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it_user815235 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It is consistent, reliable, and a cornerstone for solving problems
Pros and Cons
  • "The Dynatrace support team that we have is great and the staff that we have had onsite has been consistently good."
  • "It is getting to the point that the CTO of the organization knows the tool by first name and will look to have it brought up, because it is so consistent, reliable, and a cornerstone for solving problems."
  • "I do know that for the size of our organization, we're talking thousands of agents and hundreds of applications, it does get to the point where the servers themselves that house Dynatrace are at a point where, in some cases, they are just too big for one machine, since you have to have an entire application ecosystem all funnel into a single system."

What is our primary use case?

It is one of the core enterprise tools that we use for detecting incidents and paging out to teams when a problem happens. Ideally, it is proactive. This is what we are looking for and what you would expect with Dynatrace: To be looking for things that are going south and getting people on the phone to deal with them beforehand. With a large enterprise, where we are, there are a lot of different teams on the phones, so Dynatrace is hopefully giving us where in the large ecosystem of the application the problem actually is. Therefore, basic use cases, but this is what Dynatrace is good for.

How has it helped my organization?

We do have the pockets today where teams have started to get better at giving us a cohesive view. We use AppMon a lot to fuel the metrics that we have. Therefore, we are starting to create dashboards on top of AppMon that pull together information from a few sources and actually provide that cohesive view. We are just now starting to proof of concept it with some of the business teams to see if we can get traction and start to fill in some of the gaps that we have.

What is most valuable?

PurePath is a very staple thing for it, because within one transaction all the way through you can see the bits and pieces from when the user first came in to the database. We have mainframe components and a lot of middleware layers as well. To have one place where you can see the entire flow all the way up and back is invaluable and it saves lots of time.

What needs improvement?

It looks like they are actually fixing the issues in version 7. Therefore, I am real excited to get it in, because the core problems that we are having, the newest version seems to be fixing. If we can get out of actually having to handle every problem, it can let teams start to get steam on their own.

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been wonderful for the couple of years that I have been involved with it. It has really been the key tool of choice that anytime anything goes down anywhere, it is typically the tool that is shown on the big screen in front of everybody or shared through a Skype session. It is getting to the point that the CTO of the organization knows the tool by first name and will look to have it brought up, because it is so consistent, reliable, and a cornerstone for solving problems. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This one I would defer to my team a little bit, but I do hear a few gripes scalability-wise. It is a very good tool, and we have got it to do what we need to do. However, I do know that for the size of our organization, we're talking thousands of agents and hundreds of applications, it does get to the point where the servers themselves that house Dynatrace are at a point where, in some cases, they are just too big for one machine, since you have to have an entire application ecosystem all funnel into a single system. One of the things we run into is, when we deploy agents, it is a bit finicky sometimes about how that happens. We have had to put in measures to make sure that applications do not get an upgrade for Dynatrace until we specifically quarter them off, making sure that we have a very careful process to troubleshoot them because we have had several instances where applications have had issues after an upgrade.

How are customer service and support?

I have a very good team who are very good at this, so from my perspective, I would say is Dynatrace is one of the few companies where it seems their people are still ahead of my team in terms of troubleshooting things. Some of the other applications that I have, I feel like my guys should be paid by the companies that troubleshoot. The Dynatrace support team that we have is great and the staff that we have had onsite has been consistently good.

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

My company has used siloed monitoring tools. We do not actually try to get rid of those best of breed tools, but there are some obvious problems with them. Today, a network tool does not use the same terminology as a database tool, and the database guys do not talk the same language as the app teams. Thus, very frequently there are very silent organization or we will have huge gaps between these things. Not only do you have a conversational barrier between teams, you will frequently have whole sections of the network that are not monitored or people who think, "Well that's not my side, the network is good," and the database guy will say, "My side is good and the database is fine." However, there is obviously something in the middle that is not there. That siloing is very damaging to working on a big team trying to fix things quickly. 

Before Dynatrace, it was a smaller list of niche tools. Dynatrace was the first tool that started to slice horizontally through all the different silos and provide feedback.

How was the initial setup?

I was not at the company three years ago for the initial setup.

What other advice do I have?

I would wholeheartedly recommend the platform as it is, but looking for someone who is just getting into it and does not have a lot of experience, Dynatrace 7 seems to be easier to get into than AppMon was before. So, it is a great starting point today.

