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it_user815379 - PeerSpot reviewer
ECOM Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Feb 21, 2018
Reduces our root-cause analysis time but needs better load-handling
Pros and Cons
  • "PurePaths. The ability to see the transaction flow of the web request. It's valuable because our developers, when we have an issue, they can drill down to see exactly where in the application, the call in the application; where the high response time is, or where something is wrong."
  • "It has helped us reduce time spent on root cause analysis."
  • "Right now, for AppMon, the maximum handling load, the transaction per minute, is around 6,500. We had an issue on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, some kind of stability issue for users who could not log in. I want to see an increase in the load, at least to 7,000 or 8,000 transactions per second"
  • "It's not very scalable, we cannot add another server onto it."
  • "Right now, one day is not good enough; we would like it to be in the hours."

What is our primary use case?

I'm an admin so my primary use case is to manage the product and the software. And whenever there is a user, they have a question, they don't know how to browse or look at the PurePath, that is where I come in, to show them how to.

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped us reduce time spent on root cause analysis. Whenever there's an issue, there are multiple teams involved, and we are using multiple tools: Splunk, Nagios, etc. If we have one product that gives one solution to the root cause, the issue, it reduces some of the operation time for our team, so we can spend most of our time on automation or something else.

What is most valuable?

The PurePaths. The ability to see the transaction flow of the web request. It's very useful.

It's valuable because our developers, when we have an issue, they can drill down to see exactly where in the application, the call in the application; where the high response time is, or where something is wrong. At least they know where to look for the solution.

What needs improvement?

I want to see an increase in the load, at least to 7,000 or 8,000 transactions per second, just for it to stable for this upcoming holiday, if we do not transition to the new Dynatrace product yet.

What is missing right now is, it doesn't tell me where the problem is. So whenever we find a problem from the customer, or from our incident management team, then we go into the tools and look for it. So we want it to have more problem identification, somehow, just like the new Dynatrace product. They have the problem tab, you can go in there an see it. But AppMon lacks that.

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Dynatrace
March 2026
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Right now, for AppMon, the maximum handling load, the transactions per minute, is around 6,500. We had an issue on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, some kind of stability issue, that users who could not log in.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's not very scalable, we cannot add another server onto it. We have a little trouble there, so that's why we're trying to upgrade to this new Dynatrace product to see how it will go.

How are customer service and support?

We just submit a ticket, and it will probably take them one day. That's sufficient for us, for now.

The resolution time is also about one day. Right now, one day is not good enough. We would like it to be in the hours. So that's why, another thing with this new Dynatrace product is they have the messaging system, something like that. And they have the server that would monitor our Dynatrace server, where they can see everything, what the issue is already, so they can resolve it quicker, instead of our submitting a ticket and waiting for one day.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the set up of the app. I remember they were doing it manually. They installed the agent, set up the server manually, on each server. So when I came in, we used Jenkins to write a script to automatically deploy to our server. There is still a lot of manual configuration. It's not straightforward.

What other advice do I have?

When it comes to the nature of digital complexity, and IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems, I think moving to the cloud is very agile and provides scalability. Right now, we're using AppMon which doesn't have the AI feature. That's why we're interested in upgrading to the new Dynatrace product, which has the AI feature and scalability.

If we had just one solution that could provide real answers, as opposed to just data, there would be a lot of benefit. If somehow the new Dynatrace product - the AI engine that tells you where the problem is - would tell us where the problem is and bring it down to the pinpoint, to the root cause, so we don't have to spend time looking into it, or the developer team doesn't have to manually look into it, that would be good because those actions require time.

When we were selecting a new APM solution, the criterion of our company was performance. The performance team, they mainly use this tool to test how load capacity runs. So they are mainly testing for the performance stability of the application.

I would say that if you haven't used AppMon before, then just go and order Dynatrace, instead of going to AppMon and then transitioning.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user815382 - PeerSpot reviewer
Test Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 21, 2018
We now know when a given application is down and we can be proactive
Pros and Cons
  • "We now know when the application is down, as opposed to students opening tickets and letting us know, so it's more proactive."
  • "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."
  • "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."

