I would rate the  pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive. 

    Now, here comes the comparison to other APM competitors like AppDynamics and IBM; yhey are within the same range. They are all targeting top-end users.

    What other advice do I have?

    Dynatrace has an AI engine. It collects numerous metrics from the customer's IT environment. The AI engine then correlates and analyzes all of these collected metrics and transactions to offer some capabilities to the customers.

    However, my recommendation depends on the use cases or pain points for the customers. For application visibility or end-user experience, I would recommend Dynatrace.

    Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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    Varaprasad - PeerSpot reviewer
    Senior Technical Lead
    Real User
    Top 5
    Saves money; easy to deploy
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable features for me are the dashboard panels because they enable you to monitor multiple applications in one single site."
    • "In the next release, I'd like to see more portables included regarding the screens."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our primary use case for this solution is for checking site vulnerability to see if the applications are up or down and if they're running fine.

    How has it helped my organization?

    This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to check for site vulnerability and performance, which in the end helps us save money.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable features for me are the dashboard panels because they enable you to monitor multiple applications in one single site.

    What needs improvement?

    In the next release, I'd like to see more portables included regarding the screens.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for about three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I would rate the stability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. There are some 50 people using this solution in our organization.

    How are customer service and support?

    I would rate the technical support of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    How was the initial setup?

    The deployment process was easy as the vendor just had to give us access.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    My impression is that their pricing plan is moderate.

    What other advice do I have?

    Our deployment model is on-premises.

    I would rate this solution as a whole a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1258731 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Solutions director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
    Reseller
    Allows us to monitor application performance, underlying infrastructure, and relationships with Smartscape technology
    Pros and Cons
    • "Smartscape is a valuable feature. They also have a technology named PurePath. PurePath is the distributed tracing data."
    • "They're doing vulnerability assessments of the application stack by using OneAgent. It's a never-ending story if you are trying to be sure your application is also secure."

    What is our primary use case?

    Dynatrace is a very good solution to monitor both application performance and the underlying infrastructure. It's good to analyze all the relationships with Smartscape technology. It's very useful to understand all the dynamic relationships of the application stack, including all the hardware and dependent components. We always use the latest version. 

    We deploy it on-prem and on cloud. The SaaS solution is deployed on AWS.

    The infrastructure manager or application or database manager will be using this solution. You can also have a CIO or CFO type of dashboard since there's business value and you can monitor the components. You can decide what is the total output provided by those applications.

    What is most valuable?

    Smartscape is a valuable feature. They also have a technology named PurePath. PurePath is the distributed tracing data. Previously, we called it distributed tracing. Including all the stacks, you have the full visibility of your solution, the impact of the hardware, and all the operating system dependencies. You can analyze if you have any software change which has impacted your performance.

    What needs improvement?

    They're doing vulnerability assessments of the application stack by using OneAgent. It's a never-ending story if you are trying to be sure your application is also secure. So, they could improve in that area, but they have started doing that.

    They could definitely add additional components since the technology is driving from different perspectives. So, they should follow up with all the new components and new versions of the suite.

    The price could be lower.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using Dynatrace for two years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I haven't seen any instability. Even their SaaS platform is always up and running. We haven't seen any issues on-prem since their components are already clustered. You can implement multiple servers to have the solution.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It's very scalable for tens or hundreds of servers. We didn't see any scalability issue. Some customers have over 10,000 applications monitored by Dynatrace.

    How are customer service and support?

    We had several calls to their support organization, but we have had a very good response from them. Even the Mission Control functionality within the solution is handling most of the log collection. They can reach your server to understand the situation, and they can do a dynamic upgrade of the solution. So, it's very good and very powerful.

    I would rate them 5 out of 5.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I'm using alternatives in several customer cases. Dynatrace is the best solution in the market, but because of the price restrictions and also the relationship of vendors, we use other selections in certain environments.

    How was the initial setup?

    Setup is very easy, and it's easy to implement. I would rate setup 5 out of 5.

    Since I'm representing different use cases and different customers, we see different needs. For all of them, including having a SaaS-based approach or having on-prem deployment, it's always a matter of minutes to get some results. The amount of servers is always changing. But we are mostly targeting SaaS customers who have hundreds or thousands of servers for their application stack.

    I'm the business development manager and also the pre-sales of the solution in our company. I'm mostly doing the POCs and also leading the implementation since it's very easy. Mostly, I'm in front of our sales and also including the implementation timeframe as the customer success manager for the customers. 

    The amount of people needed for deployment and maintenance depends on the size of your environment. If your environment is not up-to-date, your environment is not handled by the operations team. This is not the case for Dynatrace.

    What was our ROI?

    Our customers have seen ROI. It's very high. I would rate it 5 out of 5.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Dynatrace is usually paid on a yearly basis. You can also have an upfront three-year contract and pay each year, and you will have better pricing. Pricing is always dependent on the industry and the region. Since we are in Turkey, we have a very big push from customers for the discount levels. It always depends on the customer and their project situation.

    There are additional costs to the standard licensing fees. If it's a SaaS-based approach, then all the platform cost is included. But if it's on-prem, you have some additional costs. Their pricing structure is a little different if you are using it on-prem without Mission Control.

    I would rate them 4 out of 5 for pricing.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Our customers evaluate other solutions like New Relic APM. If they need to have it on-prem, they are mostly including Instana and sometimes Cisco AppDynamics.