If I had just one solution which could provide real answers, not just data, the immediate benefit to my team would be two things, and they are both on the business end of what we do. Today, our business customers are very frustrated with the ecosystem that we have in place because there are so many complex components. They really want a solution where they can see what is the actual impact for the people who are trying to use the application. If I am trying to go in and check a balance or trying to buy something, they really want to know how many people are being impacted by that today. Then, what actually is the technical problem behind the scenes, but so often, we have a lot of technical problems, but we have a really hard time prioritizing what those are as a cohesive solution. If our business customers could say, "80,000 people are impacted by incident A, but only 200 people are affected by incident B." This would provide an entire view that would be so much better for trying to prioritize development teams to fix problems, and we don't have this typically today. 

We are in AppMon 6.5 today. We have people on my team who are sort of a tiger team that have to get involved whenever there is a performance problem because there is almost an art form to using AppMon today. What I have seen so far of Dynatrace and the OneAgent today, it removes a lot of the AppMon art form. I see a lot of value in moving to 7.1 later this year. I am very excited to see when some of our teams, who are not as familiar with Dynatrace but know the application, can start using the application more.  Hopefully, it will reduce and back off the need to constantly bring in my Tier 3 team as super experts and help and to maybe focus more on key problems, letting teams deal with things themselves. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Having a company that has been around for a while and has multiple products that we can leverage cost of scale.

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_user815268 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Developer at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
The real-time monitoring, which we are getting, is amazing
Pros and Cons
  • "The real-time monitoring, which we are getting, is amazing."
  • "I do not like the performance of the UI. It is really slow."

What is our primary use case?

Primary use case would be RUM for real-time monitoring. 

It has performed really well. Earlier, we were documenting how long each transaction was taking, because we had a service which was pinging different sources. Therefore, we had to go into the logs and see what the response time was for each step. Now that Dynatrace is instrumented, we are getting alerts any time the service time is not the baseline. Then, you look at the PurePath, and it really helps you drill down to where. You can work with other managed groups and tell them this is the timeframe when we saw the issue, "Did you see your CPU load go higher?" That is where I am finding it really useful. 

How has it helped my organization?

When our service response time was not matching the baseline, we realized that our Oracle TNS was getting too many pings, so Oracle recommended to us to utilize more persistent connections, so this is where Dynatrace really helped us narrow it down. Therefore, we are changing our call to use more data sourcing and connection calling. That is the real business benefit that we have received.

The real-time monitoring, which we are getting, is amazing. 

What is most valuable?

PurePath: It is really good. You can drill down and see what the baseline is. If it is five seconds and I am not happy with it, I can go into the PurePath and look at each step, then see where I can improve my performance.

What needs improvement?

I do not like the performance of the UI. It is really slow. I get a problem, but by the time I can drill down and figure it out, it is getting late because the performance is slow. When it is performing well, I know right away and I know how to react. 

Basically, our database list is running out. They have a maximum connection counts per second, and that is where we are running out of count. We were exceeding that count, so Oracle increased it to 200, and that is what Dynatrace gave us. In some situations, I have seen the UI is slow on our end.

Also, we were getting alerts, like the CPU was pinging, and it came in the middle of the night, and it was a development server. So, the next day I wanted to look at it, which process caused it, and sure enough Dynatrace gave me the details, but it does not give the user running the process. Most of the processes are very obvious what is running, like JVM is running, Java, or what websphere is running. But for this process, I had no clue. I involved a Dynatrace consultant, and he had no clue. Then, as a team, we did not know what to do. It was not happening often, so one night I was lucky enough, the monitoring alert came when I was online, and I quickly logged into the server to the top, and sure enough the process was running, and the process was running as route, so I know the groups which can run processes. 

That is how I figured out the process, and they looked into it. They figured out what the issue was, but just looking at Dynatrace I couldn't have figured it out. Therefore, I asked them if when they give these results that when they have CPU consumption in the processes, if they could also have the user. That would help.

Once screen replay comes in, that will be even more useful.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable, but slow. We have a managed solution. We do not have a set solution. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is pretty good.

How are customer service and technical support?

I am more from the development team. We have a monitoring team, which is actually supporting Dynatrace with the help of Dynatrace's guidance.

Feedback about the technical support from our monitoring team has been pretty good. Our monitoring team is totally taking it in well. They are learning on their own. 

