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reviewer1113282 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Consultant at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Automatic configuration saves us time, helpful support team, and it helps us to measure and improve our end-user experience
Pros and Cons
  • "This monitoring capability gives us the ability to measure the end-user experience."
  • "Support for cloud-based environments needs to be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients. We use Dynatrace both on-premises and in the cloud. Our use cases involve monitoring application performance. We are also able to see how the underlying infrastructure is performing.

This monitoring capability gives us the ability to measure the end-user experience.

We have other use cases, as well, but this is a summary of what we do with it.

What is most valuable?

There are several features that we find very valuable.

The setup is automated, so you don't have to do any configuration. There is very little manual intervention required.

Once it captures the data, it is able to dynamically analyze the packets and determine a probable route. This is a feature that we use very heavily.

What needs improvement?

Support for cloud-based environments needs to be improved. There is a challenge when it comes to monitoring cloud-native applications. This means that we have to use other tools that we integrate with Dynatrace. If there were another approach to monitoring things automatically then it would be a fantastic feature to add.

Some of the results that we were being given by the AI engine were not a proper output based on what the data input was.

These days, we are seeing that AIOps is becoming more predominant. As such, I would like to see more of the features in Dynatrace, expanding it from a purely monitoring solution into a full-fledged AIOps solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Dynatrace for approximately nine years.

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Dynatrace
February 2025
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With respect to stability, this is not a system that gives users access to the low level. Rather, they interact with the agents. That said, we have had some stability issues with a number of our agent deployments for our customers. One example is that the AI engine was not giving the proper output, based on what the input was.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable product but you ought to have multiple instances to scale it.

How are customer service and support?

We have worked with their technical support team on a couple of specific areas, and I would rate them a four out of five.

We have not had to contact support for applications that use simple technology, like Java. However, when it is a complex system such as an ERP or a cloud-based application, sometimes the integration requires that we create specific plugins to capture the data. These are the types of things that we have worked with technical support to resolve.

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

We have worked with various competitors' tools. Some of these are AppDynamics, New Relic, Datadog, Splunk, and others. There are a lot of other tools on the market.

Nowadays, we are working with a lot of different customers and our preference is to implement Dynatrace over the other solutions. The three main reasons for this are the features in general, the ease of implementation, and specifically for the AI capabilities.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward, although it depends on whether the application enrollment is heterogeneous or complex. The initial planning can take some time but the actual installation and setup is not a big process.

The number of staff required for deployment depends on how many applications we're going to configure. If it's only a few applications then you don't need many people. However, if a customer tells us they have a hundred applications that need to be installed in a month's time then obviously, we need more people to help with the deployment.

What about the implementation team?

As product integrators, we deploy this product with our in-house team. We have a good set of people who are trained and certified in Dynatrace.

What other advice do I have?

Over the time that I have used this product, I have worked with several versions. I am now working on the latest one.

The advice that I typically give to my clients is that you shouldn't think that it will do everything. In order to implement it properly, we need to clearly understand what are your specific use cases are, and then work on those.

Use cases can be related to an environment, a technology, or a platform. If it's a cloud-native service, for example, then you won't be able to use Dynatrace because it can't even be installed. You won't get anything out of that. This is an example of how it is not suitable for every situation. The feasibility depends on what you want to use cases are.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
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
Buyer's Guide
Dynatrace
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Dynatrace. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Software Engineer in Test at Autodesk
Real User
The visibility that it provides through the application's behavior allows us to find trends based on our customized metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "The visibility that it provides through the application's behavior allows us to find trends based on our customized metrics."
  • "The new Managed Edition is too complex. I feel like a fish out of water."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is monitoring and diagnostics for production marketing usage.

How has it helped my organization?

The visibility into the application's performance helps the executives and managers by using easy dashboards. Our engineers are also super happy with the ability to drill down and fine-tune based on issues which we have seen. A bunch of issues with OpenID were easily investigated, then we were able to fix them quickly.

It has been a very enabling tool for us, especially for my team. The visibility that it provides through the application's behavior allows us to find trends based on our customized metrics.

What is most valuable?

  • Alerts: The alerting system is really nice.
  • The ability to drill down and pinpoint issues.

What needs improvement?