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: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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it_user778722 - PeerSpot reviewer
Supervisor Of Event Management And Monitoring at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Feb 21, 2018
Dashboards enable us to locate and alert about a problem, and triage it quickly
Pros and Cons
  • "From the monitoring perspective, the ability to triage quickly is important, and the ability to alert and tell people where the problem is."
  • "Now, since people have actually been using the product, and they've actually seen the visibility and what it can provide, it's doing well, so that's why we're deciding to upgrade."
  • "I haven't had a chance to go through all of it, but I would like to see the ability, from an administrative standpoint, for it to collect statistics. I want to be able to see the servers that the agents are installed on. I want it to be able to start doing collections for me by platform: How many Linux servers do I have? How many Windows servers do I have? Statistically give me the information of how things are performing, but I want that in a dashboard, where I can look at a dashboard and I can look at a section. So the ability for me to drill down will make it easier for me."
  • "I haven't had a chance to go through all of it, but I would like to see the ability, from an administrative standpoint, for it to collect statistics."

What is our primary use case?

When we first got Dynatrace, it started just as a developer's tool. As we used it more and more, we started using it not only for applications but for hardware. Now we're using it for servers. it's evolved over time.

The use cases are monitoring, alerting, triaging, and for statistics and dashboards.

It's basically used to make sure that everything is running okay. You can check dashboards in each group. The DevOps group can use the dashboard and say, "This is how my code is working." So it's more peace of mind, and to keep things available, which is really important to us: availability and reliability. That's what it's being used for.

At product start-up, it was not very visible at first. But now, since people have actually been using the product, and they've actually seen the visibility and what it can provide, it's doing well. So that's why we're deciding to upgrade.

We've had the product for about eight years now. They started using it more and more, so the company decided to invest in it more and more.

How has it helped my organization?

Right now in an AppMon, when you have DevOps teams looking to see where transactions are going through from business transactions, and they want to set up measurements to see how things are. And dashboards - dashboards are extremely important now. Thresholds are important.

After today, at the Perform 2018 conference, I can say more because I can see, even though we're AppMon 6.5 now, and we're going to Dynatrace, I was really impressed with everything I saw. The fact that I was impressed, and I was seeing everything, what the future looks like, made us feel like we made the right choice as to what's going on.

What is most valuable?

Dashboards is one, troubleshooting is another. I come from the monitoring perspective, so the ability to triage quickly is important, and the ability to alert and tell people where the problem is, that's what I really like about the product.

What needs improvement?

I haven't had a chance to go through all of it, but I would like to see the ability, from an administrative standpoint, for it to collect statistics. I want to be able to see the servers that the agents are installed on. I want it to be able to start doing collections for me by platform: How many Linux servers do I have? How many Windows servers do I have? Statistically give me the information of how things are performing, but I want that in a dashboard, where I can look at a dashboard and I can look at a section. So the ability for me to drill down will make it easier for me.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Ours is pretty stable, being that we have AppMon. We have collectors and DTs in there, they're load-balanced all over the place. And every now and then we have issues, but it's been pretty stable. It has to be, because it's being relied upon more and more. If it was not stable then management wouldn't say, "Okay, we're going to go this direction." 

Stability is extremely important because when you're in my business, you need to have data available 24/7. If I have systems that take a hit, and I can't depend on my dashboard to pull up data, then that's a problem. And if they can't triage, then that's a problem.

We have encountered downtime. When we have downtime we look at it and say, "How quickly can you get it up?" The good thing is that when we had downtime, we also had load-balancing in place. If you have that in place that really helps out, because then you go from one to another. It doesn't mean that it wasn't down, but it wasn't down long.

We can't afford to be down, because being down costs money. Everything is equated to money, to some degree. If this tool is not available during this time, how much money am I losing because I can't triage it? How many resources am I using? We've had some downtime, but not much. Even when you do maintenance, it's done a certain way.

Nothing is 100%, but it's pretty reliable. It had to be impressive enough for our management to allow us to invest into it going forward.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales pretty well. I'm from a pretty big company. The solution started out small and scaled out, because we have a lot of collectors.

We scaled up. The good thing is, that's where Dynatrace SaaS is going to come in, when you look at what it's costing us to maintain the hardware on-prem, and do the analysis. 