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

We have a lot of siloed monitoring tools; as in, we still have them. They are good alerting tools, but they cannot really measure response time levels and do the PurePath analysis, which Dynatrace is able to give us. This was the real challenge we had. They would say, "Why don't you record the response time for each step in the log file and we can monitor that," but I did not like that way of doing it. Dynatrace has very graphical interface, therefore it beats those tools. 

We used and are still using Nimsoft. The alerting is pretty good, and it integrates well with our issue management tools. Now though, Dynatrace integrate well with ServiceNow, and we are in the process of moving to ServiceNow. 

How was the initial setup?

I am in the development. We just instrumented it on my servers. 

We had major issues, and it was not Dynatrace. It was how Dynatrace and Voz garbage collection were interacting, so IBM got involved and had to upgrade us. Now, it is doing a real good job, but that is how I got pulled into Dynatrace. 

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

There is a license issue where if we increase the memory we have to up the licenses. I was unaware of that going in. I thought it was scalable without all the paperwork behind the scenes.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I would recommend Dynatrace because I have seen Nimsoft. They do not have this graphical interface, and a graphical interface helps. Otherwise, with CP utilization and memory utilization, you would have to go to capacity planning to have them share their graphics. With Dynatrace, we can just bypass all that and just use it to see all the details. 

What other advice do I have?

I would really recommend this product. 

We are not yet using cloud.

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
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_user815232 - PeerSpot reviewer
Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
With PurePath, it is easy to see what areas you want to alert on and catch
Pros and Cons
  • "It is easy to see what areas you want to alert on and catch.​"
  • "I am primarily doing DC RUM, so on that side there are a lot of awesome abilities where people who can't implement an agent are able to still monitor a lot of their apps and decodes."
  • "In regards to Diffie-Hellman encryption stuff, it is a hurdle with what we are doing with DC RUM, where everyone is embracing stronger security suites, but the whole point of DC RUM is to get that data between the tiers."

What is our primary use case?

Our group handles a multitude of applications using Dynatrace. In my experience, I have used a lot of different tools, and Dynatrace has been pretty awesome with handling all the various issues that pop up.

What is most valuable?

PurePath is pretty awesome. The amount of data that the tool exposes compared to a lot of other agent-base suites is dramatically different. A plethora of people  embrace a lot of the topology views and various different things. I am primarily doing DC RUM, so on that side there are a lot of awesome abilities where people who can't implement an agent are able to still monitor a lot of their apps and decodes.

What needs improvement?

We are not using the ServiceNow integrations. We have to go through this event engine, so some of the data and the alerts get taken out. We have a script that pulls in some data around what the alert is dealing with, but maybe there is more data that could be exposed there. Besides that, in regards to Diffie-Hellman encryption stuff, it is a hurdle with what we are doing with DC RUM, where everyone is embracing stronger security suites, but the whole point of DC RUM is to get that data between the tiers.

We have big data solutions now coming in, so we are being asked to export some of that data into Tableau and various different platforms, so anything that makes that easier is welcome. DC RUM has an API that they can call, and Dynatrace can stream out to it. Those APIs are welcome.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been problems, but nothing that we could not figure out. There have been a couple issues where agents have caused issues with applications, but you could chalk that up to QA testing or other stuff. Overall, it has been a good product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I hear it is supposed to be improving. My impression is mixed. We have a lot of Dynatrace servers with a lot of agents, so we are pushing the capacity of some of those servers. At the moment, we are not doing any cross-server stitching between the agents, so we are missing out on that piece a little bit. However, that will improve with the next version. Therefore, we are managing the capacity, but currently it is decentralized.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is awesome. I primarily do DC RUM, but all of that is in Poland, and they are phenomenal.

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

I have used CA, Wiley, CA CEM, and a little BMC stuff; those are the main ones.

They were good in their own silo. They just did not bring everything together in one central view. That was the difficulty. A lot of teams did not embrace it as much as we have seen the Dynatrace platform be embraced.

We switched from CA to Dynatrace, because limited data that was being exposed from Wiley. You get similar response time volume and error rate for instruments and components, but it is a lot more manual to get those components instrumented. Whereas a PurePath is right in front of you, so it is really easy to see what areas you want to alert on and catch.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is straightforward. I have stood it up at multiple companies. I did it at Verizon Wireless, PNC, and Merck Pharmaceuticals. I knew what to do, so it was easy. 