The new Managed Edition is too complex. I feel like a fish out of water. From the on-premise version to the AWS version, our initial use has been very complex. 

For the integration, I use a hollow testing tube called Performance Center. I would like the ability to integrate with it. This would be a good feature. While I believe it is there, it needs to be fine-tuned.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'm pretty impressed with the stability. 

With the AWS version, you can access the updates through the browsers, not worrying about the tick line. 

With the on-premise version, you need to use the tick line for updates. There are times when architects, who do not use the product constantly, find their stage and production options out of sync, then they need to have two tick lines on the same system.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There was an issue on-premise. We were trying to troubleshoot a production issue. We had to run a bunch of queries for different time frames to see where the issues were and how recently they had been seen. This crashed the Dynatrace server.

We are now moving slowly moving in installments of the AWS version because our environments are not large enough right now. So, we haven't tested it yet.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have only heard positive reviews.

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

We went with Dynatrace because of its ease of use and it is feature-rich. It helps you to drill down into bottlenecks and find issues. When you have highly integrated systems, it gives you an extra lens through your whole ecosystem.

What about the implementation team?

The Dynatrace team helped us with the integration and configuration in our AWS environment.

What was our ROI?

There have been many advantages in terms of production and issue resolutions.

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

The product is pricey, but it is feature-rich, which is why we probably haven't looked away from it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are also using New Relic. Our product teams keep explore new options to see what is out there.

I prefer Dynatrace over New Relic because there are better features.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Dynatrace Managed because it has more features, and go straight for the AWS version because it is simpler to manage. It can also be accessed through the browser. 

We previously used the on-premise version, but have switched to the AWS version, which has more features.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user815325 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
PureStack gives visibility from the end-user right through to the code level
Pros and Cons
  • "PureStack, I just love it. It can give visibility from the end-user perspective right through to the code level. That's the most valuable feature."

    What is our primary use case?

    We’re using Dynatrace AppMon currently in our environment, and we’re using it for troubleshooting performance issues. We are mainly using it in the performance-testing environment, to try to reproduce a problem if we happen to see one in production, and find what the root cause is.

    It's performing well, absolutely.

    How has it helped my organization?

    I’m not sure about the entire organization, but for my quality assurance, the mean time to resolution or to find a problem has been reduced dramatically now. I don’t have a percentage but, we used to take a week or more to troubleshoot an issue, now it can be done very quickly, probably in a day’s time.

    What is most valuable?

    PureStack, I just love it. It can give visibility from the end-user perspective right through to the code level. That's the most valuable feature.

    Also the UI is amazing. We really like it.

    What needs improvement?

    I think Dynatrace is top-notch, it's well ahead of its competitors. I don’t see any features which another vendor or other products have which Dynatrace doesn't. I think Dynatrace is in pretty good shape right now. I don’t really have any features which I’m lacking right now, so it's all good.

    In terms of new features, I’m excited about AWS monitoring, that Lambda function, and log analysis. We’re not yet on the cloud, but still it's a good feature. We are actually planning to move to the cloud, and my organization is actively looking for tools which can support monitoring. This will definitely be a value-added feature.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It's not a big concern for us at this moment.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We haven't used technical support.

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

    For deep diagnostics we were using an HPE product or, then, a Microsoft product called Diagnostics. It was difficult to use that tool and connect the dots. It was per machine base, per JVM base, and was not really giving a holistic picture. But Dynatrace is doing that all for us. And PurePath, again, I just love that. That was missing.

    How was the initial setup?

    I think one of the vendors helped us. We didn’t have any hands-on, but I think we did some Dynatrace University, we’ve been through some videos. And the vendor gave us some training, so we’re fine with that.

    What other advice do I have?

    I’m a big advocate of AI. It seems that AI can join the dots sometimes for us, and that is helpful. Instead of spending the time to think and connect all the dots, AI can do that for us in the future, and can come up with a solution also. That will be nice.

    In my previous company I did use siloed monitoring tools. We used HPE BSM, Business Service Management. There were two piece to that. One was infrastructure monitoring, host monitoring such as CPU, memory, using SiteScope. The other was end-user monitoring, synthetic user monitoring. Also, there was a piece called Diagnostics. The challenge was, although the two pieces, synthetic monitoring and the host monitoring, both were agentless, it didn’t give us the real root cause of issues. Diagnostics did but you had to go and install it, and it didn’t perform very well in production.