    Dynatrace has great output and very successful implementation in most cases, including the microservices, the new technology components, and the monolithic architectures of classic Java and .NET applications. They are very good technically but usually very expensive. That's why customers are always evaluating other alternatives to understand what is the final cost of the project.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

    My advice to those looking to implement this solution is to include Dynatrace in their evaluation and try to understand if the other solutions can have similar results with their footprint. It depends on the environment. If it's mostly a newer environment like microservices and just Kubernetes or that type of environment, they can also have some outputs with Instana. But if it's monolithic and there's old stuff in their environment, they can have some outputs with AppDynamics. 

    Dynatrace includes all of the technologies from old to new. They are very powerful. So, I strongly suggest having them in the evaluation period.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Hybrid Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
    PeerSpot user
    PeerSpot user
    Sr.Tech.Analyst Monitoreo at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Allows you to discover all libraries and technologies that exist on the market today
    Pros and Cons
    • "The solution can be deployed quickly on-prem. Once it's deployed, you can use discovery and review the process and service on this application."
    • "It would help if Dynatrace allowed more features that work with metrics like Grafana or New Relic."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use the solution in server monitoring, application monitoring, and roam and synthetic monitoring. We have 1,000 Dynatrace users in our organization.

    What is most valuable?

    The solution can be deployed quickly on-prem. Once it's deployed, you can use discovery and review the process and service on this application.

    What needs improvement?

    Dynatrace would be closer to a perfect tool if it could bring an interface similar to a standard for metrics like Prometheus and Grafana, New Relic, and Datadog, and the way they present these panels. It would help if Dynatrace allowed more features that work with metrics like Grafana or New Relic because the data is there in Dynatrace. Dynatrace collects all the information but some companies consider integrating, for instance, Dynatrace metrics with Grafana.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using this solution for more than one year. It's a SaaS solution, and it's deployed on a private cloud.

    How are customer service and support?

    Support is okay but could be better and faster. The documentation for the tool could be better. The documentation with Elastic and Datadog is more detailed.

    How was the initial setup?

    Initial setup is simple but it depends. In the server monitoring, it's only install and discovery. That is very quick. To install with a cloud like OpenShift, it requires some Sandcastle configuration about tokens and operators, but with old data, it's fast.

    What about the implementation team?

    Two people were required for deployment.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    I have a little experience with Datadog, but it doesn't have the power to discover with some libraries like Dynatrace. With Dynatrace, you can discover all libraries and technologies that exist on the market today. With Datadog, that's not 100% the case. Datadog is a very good product but it works differently. Datadog has machine learning, too, but not in all discovery options of SQL and in all layers of our monitoring like infrastructure, service, process, and applications—like Dynatrace. With Dynatrace, 100% of all options are included in your machine learning, in your AI.

    For development, Datadog is a little more friendly to your front end and development teams. There are some areas, particularly the Apdex of Datadog, that are more understandable for the development teams. Dynatrace is a little more difficult to understand for development teams. It requires some more learning.

    The APM feature in Datadog is easier to understand. It works manually, like New Relic, Grafana, or Elastic. That's more understandable for software development teams.

    I tested New Relic between 2019 and 2020. Like Datadog, I tested and did proof of concept for New Relic in about one month. New Relic is strong and the APM is easier for teams of dev to write. The scope of New Relic is like Datadog. It doesn't cover all technologies and all libraries and just works efficiently with all items of applications for work with QA and dev.

    I have not tested the integration of New Relic. I know some colleagues that integrated between the tools for the infrastructure coverage in Datadog and the APM coverage in New Relic.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10. It's not a 10 because there are some little things that could be enhanced. Otherwise, the product is great.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Private Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1497948 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Associate Director, Application Performance Management Solution Design & Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    OneAgent platform that is scalable, stable, easy to install, and has good support
    Pros and Cons
    • "We like the on-premises platform and the horizontal scalability."
    • "They could also, develop an observability platform where you could have the ability to inject events, locks, and traces."

    What is our primary use case?

    In the six months that we were using Dynatrace, it was a proof of concept.

    It's used for full-stack monitoring, automated instrumentation, APM, and byte code injections, as well as infrastructure performance monitoring and the virtualization layer.

    What is most valuable?

    We really liked the OneAgent technology automated instrumentation. It is impressive, better than the competitors, AppDynamics.

    We like the on-premises platform and the horizontal scalability.

    What needs improvement?

    In the next release, other than the price being reduced, I would like to see some improvements in open telemetry support, the open standards support.

    They could also develop an observability platform where you could have the ability to inject events, locks, and traces.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have been using Dynatrace for six months.

    We used the Dynatrace managed service. It was the latest version when we used it.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability was fine. We did not encounter any issues. It was working as designed and expected.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It's a scalable solution with a true cluster platform that can be expanded. It works very well.

    We have 200 users in our organization who are using it.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We are satisfied with the technical support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We were using AppDynamics and CA APM in the past.

    How was the initial setup?

    It was a straightforward installation.

    It took two to three days to configure and do the proof of concept.

    We had a team of two or three to deploy this solution.

    What about the implementation team?

    We completed the installation ourselves.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Financially, Dynatrace was a lot more expensive than AppDynamics.

    Our business case wouldn't resolve, which is why we decided to renew the licenses with AppDynamics.

    Dynatrace should reduce their pricing. It should be cheaper.

    We are no longer using Dynatrace because it was too expensive.

    What other advice do I have?

    If the price were reduced then we would use this solution again.

    For those who are interested in using this product, we would recommend it.

    I would rate Dynatrace a nine out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Dynatrace Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: November 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Dynatrace Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.