What about the implementation team?

When I first did an install, there were some hurdles. However, everything was well supported by our site rep, who came on site frequently in New Jersey, and was helping me out. It helped.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I was in for onboarding DC RUM. We did a PoC with BMC, CA, Dynatrace, and AppDynamics. There are some other competitors who are always being looked at, but the data exposed was dramatically better from Dynatrace, so that is why we went with Dynatrace.

What other advice do I have?

Look at Dynatrace. Having worked with it and recommended it for approximately eight years, it has been a great platform.

The role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems is very important. We must embrace the AI overlord. There is a lot of data that comes into Dynatrace, and anything that makes it easier to arrive at the end resolution of a problem is welcome. There is always more analysis that needs to be done, but I think it is important to start using AI to get there more quickly.

If I had just one solution that could provide real answers, not just data, the immediate benefit I would like to see is anything that helps the app team know how to get the answer more quickly and save us time in the middle of the night. 

We get woken up all hours of the night for issues. You would hope that app teams would start to use the tools themselves, when it comes down to it, we know the tool best because we manage it. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

The two main things I would say are critical:

  1. Obviously, the technology cannot fall behind competitors, but at the same time, they have to remain pretty agile in developing the tool. 
  2. They need a large enough support staff where any issues which arise, we get support on them. 
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_user815412 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Of Digital Resiliency and APM at Royal Bank of Canada
Real User
Gives us visibility, understanding, and the ability to provide the same answers to different levels of personnel
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is capture of 100% of the traffic. Also, exposure to downstream services, that might not necessarily be new, to everybody who's using applications. It triggers them and captures them and it gives visibility to some pieces that might be forgotten or even obscured."

    What is our primary use case?

    Primary use case would be exposing application performance, and incidents and errors within the application. It has performed exceptionally well.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Understanding and visibility, and the ability to provide the same answers across the different archetypes of support personnel, maintenance personnel, business personnel, executives, middle managers like myself, where we're all telling the same story and we're all working off of that same story, to understand what's going on.

    The main benefit has been time, definitely. Over my career I've spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in war rooms picking problems apart, over-analyzing issues, chasing red herrings, and this type of solution, or solution set, not just AppMon but Dynatrace, and even the Synthetic portion, really helps us narrow down what we're looking for.

    What is most valuable?

    Capture of 100% of the traffic. Exposure to downstream services, that might not necessarily be new, to everybody who's using applications. It triggers them and captures them and it gives visibility to some pieces that might be forgotten or even obscured.

    What needs improvement?

    If it is AppMon, I would really like ease of integration developed into Logstash. The business transaction data doesn't have a natural feed through the GUI, through the configuration. We have to do a little jiggering in between to get it to feed, so I'd like to have that out-of-the-box. That'd be great. We have now, out-of-the-box UEM integration, I'd like to have the rest out of the box as well.

    And if it's Dynatrace we're talking about, I really think they're on the right track as it is, because of all the AI and all the session replay and all these fantastic things we've been shown.

    And if it's the Dynatrace Synthetic which we also use, I would love to have higher-level analytics across the tests. Where today we get errors and generate them per test, but we have clusters of tests that are for the same application, I'd love to see a little bit more analysis done across series of tests, so that we can have higher roll-ups of actionable information.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    This is an interesting question. We've had our challenges in the past because our primary tool over the five years has been AppMon, and AppMon has had a series of evolutions. We started with the 4.2 version and we've come all the way to version 7 at this point. It was never intended to be a high-availability solution or a clustered solution, and some of those improvements have been made more recently. But historically, it was fragile. 

    Like I said, I have a very large implementation. Over six thousand agents with AppMon. Some of our servers are very highly loaded, over a thousand agents, and when we talk about our online banking, mobile banking platforms, we drive significant load and it can really impact the viability of the servers.

    To be fair, we were pushing the product to its limits, and it even prompted some of the architectural changes within Dynatrace itself, and within the AppMon tool, to allow for larger footprints. But generally, and lately, it's been extremely stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The AppMon product hasn't been historically as scalable. That is one of the reasons we're really excited about Dynatrace product, because it was redesigned for scalable environments with scalability itself in mind.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    The technical support has been fantastic, even getting right up to third-level support and getting changes overnight. 