    In terms of one tool, right now I’m seeing Dynatrace can do a lot of things: the entire DevOps, infrastructure, application performance monitoring, all that can be done using just one tool. Now they just released a new feature for log monitoring. I’m really excited to learn about that. If everything can be packaged in one, that would be nice. You wouldn't have to worry about different vendors and patches. And especially, they have a SaaS model. I’m a big advocate of SaaS. My company is not right there but eventually, I hope, when it gets there, I think you’ll see big use of it, and ease of use.

    I think from the organization's perspective, probably the most important criteria when selecting a vendor would be the cost, and the tool, obviously. The tool is very important: quality of the tool, reliability, scalability, all those factors weigh in.

    My advice would be, from the tool perspective, to look at this tool and its features: ease of use, scalability, and stability-wise this tool stands out. I understand organizations have a pricing factor, a cost factor. That is something you have to decide on. If you want a low-cost tool, there are different tools in the market, or do you want to settle with the best tool in the market but you'll spend a lot more money. Do your research, work with your peers, your leadership, understand which way they want to go. But definitely, as an engineer, I will always say you should go Dynatrace.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user815340 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Manager Custom Solutions at Nemours
    Real User
    Mitigates issues before they are in production, and if in production, reduces the time to find and resolve them
    Pros and Cons
    • "The PurePaths are valuable because that's where somebody who is a non-developer can figure out where the problem is and send appropriate PurePaths, clean charts, or even the link to the developer. The developer can then look at it and figure out exactly where the problem is, this is the piece of code that took the longest time, and then resolve it."
    • "The challenge with AppMon is, what if you don't have an AppMon agent on a host, but it talks to the database. It talks to it, but I don't have either a host agent or an AppMon agent on it. That has been a challenge, but I believe the Dynatrace agent, the OneAgent, will solve that, potentially."
    • "The configuration of the alerts, that's been a challenge in AppMon for me, right now. Some of the alerts are too noisy, but that might be my lack of some configuration."

    What is our primary use case?

    The primary use case is application monitoring. We are using APM to test for performance, bugs, and hoping to resolve the issues faster, and hoping to catch them before we go to production.

    It's been great, it has helped us a lot. It can do more, but it's definitely helped us a lot and I'm a big believer in Dynatrace products.

    How has it helped my organization?

    First of all it's mitigating issues before they are in production, and if they do go into production, it's reducing the time to find the issue and actually resolve it. I believe, in the organization that we're in right now, that is challenged for resources and time, a product like Dynatrace helps immensely.

    What is most valuable?

    The PurePaths, because that's where somebody who is a non-developer can figure out where the problem is and send appropriate PurePaths, clean charts, or even the link to the developer. The developer can then look at it and figure out exactly where the problem is, this is the piece of code that took the longest time, and then resolve it.

    What needs improvement?

    Right now, since I'm primarily an AppMon user, so maybe the Dynatrace product addresses this: The challenge with AppMon is, what if you don't have an AppMon agent on a host, but it talks to the database. It talks to it, but I don't have either a host agent or an AppMon agent on it. That has been a challenge, but I believe the Dynatrace agent, the OneAgent, will solve that, potentially. You ask me three months from now, after we take a crack at the Dynatrace product, maybe my answer will be different, but I'm hoping that addresses some of the issues.

    The configuration of the alerts, that's been a challenge in AppMon for me, right now. Some of the alerts are too noisy, but that might be my lack of some configuration. Again, it's just me primarily handling it, so that could be an issue. Somebody asked a question in one of the sessions, here at the Perform 2018 conference, about noise and how many alerts to your problem count, and the person doing the session answered right away saying, "I checked my dashboard before I came to this session and I had one alert on it." So I'm guessing that will resolve itself.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    More than five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I think I like the direction it's going in, the only challenging part for me is to keep up with the name changes. But other than that, as far as stability, I think I'm happy with it.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I think for the deployments we have right now, it has not been a challenge. My goal is to increase the usage throughout the organization, maybe that's where I'll face some challenges, but at this point there are no challenges.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I have used technical support in the past and they are pretty quick to respond. The other thing is, the APM community is available, Andy answers pretty much any question I post pretty quickly, so I think that group community help is really good.