Scalability: We're always building more applications. And the fact that we can get rid of a lot of hardware and run that tool is really important.

Scalability is really important with growth. You need something that can scale quickly and not have to go through this whole process. It's one thing to look at it and do an analysis and say, "Okay, I need to scale." But, it would be easier if you could look at something and put in a formula and say, "Alright, we can scale based on this." Or something that could tell us. "You're at a point where you need to scale," so that would help out.

How is customer service and technical support?

It's easier when you can get to a level-2. We've had guardians on site for a while. Because we've had guardians on site they made it easier for us to get to support. So we know how to navigate support. 

From my perspective, support has been quite satisfactory, because it's not like we're a novice going at this. We understand, these are the people you need to talk to. And they recognize the urgency when you're calling. So, I feel comfortable with saying support has been pretty good for us.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but since then we've upgraded so many times. The upgrade is pretty easy. Complexity comes in when you have to schedule things. If I have a DevOps team that's in prod, once we were able to actually cookie cut the upgrade process, it was easier.

It also depends on the different platforms you're dealing with. You're dealing with Windows versus Linux, and you have to inject code into certain places, that's an issue. 

I'm glad when Dynatrace says they have a different agent, because I wasn't crazy about the agent, the way we were deploying it. Not only me, but you have people who are quite protective of their code, and if you've got to inject an agent, they're not really comfortable with that. But with the new agent, that makes it easier for me too. That's another reason I was happy, that's one of the things I asked about: How are we doing the agent? Even though we were automated, there were still some configurations. But with this new product, it seems like deploying agents is going to be awesome.

What other advice do I have?

I'm excited because I like the AI piece. I want to get rid of the thresholds piece. That's part of the excitement as to where we are going to go, because a lot of the conversation occurs when you have to say, "What's the real threshold based on the applications that we have?" We have over 500 applications, easily. Each one has its own behavior. Then everyone wants to discuss a threshold. Now, I'm thinking, with Dynatrace SaaS, we don't have to do that anymore. Bit it will be awhile before we get there.

AI is really important. We're on-prem right now for hybrid to go to the cloud. So when you have the numbers and trends based on what AI can do, it helps you along the way. I can run reports and see the things that I need that will satisfy my customer, that will make it easier for me. We are looking towards the cloud, we do have applications up there. It becomes a sizing issue, as far as what do you need, because you have to pay to be in the cloud. So AI is really important because it will not only help us troubleshoot, it will actually predict some of the things we need to help us get there. I can't put a number on the importance of AI right now.

It's going to change a lot of analysis and things that you have to do. The one thing I would like to see is what's involved in setting up the AI. Because I'm excited about it, I want to see what's involved in setting it up, and see that component.

Regarding siloed monitoring tools, portability is one of the challenges. Siloed monitoring tools make it really hard to port out to other places. You get data, but you can't necessarily use it as far as fitting it into other areas. That's the problem with siloed monitoring tools. If you're good for that scope then you're okay, but when it's time to go beyond that scope... Going enterprise-wide is important. So, where siloed monitoring tools were okay at the time, they're just not keeping up what's going on now. The monitoring field is evolving. It's more than about just monitoring. Monitoring is one thing, alerting is another thing. But the AI part puts it together, makes it easier, not only for you to do your job, but the self-healing piece that goes with it. That's really exciting, when things can self-heal and then just report on it. That makes life a lot easier.

If we had just one solution that could provide real answers, and not just data, the benefit would depend on how you look at a benefit. First of all, we would be more efficient. However, I'm not sure if it would help from a resource standpoint, because then I'm not going to need all those resources, if I have a tool that's going to do everything I need. But, it would help in the sense that, if I can resolve something like that, and things fall into place. That would greatly help. And not only that, then I could just depend one tool. Right now, people look at a solution as, "I need a tool for this, and a tool for that." But if I can move towards one tool that will provide me everything I need, then that would be great.