    A small anecdote: We needed some changes to the UE mobile agent and we needed them in a hurry. And support turned that ask around in two days, which was phenomenal.

    And then, I started talking to some of the guys in Boston, Detroit about some of the exciting changes they're making for their support model where they can have off-site guardians. I actually employ two guardians myself at a time. I have them on a one year contract. Putting them in-house has been invaluable.

    The idea of other organizations being able to use Dynatrace guardian hours, and doing it piece meal as they need it, is great because not everybody needs as much hand-holding, but everybody needs a little help some time. The response time and the knowledge has been tremendous.

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

    We've used a number of tools. We've used SCOM and Wily Introscope and Groundworks. We've used Nagios, Zabbix. We've used HPE RUM which was terrible. It cost a lot of FT overhead. There have been a few others, I just can't remember them offhand.

    A lot of them were siloed, very siloed approaches to monitoring. Some of them have similar approaches, DC RUM is the same as HPE RUM, but the manpower overhead is significant. The challenge there is they just don't talk to each other. And they're not providing the same information to the same people because people craft the output to what they want, and they're not trying to tell the same story. Dynatrace just attempts to tell the truth.

    To be honest, I wasn't part of the board of smarty-pants that brought the solution in, but I can imagine the criteria they looked at included breadth of coverage of technologies, the cost, and ease of use. Either way, I thank that team because it changed our lives.

    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 problems is absolutely crucial. Last year I spent a large portion of my time doing an investigation into AI capabilities for IT operations, and I evaluated several products in the market space. I found they're all very, very immature, but it's an absolute necessity for us going forward. 

    We're a very large bank and we have hundreds of thousands of users, thousands and thousands of applications. When you start scaling up to the cloud with microservices, the sheer volume of data is so massive that human beings can't evaluate it anymore. It's not possible. AI is the only way that we're going to be able to move forward into the future with these types of architectures, and still get the value out of the data that we're recording.

    I've definitely used so many siloed monitoring tools in the past. The challenge is when it comes to clustering and high-availability - that type of solutioning where we look at strict node-based siloing and then application based siloing. Even then you're limiting yourself to the purview of what's in that container or what's in that application, and if you're not looking outside of yourself then you're really just looking for a culture of "not me," instead of fostering a culture of this is what it is. Let's work together.

    If we had just one solution that could provide real access and not just top line data, I think it would probably free us up in terms of manpower and work hours, to allow us to do more value-add things. If all we're doing is working with top level data, then you have to spend a lot more time digging deeper to find your cause or to find actionable insights into the applications, and that chews up manpower. In this day and age, IT overhead really has become "Let's look at the employee first and cut that first." So, if we need to move in that direction, having something that provides real answers helps us to make that adjustment.

    I rate Dynatrace an eight out of 10. I never want to give a perfect score because there's always room for improvement. But it's been a great journey for me and I look forward to many more years with it.

    I'd recommend you look at Dynatrace. It's really the only one worth looking at.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user815214 - PeerSpot reviewer
    System Engineer - SiteScope Owner and Tech Lead at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Shows where the problem is and isolates the issue
    Pros and Cons
    • "It helps to show where the problem is and isolates the issue."
    • "The installation and configuration were very straightforward and nice."
    • "Stability has been very nice, and Dynatrace runs on the Linux system."
    • "​An additional feature that we could use is the rollover. If we could rollover to different datacenters, then it would satisfy our requirement. I.e., if one datacenter fails, then we could rollover to another datacenter.​"
    • "We had one issue when we tried to enter one agent and it just does not work. We got to work with the highest level of support, but it took a while to get there."

    What is our primary use case?

    Currently, we use Dynatrace to monitor the PCF Cloud Foundry. We just started using it. So far, so good.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We do not have an effective tool to monitor the PCF Cloud Foundry. Dynatrace closes that gap. We have tried using different tools to monitor Cloud Foundry, but they were all ineffective. 

    What is most valuable?

    It helps to show you the performance. It also shows you where the problem is, automatically trying to find the problem. It helps to show where the problem is and isolates the issue. 

    The installation and configuration were very straightforward and nice.

    What needs improvement?

    There was one issue with the installation, but the we resolved the issue. It was some issue with the proxy, and we resolved it.

    An additional feature that we could use is the rollover. If we could rollover to different datacenters, then it would satisfy our requirement. I.e., if one datacenter fails, then we could rollover to another datacenter.