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

    I have use siloed monitoring tools in the past. When I started at Nemours 17 years ago, I had custom scripts that I would use to apply to various servers. They were on the host level, but the deployment was challenging. How to tie in a CPU alert to application slowness is challenging, because you had to go to the timestamp, look at the log and say, "Okay, this might be the issue." Dynatrace tells you how it is, and I think that's the most important feature.

    How was the initial setup?

    I'm the primary Dynatrace admin, if you want to call me that, and it was pretty easy. But keep in mind, my skill sets are probably unique in the sense that I understand applications well, so I know how to insert the agent - because we use AppMon - how we insert agent into JVM.

    But I believe the new Dynatrace product is probably the way to go, because you don't need to actually talk to the application folks, you just deploy it on the host and you're done. I believe it's definitely going in the right direction. It is complex, it wasn't for me, but I can imagine it being complex for some people.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    I don't know if there were any other vendors on my list because we've been users for about 15 years. We started out with a Vantage product that moved to server monitoring, and then we had the Gomez platform, and then you also had Dynatrace, but then they all came under the same umbrella. So we never really evaluated any other vendor. We had some of the free tools we used to use, like  Profiler, but from what I've heard from developers, nothing ever came close to this so I'm a fan.

    What other advice do I have?

    If we had just one solution that could provide real answers, as opposed to just data, we could spend less time on troubleshooting and trying to figure out what the problem is, and actually do our jobs, which is to design, build, and develop software.

    The criteria we look for when adopting an APM solution are ease of use, and does it truly get you down to the problem area - and I believe that Dynatrace does - and the third one, it's true for everyone, is the cost.

    I would rate it a nine out of 10. I'm not giving it a 10 yet because I would like to see the Dynatrace product in action and truly want to understand it. If we move to Dynatrace, away from AppMon, are we missing out on something?

    My advice would be go with Dynatrace.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user815382 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Test Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    We now know when a given application is down and we can be proactive
    Pros and Cons
      • "The thing that is preventing us from moving forward with Dynatrace right now is that we can't tag our customer traffic with a customizable tag. All of our students have a unique identifier and in AppMon we tag that and we can search by it very easily and it's very useful. But in Dynatrace, you can't yet customize and find people like that, so that's really preventing us. I heard that it's being worked on but I'm not sure when it's coming out."
      • "One of the new features is "impacted users." I would like to see a rate of impacted users. For example, how long has the problem been going on: 100 users in five minutes. Does that mean that in 3 hours if we don't get this solved, we're impacting x number of people? Understanding the rate at which the problem is impacting people would be a cool feature."

      What is our primary use case?

      The one that we recently scripted was just to see if an application was up, it was a very simple script. We had an issue with a vended solution at the university in which the application would just go down and the vendor had said that, "Oh, it never goes down, we have 100% uptime." We didn't have a good way to monitor that before. We said, "Our students our reporting that they cannot log in." With Synthetics, we wrote a very simple script that went to the landing page and tried to type and hit "enter," and that's it.

      We have two-factor and some other things that prevent us from going too far into it, and we haven't figured out a technical solution for it, but it's a very simple use case of just making sure that the application is up.

      Dynatrace itself is performing well.

      How has it helped my organization?

      We now know when the application is down, as opposed to students opening tickets and letting us know. So it's more proactive.

      What is most valuable?

      That it's always running.

      What needs improvement?

      From what I've learned today, here at the Perform 2018 conference, there are two things that I really want to see.

      Number one, the thing that is preventing MSU from moving forward with Dynatrace right now is that we can't tag our customer traffic with a customizable tag. All of our students have a unique identifier and in AppMon we tag that and we can search by it very easily and it's very useful. But in Dynatrace, you can't yet customize and find people like that, so that's really preventing us. I heard that it's being worked on but I'm not sure when it's coming out.

      The second thing that I'd really love to see is - I'm very impressed by all the new features that I've learned about at the conference - and one of the features is "impacted users." I would like to see a rate of impacted users. For example, how long has the problem been going on: 100 users in five minutes. Does that mean that in 3 hours if we don't get this solved, we're impacting x number of people? Understanding the rate at which the problem is impacting people would be a cool feature.