Our most important criteria when working or selecting a vendor: Of course, there's always cost. Stability is another. The amount of time they have been in the market. Then we do a PoC and see if they can meet the use cases that we have. We have a standard, some 125 use cases that we put out there. We see they perform based on those use cases. It's completely agnostic. I don't care who the vendor is. Can they meet my use cases? Do they have stability? Do they have the reputation? And then we negotiate cost.

Right now, the solution we have in place, I would give it about an eight out of 10. Things are changing, technology needs to change. It's been doing a job, but I mentioned the things I asked for. I'm looking for more, so that's probably why an eight. It's doing the job, but I'm looking for it to go further. 

They have a new product that's going to go further, so that's how we do it. Now, the new solution, I'm not sure how we're rating it yet. I have to see what it's going to do. 

But would I recommend it? Yes. Because we have the experience, it has done this and this for me. Can I depend on it? Yes.

If a colleague at another company was looking to implement a similar solution I would need to know they were looking for before I could advise them. I would tell them from my perspective, this is what the tool has done for us. If they ask me the questions, I'll tell them exactly what I think. At this point, would you recommend this solution? Sure, because it does this for me. If you're looking into looking at code, at that part, yes it does that for me. If you're looking for monitoring, yes it does that for me. I would recommend it. 

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user815358 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Feb 21, 2018
We are able to drill down and detect what the problems are; providing high-quality performance monitoring
Pros and Cons
  • "Provides more insight into detecting what the problem is with some of our applications."
  • "We are able to drill down and detect what the problems are; providing high-quality performance monitoring."
  • "We found a tool that can be utilized by testing, DevOps, marketing, software engineering, and monitoring, and now everybody is utilizing one tool, which is a huge savings."
  • "​Our environment is very complicated anyway, so the initial setup was a bit of a struggle, but only because we have so many applications and JVMs that we have been working on for long time."
  • "We are still struggling a bit with finding an answer quickly."
  • "Right now, we are struggling a bit with stability. We have outages, data loss, and have had to restart, but have not narrowed down exactly what the problem is yet."

What is our primary use case?

We currently use AppMon. It has been performing great compared to what we replaced.

The main use case is application performance monitoring and availability.

How has it helped my organization?

The main benefits will be more proactive, high-quality performance monitoring and availability with more insight into the application. It is very impressive.

It has helped my business move forward probably just by taking the next step that everybody needs to think about, which is AI and the possibility of cloud. I do not know what direction the company will go with that yet.

What is most valuable?

  • PurePath
  • Being able to drill down and detect what the problems are.
  • More insight into detecting what the problem is with some of our applications. 

What needs improvement?

We are still struggling a bit with finding an answer quickly. It is all there, but there is so much that it is still really hard to figure out exactly which way you want to go:

  • What do I right click? 
  • Where do I go? 

It is a little overwhelming with the amount of data that we have. I think it is more of an issue on our end. We just need to get more familiar with it. We just started implementing it last June, are still relatively new, and are currently struggling with some performance issues.

We have already seen the next release. It is doing so much more than what we ever expected. 

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Right now, we are struggling a bit with stability. 

We have outages. We have not pinpointed what the problem is. We have data loss. We have had to restart and have not narrowed down exactly what the problem is yet. So, that is in the works.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is good. 

Because we are having stability issues right now, it depends on what we need to do:

  • Do we need to add more memory? 
  • Do we need to add more collectors? 
  • Do we need to bump up something? 

So, this is a little uncertain at the moment.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good. 

There was only one time that I had to contact someone at two o'clock in the morning and the response was not as quick as I thought it was going to be. However, we addressed that with meetings. I think they have done a lot better job of their support.

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

We have used siloed monitoring tools, specifically CA APM. The challenges were probably the end-to-end and getting the full picture of what the problem was. There always seemed to be some major piece missing and Dynatrace has allowed us to get as close to that big picture as we possibly can. Then, with OneAgent, it has to provide the problem to you. It does not really get any better than that.

We picked Dynatrace because of the value that it provides.

How was the initial setup?

Our environment is very complicated anyway, so the initial setup was a bit of a struggle, but only because we have so many applications and JVMs that we have been working on for long time. We had to move everything from CA APM to Dynatrace, so it was a big conversion process.

What was our ROI?