    Right now, they can rollover to a multi-node cluster. Generally, they require a multi-node in the same data center. Our requirement is because we want something in case of a catastrophe, like an earthquake, and the data is possibly wiped out. We need a way to automatically roll it over to another datacenter. 

    This is not offered at the moment.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Still implementing.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    So far, stability has been very nice, and Dynatrace runs on the Linux system.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It scales well. 

    The only thing is we do have requirements where if one datacenter fails, you need to switch to another datacenter. On this front, Dynatrace was not built. They have active to active standby, but from our talks with Dynatrace, they are not built between datacenters. They need to be logged in at the same datacenter, and if they are logged in at different datacenters, there might be some issues. That is one thing they need to improve on: Datacenters which are geographically located. So, when there is a issue in the datacenter, they can just automatically rollover to another datacenter. 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We used technical support. We just start configuring the system and the initial installation. We had one issue when we tried to enter one agent and it just does not work. We got to work with the highest level of support, but it took a while to get there. Initially, we did not get to that level. This is considering maybe it was just after the New Year, and it took a little bit longer than we expected to get to the highest level of support. 

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

    We do use multiple monitoring tools in our organization, including size scope, BPM, and CA APM. We also have RUM and several different monitoring tools. 

    We chose Dynatrace, because it is good at monitoring the PCF and also the performance platform is very nice. 

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was straightforward, very easy and nice. 

    What other advice do I have?

    AI is very important with the increased complexity of the IT system. IT is very hard to pinpoint the root issues of a problem with AI. It would help you to analyze the issues and let you get to the root issue faster, because people with experience are rare, and with AI, it helps bridge this gap. 

    If I had just one solution that could provide real answers, not just data, the immediate benefit would be using only one tool where you do not have the complexity of managing more tools.

    Most important criteria when looking for an APM solution: 

    1. I need it to monitor all the different applications. We have a diverse suite of applications, and it needs to support all the different applications. 
    2. It has its own stability and is well supported.
    3. It needs to be scalable. 
    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
    PeerSpot user
    Owner with 51-200 employees
    Vendor
    Customer service could be improved but dynaTrace is installed in half-a-day, fully operational...a preferred tool

    What is most valuable?

    Track and tracing of each individual end user transaction throughout a complex Core Bank financial chain. Within 5 clicks you got the evidence why the performance is lacking. Also a problem could be analysed from different angles. One dashboard that provides the information and you can work independently (you don't need the presence of OPS people, and other tooling except Tibco EMS monitoring)

    How has it helped my organization?

    Our customer base is too immature on performance matters. Besides that, they are now working with Dev/OPs teams (more than 180!) where there is no governance overall. Every team can decide what they want to use with respect to tooling. There is no Business or Operational chain owner.

    What needs improvement?

    Message Bus monitoring: it is not possible to deep dive into the the Tibco EMS bus. The consequence is that we depends on EMS monitoring tools like RTView, Tibco Hawk, GEMS etc. These tools are lacking the functionality to track and trace individual Tibco messages, something you really need to do trouble shooting; Deployment of dynaTrace agent fixes per selected agents instead of all agents. Consequence is that if an Agent fix is corrupted or whatsoever, all agents are off-line; Eco system like AppDynamics (external parties can develop plugins). On the other hand, it has an disadvantage because your quality control must be very good to not jeopardize the tool stability.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for 2 years.

    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    Not at all. This product is developed by guys who perfectly understand that a quick and seamless install is part of the customer experience. It is heaven if you compare this with IBM or HP stuff.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Not at all. No crashes whatsoever.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I can't answer this question, because it is not deployed in a broader way. I'm not convinced to deploy a large scale solution, because it consumes an enormous amount of data resulting in a decrease of retention time. So I advise to deploy more DT instances where every Dev/OPS is responsible for their own DT instance.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service: Could be improved, but has everything to do with the merge of Compuware and dynaTrace. There is a local office in the Netherlands, but available FTE is under par.Technical Support: It is good.