      For how long have I used the solution?

      Trial/evaluations only.

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      It seems very stable.

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      With the AI, it seems very scalable. 

      How are customer service and technical support?

      We're going through a proof of concept right now, so we work very closely. They're knowledgeable and we get the right person whenever we call.

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

      We didn't have a previous APM solution. We didn't know we needed this solution until we saw it. It was literally students calling in with problem tickets.

      How was the initial setup?

      I'm just a supervisor, so I sat with our technician during setup. I didn't do any of the actual work, but it seems seamless. It installed in about two minutes. I really wanted to see it. I have to go to the assistant director and, eventually, the director and try to explain why I think we need the new technology.

      Which other solutions did I evaluate?

      They went through a whole eight month process. I wasn't there, I'm a new manager, but I understand they had over a dozen companies. They had spreadsheets of all the pros and cons. They went with Dynatrace because it just has more features.

      What other advice do I have?

      Regarding AI and the ability of IT to scale into the cloud and manage performance problems, we don't have the new technology yet, we don't have the new AI, we have the old AppMon and Synthetics. But it seems like it's very important.

      We have used siloed monitoring tools in the past. The university is very old and very segmented and different departments use different tools and we don't all talk to each other. We still have this problem today and we're trying to get more user adoption for Dynatrace. But it's difficult.

      If we had just one solution that could provide real answers, and not just data, I think that we would spend less time working on things that probably don't matter, like mundane routine operations.

      To me, the most important criteria when working with a vendor is responsiveness to issues.

      My advice to colleagues would be, do your homework. But, I would be surprised if anybody would beat Dynatrace.

      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
      PeerSpot user
      it_user815337 - PeerSpot reviewer
      Monitoring Team Lead at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
      Real User
      Auto-discovers everything; within seconds you see the business transaction and how it's mapped
      Pros and Cons
      • "What I like about it, is how it auto-discovers everything rapidly; within a matter of seconds you get to see the business transaction and how it's mapped within the product itself."
      • "We're not quite there yet, but the thing I would like to see is to really have that view of how issues relate to the business. Often enough, the tools that IT have for IT stop at the IT level. They cannot go into the business level part. They can't understand, because they don't have the information that the business needs to provide them with - for example how much an hour of downtime costs the business. For us, in IT, it's an hour of downtime, but it equates to money and equates to hours lost and equates to a lot of things, and often enough we don't have that information. This is where I would like to see us going."

      What is our primary use case?

      We wanted to replace the previous APM, which was a first generation product, so that was our use case for purchasing Dynatrace.

      Its performance has been wonderful.

      How has it helped my organization?

      One of the benefits - and I think it's because of one of the features that Dynatrace has, which is PurePaths - is that we have been able to diagnose, a lot faster, some of the issues that we have encountered in the past, when it comes to performance. We've even encountered two issues where we had to go back to software companies and tell them "You've got a problem with your software, and this is where it lies." Dynatrace was the one that helped us with that. We haven't completely removed the war room but we're expediting some of those war room diagnoses.

      What is most valuable?

      The customers just bought into it and just love it. They love the ease of use and the dashboarding that we have been able to set up for them. Everything that we have done so far has been a success.

      What I like about it, is how it auto-discovers everything rapidly; within a matter of seconds you get to see the business transaction and how it's mapped within the product itself. That surprised the customer, but when we were starting to give them some of the dashboards in matters of minutes, after that, they were even more impressed with that feature.

      What needs improvement?

      We're not quite there yet, but the thing I would like to see is to really have that view of how issues relate to the business. Often enough, the tools that IT have for IT stop at the IT level. They cannot go into the business level part. They can't understand, because they don't have the information that the business needs to provide them with - for example how much an hour of downtime costs the business. For us, in IT, it's an hour of downtime, but it equates to money and equates to hours lost and equates to a lot of things, and often enough we don't have that information. This is where I would like to see us going. I think having a tool that can do that, and help us out with that information, I think would be helpful.

      I don't play with the tool itself, I could ask some of the guys that do, they would be able to tell you more about it, but at this point I haven't heard anything that was a showstopper.