We found a tool that can be utilized by testing, DevOps, marketing, software engineering, and monitoring. Before, we always had everybody doing their own thing. Now, everybody's utilizing one tool, which is huge. That is a huge savings.

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

Definitely look at Dynatrace if you are looking to purchase an APM solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate other solutions, but I was not a part of that process.

What other advice do I have?

If I had just one solution which could provide real answers as opposed to just data, the benefit to my team would be time savings. We are scrambling all the time to try to figure out when there is a problem. If we could have something else telling us what the problem is, we could spend more time fixing it, providing valuable dashboards. and other valuable monitoring, then have a better proactive monitoring environment. So, it is huge.

The role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the Cloud and manage performance problems is huge and really important, especially after seeing OneAgent. We will probably be moving to that, then probably be upgrading to version 7. I think that is the direction that the company will be going. They do not say that they are not supporting it, but it is highly encouraged that you jump onboard the OneAgent train.

Most important criteria when selecting an APM solution: Something that was less overhead for us. We were finding with our old tool, which we still support because we are still not off of it, to get the same thing that we get with Dynatrace required more servers and effort on our part to address everything that we wanted to from the performance side. So, there is less infrastructure to support and it is a little more consolidated.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user520278 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 21, 2018
It is limitless when it comes down to being able to scale up or even scale back
Pros and Cons
  • "It allows you to better utilize and focus your talent, and tell management that you are not only looking at problems, but how you can ultimately make the product better for the end user."
  • "It is limitless when it comes down to being able to scale up or even scale back, if we need it to."
  • "We have not had any stability issues with it at all. This has been the most stable solution that I have worked with."
  • "We have not had any stability issues with it at all, and the solution that we have implemented here in the last six months has been the most stable solution that I have worked with in all my 22 years in IT."
  • "I was hands on in the setup of the solution. Initially, it seemed a little daunting."
  • "I was hands on in the setup of the solution. Initially, it seemed a little daunting."

What is our primary use case?

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

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

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

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

What is most valuable?

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

What needs improvement?

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

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

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and technical support?

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

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

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

How was the initial setup?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

What other advice do I have?

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

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

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

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

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user815259 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software QA Engineer at a consultancy with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Feb 20, 2018
It makes our lives easier as we drill down to problems
Pros and Cons
  • "We use Dynatrace for performance testing. We use it to dig down for application layer or slowness issues, getting a clear idea of what is causing the issues, then reporting back to the engineering team."
  • "It makes our lives easier as we drill down to problems."
  • "There is a strong user community. There is no need to talk to the technical support, because all the questions which I have had, all the solutions were in the documentation. Or, I have been able to post a question to the user community and get an answer within a day or two."
  • "I would definitely recommend this solution, because it has all of the new features coming with Dynatrace OneAgent."
  • "Getting the EM data, we have to open a browser. Generally, one of the asks from our clients or our engineering team is to change this."
  • "Getting the EM data, we have to open a browser."

What is our primary use case?

  1. We use Dynatrace for performance testing. We use it to dig down for application layer or slowness issues, getting a clear idea of what is causing the issues, then reporting back to the engineering team. 
  2. We monitor our infrastructure using AppMon, where our hosts have their CPU thresholds and our memory issues are going on. We use for that.

It is performing well. It makes our lives easier as we drill down to problems. If something happens in production, and a client reports the issue, say our page is loading in 10 seconds, and the issue comes to the performance testing team, we can get the exact API call or query level regarding what is causing the slowness. Then, our job is to open Dynatrace and test the filter on the time span if it is there. Some matters cannot be captured, because by default, Dynatrace does not capture everything. For some matters, we need to add sensors, then handle it.

What is most valuable?

Whenever a developer does a code change or new feature implementation, it comes to performance shifting. We just do not raise a bug saying that your page is loading in 10 seconds, please go and fix. What we do is analyze Dynatrace and test PurePath. We analyze metal hot spots, which are the exceptions, and we share data that in AppMon where we have a facility where we save station and take screenshots of what metal or what class it is causing issues, and share that to the engineering team. With the bugs, we have to go and do line numbers, and the same thing with the code.

What needs improvement?