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

    7 years ago I used HP Diagnostics. This was not an out-of-the-box instrumentation (1st gen diagnostic tooling). It took too much time to get added value out-of-it, too much interpretation. dynaTrace is installed in half-a-day, fully operational (including the dynaTrace agents, dynaTrace server and Collector). This is why this tool with all its functionalities is a preferred tool for performance troubleshooting, performance tests, test automation and full coverage production monitoring. It also works with a lot of performance test tools. I'm not impressed by the Dell Foglight diagnostics; I never see it working with SOA technology. AppDynamics: despite the fact that I didn't work with a full deployed installation of AppDynamics, you need a lot to do to get the information like dynaTrace provides.

    How was the initial setup?

    Straightforward

    What about the implementation team?

    We don't to depend on vendor PSO.

    What was our ROI?

    Can''t answer this question. The performance organisation is too immature to answer this.

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

    Tool investment (initial 50 JVM agents, increased to 80). One time investment with yearly maintenance costs Total Stitching activities 20 days (due to Tibco wired /unwired mechanism and old JMS version usage); 5 days per week performance testing

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    No, I didn't evaluate other options. Reason: I'm not totally convinced about the products provided by vendors like IBM, CA, HP, BMC etc. Way-too-much consultancy, it takes a lot of time to generate added value, too difficult to work with etc.

    What other advice do I have?

    Use it as fast as you can. List prices are negotiable. You get instant success!
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user227253 - PeerSpot reviewer
    it_user227253Agile Tester / Test Consultant at Valori
    Vendor

    thanks for your frankness! It encourages me to recommend DynaTrace to Ops teams,

    grtz, Erik

    Imraan Kadir - PeerSpot reviewer
    Head of PMO and Strategic Planning at Vitality
    Real User
    Top 10
    Good monitoring with the ability to drill down and great for large organizations
    Pros and Cons
    • "The monitoring is very good."
    • "The solution is a bit pricey."

    What is our primary use case?

    I primarily use the solution for mobile monitoring and service management. 

    What is most valuable?

    The monitoring is very good.

    We like that the solution has the ability to drill down so that you can see your payload. 

    The solution is ideal for large companies. 

    What needs improvement?

    I'm not sure if there are improvements needed. I don't work actively with it. I sit at the management level.

    The solution is a bit pricey. As a result, you can't shift quite so easily, and you always are testing in production.

    It's not the best solution for small-scale companies. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using the solution for five years.

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

    The cost model for developers, et cetera, is too expensive. It's not very affordable for small companies. 

    What other advice do I have?

    I am just a customer and an end-user.

    I'm using the latest version of the solution. It updates regularly.

    I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd advise users to try it out. However, it's more for large-scale companies and not really the best for smaller organizations. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud

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

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1098759 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Works at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Provides insight into user behavior that facilitates improving the UX
    Pros and Cons
    • "I think with Dynatrace, it has helped to bring value to the business because now we can speak using the same language."
    • "On the side of the end user experience, I would suggest adding a new service for analyzing the backtrace of users."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use this solution for end-user experience, infrastructure monitoring, analysis of bounce rates, service calls to the database, root cause analysis, and problem management. For end-user analysis, I can monitor where the connections come from, the time, the number of navigated pages, bounce rates, and finally, if the usage was satisfactory or not.

    How has it helped my organization?

    This solution has improved our organization in several ways, including the speed of detecting problems, predictive maintenance, root cause analysis, and alert generation. We are also better able to understand trends with respect to user behavior like time zone connections, and the times when there is less usage of the system by users.

    Our organization is too IT oriented. I think with Dynatrace, it has helped to bring value to the business because now we can speak using the same language.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable features for me are end-user analysis and problem detection. I am responsible for adoption, availability, and performance. In the case of adoption, the number of new users coming to the system is a good metric for management. For problem management, problem detection is a good feature to save time.

    What needs improvement?

    I have reported a bug where a CI was not reflected in the dashboard, yet it was detected in the problem management.

    On the side of the end user experience, I would suggest adding a new service for analyzing the backtrace of users.

    Also, I would like to see an option to export the dashboard to create better reports and avoid copy/paste.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Between one and two years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    In terms of stability, it is ok and we have had no issues reported so far.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We cannot properly address scalability yet.

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

    Prior to this solution, we used Gomez. It was part of the original solution that was installed. We had many problems with synthetic monitoring because it was down most of the time.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    The tools were installed before I joined the company.

    What other advice do I have?

    There are long term benefits in using the monitoring tool. There is also strategic value added, as is the case of transforming the internal language of the technical teams.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
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    Updated: November 2024
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