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      Stability has been great. I can't say enough about being able to upgrade and not even worry too much about the fact that it's going to be stable. I'd like to maybe see a little bit more about HA and disaster recovery. I feel that's a part that, at this point, we haven't been able to focus on - maybe because we didn't need to - but it's something that I would like to see more of.

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      I haven't hit that one yet, and I have to eventually, so I'm hoping scalability is going to be good.

      How is customer service and technical support?

      I've never had to use technical support.

      The only time that we really needed support, we actually engaged with, not a guardian, but the next level, which was a consultant. He came to work with us and help us out, deploying some of the stuff that we needed to do.

      How was the initial setup?

      I wasn't involved directly in the setup. I oversaw the project that did. It didn't seem complicated, but honestly I can't say for sure.

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

      I don't think the limitations are technical at this point, honestly. My limitations are more to do - and maybe it's because of the nature of the job I have - but they have to do with pricing. It's a little bit pricey. It's a very good tool. It's worth the price, to a certain degree. But it's hard to justify when it's that costly.

      Which other solutions did I evaluate?

      CA and AppDynamics.

      It was a close race between AppDynamics and Dynatrace, but the views, the dashboarding, the clarity of the views, was a lot better. When you looked at it, it was easy to actually see what you needed to see.

      What other advice do I have?

      When it comes to the nature of digital complexity, and the role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems, I'm not there yet. I wouldn't be able to answer you honestly on that one.

      We have used siloed monitoring tools in the past. The challenge associated with them is mainly integrations. We still have plenty of these tools, but the reality of it now is that they all have to talk to each other in order to get more information out of the monitoring. It's not enough to just see an alert, you need to correlate that to an application, you need to correlate that to a business model. And all of that is done only if you can have the tools talking to each other. Unfortunately, most of the time they don't talk well together.

      If we had just one solution that could provide real answers, and not just data, the benefit, from a manageability perspective, would be that I could concentrate my workload and my workforce on working with one product, therefore having one expertise. Now, I need to have several people understanding several products and, unfortunately, because they can't be hands-on most of the time, they don't have the expertise, or when they do have the expertise on one product, they can't develop it on the other products. For sure, from a workforce perspective, right there you've got a big advantage.

      The main criterion we had for an APM was that we wanted to see an end-to-end view of our business transactions, which is something that we've never had and that the business has been asking for for years. That is the main criterion that pushed us to actually go this route. The first tool that we purchased was really hard to manage, didn't fit the bill that well, and that's when we moved to Dynatrace.

      I would definitely say look into Dynatrace. One of the things that really dazzled me was that the minute you installed it you started seeing something coming out of it. and just that makes it so much easier. You don't have to wait. When you have to wait to see the results, it's not good.

      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
      PeerSpot user
      it_user815352 - PeerSpot reviewer
      Consultant at Infosys Technologies Ltd
      Real User
      Pass all the connections to Smartscape and it will tell you the root cause of the problem
      Pros and Cons
      • "Smartscape is a wonderful feature. I'm really loving it because there's no need for you to go deep into an analysis and go in to see where we are going wrong. You go to Smartscape, pass all the connections, and it will tell you the root cause."
      • "With Linux or Windows, it automatically takes care of everything, so there's no need for you to do any manual config changes. But when it comes to AIX - because I implemented it two weeks back - you have to go back to kind of an AppMon approach, where you instrument agents for .NET applications. So if Dynatrace could make those changes and make it automated, that would be one of the biggest action items."
      • "One of the features that we are lacking is on the reports side. We don't have much reporting available. And the dashboards. I checked on their blog and they said that they are working on the dashboard front where you can create the dashboards. We do have dashboards available. They said they are bringing in a lot of things there, so I'm looking forward to that, on reports."
      • "There's no download action for the reports, so if they could add something like that, it would add value for us. We cannot save data for more than seven to 10 days, so it would be better to add a feature for downloading. At least we could store the data and then we could compare for ourselves, where we are starting and where we are and where we are heading. I would have those metrics."
      • "Scalability-wise, on the data side, I'm really worried because they are giving only seven days data retention. They should plan something on that, to increase the data."

      What is our primary use case?