Getting the EM data, we have to open a browser. Generally, one of the asks from our clients or our engineering team is to change this. However, there is not a performance single tool, which opens a browser. That is one of the problems.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

For our company, it is on-premise. It will be around a 100 plus hosts and 3 different servers, so it is fine in terms of scalability. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not used technical support. There is a strong user community. There is no need to talk to the technical support, because all the questions which I have had, all the solutions were in the documentation. Or, I have been able to post a question to the user community and get an answer within a day or two.

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

No. This is our first APM solution. We have not previously used siloed monitoring tools either.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial setup, though I was involved with upgrades.

What about the implementation team?

We take care of our own environment. We are responsible for our performance setting environment. We place the first sensor. We do all those things.

What other advice do I have?

I would definitely recommend this solution, because it has all of the new features coming with Dynatrace OneAgent. It will be awesome for any client or company. 

If I had just one solution which could provide real answers, not just data, and benefit my team, it would be one solution where you can get all the data stating this is the root cause and this is the solution. That would be awesome.  

AI will definitely play a bigger role when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems. ZSA will need to predict things like rolling insights to the client on the sales and marketing front.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

  • Ease of use
  • Enough documentation
  • Strong community. 
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_user815298 - PeerSpot reviewer
QA Performance Lead at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 20, 2018
PurePath helps you pinpoint issues, then develop and focus them in the right way
Pros and Cons
  • "Having the metrics easily understood and easily articulating the information."
  • "The ability to use PurePath in analytics is definitely the most valuable feature. It helps you pinpoint issues, then develop and focus them in the right way."
  • "We are able to fix issues rather quickly, by identifying then fixing them. Therefore, the efficiency of the organization has improved. We are spending less time fixing issues."
  • "We are able to fix issues rather quickly, by identifying then fixing them, therefore, the efficiency of the organization has improved and we are spending less time fixing issues so costs have decreased."
  • "​The AppMon 6.5 is problematic in configuring. It is little finicky. When we configured the JVM, it did not work."
  • "The AppMon 6.5 is problematic in configuring."

What is our primary use case?

We are actually using it in the test environment, not in production. That is our use case. What we want to do is we want to test it and find issues either with our core or infrastructure before it goes live.

How has it helped my organization?

We are able to fix issues rather quickly, by identifying then fixing them. Therefore, the efficiency of the organization has improved. We are spending less time fixing issues.

Business case: We had a problem with the previous solution where we were spending more time on it. That meant increased costs. Now, we are spending less time, so costs have decreased. That is how you improve the efficiency of the organization.

What is most valuable?

The ability to use PurePath in analytics is definitely the most valuable feature. It helps you pinpoint issues, then develop and focus them in the right way. It helps to fix them rather quickly.

What needs improvement?

I am more interested in the end-to-end performance system, not only the server site from the client's side. 

For example:

  • How much time is spent on the client when the user is interacting with the mobile application or even web application?
  • How much time each click took?
  • How much time the page object domain took to load up?
  • Even if it is a mobile app, when you interact with the app, how much time the control took to respond to it? 

Right now, we use the Dynatrace library to build. Then, we would like to generate the overall transaction and the performance it has when the request is coming from different networks across different regions, different periods, and different parts of the world, like the synthetic monitoring solution. So, there are desperate systems. 

What we would like to see is to make it easy, more automated with an easier way of doing these things. OneAgent is an easier approach which you just install it automatically into the installed application and it sends you the information. For the mobile clients, we want to get the end-to-end thing that makes it easier to set up, that will be cool.

For how long have I used the solution?

Still implementing.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With stability, we have seen some issues. Then, we fixed them. So, it is stable now. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is another objective. We are trying to test the scalability of Dynatrace. We have seen some scalability issues because of the non-optimal users of the resources and the infrastructure, so we made it more scalable. So, it is acceptably scalable.

The role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance is very important. The AI definitely works.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is pretty good. Not only the technical support, but the upper managers, they are also very technically, savvy people. Most of them, not all of them are. Also, some of the sales accounts, they are able to find you the right technical people, if necessary. 