      We are a retail market. We wanted to understand how our business is doing, how our website is doing. This solution is one of our key parameters for determining how we are behaving on a timely basis, because every second is currency. Every second is money, so it matters.

      How has it helped my organization?

      It's reducing our manual efforts. Once you get the application guys to install OneAgent and it's done, there's no need for them. You can do every task. And AI, Smartscape, we're really into them. These are the things that are helping our organization the most.

      In my organization, where we are using Dynatrace, three years back we were using Dynatrace AppMon in order to instrument .NET applications. It used to take time, because you had to onboard your resources from the support team, get that guy, get that instrument. It was a little bit of a pain, because you had to plan things prior and get these things started.

      With this, the new Dynatrace, what's happening is we don't need to do all those things. Get that OneAgent installed and it does everything and it takes care of all the applications. It's actually simplifying my job. That's why I feel Dynatrace is great at this point of time.

      What is most valuable?

      Smartscape is a wonderful feature. I'm really loving it because there's no need for you to go deep into an analysis and go in to see where we are going wrong. You go to Smartscape, pass all the connections, and it will tell you the root cause. 

      One of the coolest features is AI. It's amazing. You don't need to create the process groups, you don't need to create any other groups. It will automatically take all of this, based on the technology, create groups. It does amazing things. My manual labor is almost reduced because of this.

      What needs improvement?

      With Linux or Windows, it automatically takes care of everything, so there's no need for you to do any manual config changes. But when it comes to AIX - because I implemented it two weeks back - you have to go back to kind of an AppMon approach, where you instrument agents for .NET applications. So if Dynatrace could make those changes and make it automated, that would be one of the biggest action items.

      One of the features that we are lacking is on the reports side. We don't have much reporting available. And the dashboards. I checked on their blog and they said that they are working on the dashboard front where you can create the dashboards. We do have dashboards available. They said they are bringing in a lot of things there, so I'm looking forward to that, on reports.

      And there's no download action for the reports, so if they could add something like that, it would add value for us. We cannot save data for more than seven to 10 days, so it would be better to add a feature for downloading. At least we could store the data and then we could compare for ourselves, where we are starting and where we are and where we are heading. I would have those metrics, that's something I'm looking for. 

      They do have some APIs where you can feed the data into Splunk. 

      For how long have I used the solution?

      Three to five years.

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      I really cannot say or comment on this, because it is still evolving. They are bringing in a lot of changes. Also, I'm posting a lot of questions and queries and requesting they add some of the coolest features. So, stability-wise, probably next year, or middle of this year, I can comment on this. Right now, I don't want to.

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      Scalability-wise, on the data side, I'm really worried because they are giving only seven days data retention. They should plan something on that, to increase the data.

      How are customer service and technical support?

      Whenever I reach out to technical support, they are helping us. There's no point at which I would say they're not helping. They are very good. 

      The problem here is that they are evolving day to day. Some features they're saying they'll include the next week or coming up. They have planned features, and that's where we are lagging.

      But whenever I reach out to the support guys, they are very good.

      When it comes to support, it all matters. You have a problem with your application and you don't know how to solve it, you reach out to the support guys. And if they are responding on time, that solves your problem. If you have a problem in an important application and your support guy doesn't respond and you are losing business... that's where these guys are standing out. Their support is constant, so you can reach out to them at any time and they are there. They're just helping us in that.

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

      I've used different monitoring tools. I don't want to name them, because it could cause a problem. We used siloed monitoring tools but we couldn't find most of the features that Dynatrace offers. That's the reason these guys are standing first in the market. Number one in the market.

      We also switched because of the coolest features and support.

      How was the initial setup?

      It's straightforward. Very simple. There is a lot of automation.

      What other advice do I have?

      I rate them an eight out of 10. Although they have a lot of things already available, still, there's a long way to go.

      I'm always recommending Dynatrace now. We had two vendors come to us and we proposed to one the Dynatrace solution; and the other is in the pipeline, so we have to start the discussion. I'm part of a the team that works on Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solutions. We do RFPs for them, PoCs for them, so that's one of the engagements that I am involved into. So my first choice, obviously, would be Dynatrace.

      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: February 2025
      Buyer's Guide
      Download our free Dynatrace Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.