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

In my organization, I am dealing with more than 20 applications. I have to scale with limited resources, so I needed a sophisticated tool to tell me where the problem is. Traditionally, I would be telling you that you have a problem. Now, I am able to tell you that you have a problem right now and what it is. That has made a big difference. I was looking for tool to do this, then I found Dynatrace.

How was the initial setup?

The AppMon 6.5 is problematic in configuring. It is little finicky. When we configured the JVM, it did not work. 

Sometimes, people are making mistakes, typos, or even if you just sit down you need to be in the light, either in the beginning or in the end. So, this is always a little problematic for us. The issue is not super small, but it is okay.

What was our ROI?

We are buying more licenses, because we are seeing more value.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise a colleague or friend to use Dynatrace.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

  • PurePath
  • Ease of use
  • The dashboard
  • Having the metrics easily understood and easily articulating the information.
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_user815271 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer Architect at a leisure / travel company
Real User
Feb 20, 2018
Provides usability to transform data into a more meaningful presentation
Pros and Cons
  • "It gives more visibility into all the coding (the black screen). It gives a nice screen. You can see ups and downs. You can see where the traffic is getting impacted, more on the convergence side."
  • "It is a platform that is very well-suited for marketers, but also for technology people. That is the key: the dashboard."
  • "We used AppDynamics, and our challenges using siloed monitoring revolved around integration because you needed more manpower to manage things, but now with Dynatrace it is just a few clicks and it scales up, which makes a big difference."
  • "​We are waiting on the new features to see how they perform."
  • "We are waiting on the new features to see how they perform."

What is our primary use case?

We use AppMon and synthetic, especially synthetic for monitoring the users and user experiences, and finding the JavaScript errors. Our working flow is mainly single page application. Therefore, it does help to improve the speed and performance of pages. I am excited about the session replay feature.

We will actually be integrating with Mouseflow, which does the same thing. It is not a big deal to integrate and disintegrate it. If session replay does what Mouseflow is doing, then it is probably our best bet.

What is most valuable?

It gives more visibility into all the coding (the black screen). It gives a nice screen. You can see ups and downs. You can see where the traffic is getting impacted, more on the convergence side. 

It is a platform that is very well-suited for marketers, but also for technology people. That is the key: the dashboard.

What needs improvement?

We are waiting on the new features to see how they perform.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far, it seems good. We are not seeing issues. We are happy with it, and we have in-house based Dynatrace. Now, we are moving to the SaaS-based. We cannot comment much on the SaaS yet, because it is moving, and we are not there yet.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In the context of adding monitoring to all your instances, we have scaled up, because it is a cloud-based solution. It just scales on its own. 

What you need scalability for is around the ease of adding a new platform or new servers to the platform, and that is pretty fast.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not spent much time with the technical support. I am an enterprise architect, so the time spent from the technical side is more the DevOps team, and so not much me.

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

We did use siloed monitoring tools. We used AppDynamics. Our challenges using siloed monitoring revolved around integration. You needed more manpower to manage things. Now, it is just a few clicks, and it scales up. That is the difference.

We switched to Dynatrace based on feedback from the business and the technical team. It was the usability, and how you transform data into a more meaningful presentation or graphical interface.

How was the initial setup?

I was involved with the new setup process. We have Adobe Stack, so we are doing Adobe Stack.

It is pretty straightforward. You just go to the install Dynatrace UI. It gives you the command. You just need to run the command. It is pretty straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

It is so easy. You would probably need technical support if you ran into issues, but it is pretty easy. The agent talks to the cloud solution right away.

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

I am not sure about the cost, because I was not involved in the initial implementation.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No.

What other advice do I have?

If I had a solution which could provide real answers, not just data, the immediate benefit for my team would be turnaround and evaluation time. If you could transform these into a language that management understands, that would be the key.

The role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems plays a big role. There are various platforms, offerings, services, and applications, which integrate with so many things. You will not need to spend time hooking this to that. The AI will figure it out, which is pretty cool.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

  • How much you really need to know about it. E.g., how easy is it to know about the product capabilities.
  • Cost. Everybody thinks about cost.
  • From a technology standpoint, the product should not ask you to build using manpower to set up your own infrastructure.
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
Download our free Dynatrace Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Dynatrace Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.