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it_user815289 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We scaled from 300 to 800 agents in six months, and there were no issues at the server level
Pros and Cons
  • "We scaled from 300 agents to 800 agents in six months. There were no issues at the server level, which is pretty good.​"
  • "We know exactly which line, which method, and which program needs fixing, so we directly go to the right developer and the guy comes in fixes it."
  • "We are now able to identify the root cause in 15 minutes. It has helped the entire operations of our company."

    What is our primary use case?

    The primary use case is we have customer-impacting production issues, so we have to get in there and quickly find out the root cause. It used to take days because we did not have an APM tool. With Dynatrace, we are now able to identify the root cause in 15 minutes. It has helped the entire operations of our company. It is working really well.

    What is most valuable?

    PurePath is the best. I have never seen it before and the way it is helping is really cool. It is eliminating lots of hops we go through to find the cause and reach out to the person. Now, we know exactly which line, which method, and which program needs fixing, so we directly go to the right developer and the guy comes in fixes it. Then, in the next week at least, it is done. 

    What needs improvement?

    I am looking forward to new Dynatrace features coming out. However, I am still hoping for more.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is 99.9% stable. For the 0.1%, there were too many users who were using the client. This was the problem. So, we had to move to the business rich client, then the issue was gone. 

    Buyer's Guide
    Dynatrace
    April 2025
    Learn what your peers think about Dynatrace. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
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    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We scaled from 300 agents to 800 agents in six months. There were no issues at the server level, which is pretty good.

    How are customer service and support?

    We have used the problem management, which is available on the management support community site. We have used that. 

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

    Dynatrace is my first APM tool. We were previously using CA Wiley. With Wiley, we did not have the ability to get inside the process. We were outside. Now, with the Dynatrace, we are getting inside the PurePath, which is a great help. 

    How was the initial setup?

    I helped my administration to do the initial setup. It was very easy.

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

    If you are looking to implement it, go straight ahead. Don't even think about it, just use it. 

    What other advice do I have?

    When it comes to IT's ability to scale to in a cloud and manage performance problems, now that we are activating more agents of Dynatrace, AI is going to be tremendously helpful to us. 

    If I had just one solution that could provide real answers, not just data, the immediate benefit would be the ability to add up more applications into the performance support, then help more applications with the fewer number of resources in our app.

    Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

    1. The sales rep with their technical team coming to see us and giving us a demo is the key. We need to understand exactly what level of depth they have.
    2. We need security in place.
    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_user815286 - PeerSpot reviewer
    APM Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    You save time fixing issues because deployment is easy
    Pros and Cons
    • "The user interface is like a type of dashboard. You can use the tool as an end user into the tool interface, which is good."
    • "The deployment configuration and everything is simple. It is not that complicated."
    • "We have configured the alerting so the error or the incident will go to the respective team. Then, the team can contact the user once they see that they have an issue and ask if they can them resolve the issue."
    • "There is a limitation on timeframe. Now, if you look at the dashboard, it will state five minutes, then 15 minutes, then one hour, then six hours, and finally 24 hours. I would like them to provide a set of options defining the business hour."

    What is our primary use case?

    Considering the application and what we are using at the client site. We have a user interaction related application where users fill in their information, and they are processing the formality and completing the business transaction. The business transaction generates a policy or a report out of all the services. This is from the user interface point of things. 

    Other than that, they are that second aspect of us in elite services called back-end services. There is no actual user interface with these services for the end user. There are some other applications, which will be calling the services. At the client side, we are monitoring Layer 2. One service that we use it for: What are the issues, what are the problems, and what are we facing for services.

    Similarly, when the user interaction is there, what are the challenges users are facing and how we can proactively use Dynatrace and get the problem resolved. That is what the current setup of Dynatrace offers our client base.

    How has it helped my organization?

    1. The deployment configuration and everything is simple. It is not that complicated. That is critical, because that saves time. Whenever something goes wrong, since in deployment everything is easy, you are saving time solving the issues. 
    2. The user interface. The user interface is like a type of dashboard. You can use the tool as an end user into the tool interface, which is good. This is simple, not complex as where to find something. Any layman, if you give them the tool, who has knowledge of how to use an internet browser will be able to use the tool if you just explain it in a few words. It is intuitive.

    What is most valuable?

    Mainly, if the user rarely utilizes user monitoring, this is the biggest feature. Because when the user has an issue, we have configured the alerting so the error or the incident will go to the respective team. Then, the team can contact the user once they see that they have an issue and ask if they can them resolve the issue. That is the key thing, because that helps with revenue loss. This is the key feature that we see.

    What needs improvement?

    There is a limitation on timeframe. Now, if you look at the dashboard, it will state five minutes, then 15 minutes, then one hour, then six hours, and finally 24 hours. I would like them to provide a set of options defining the business hour.

    In the morning from 5AM to 6AM is my business hour. If you could give me that option, it would be easier for me instead of just lasting one business hour to finish. This would be a cool feature. 

    A lot of organizations are 24/7, but they will be mainly looking for limited data for their business hours. My business hours are about 12 hours, which is when all my analysis is done.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We had only two or three major downtimes. We were able to resolve those in less than eight hours. These were not big, major downtimes that we experienced for the solution.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We have used technical support many times, because there are some issues which we were not able to figure out based on the information provided. There are some things, which we need the technical support team's help in making the changes, and also before changes are made. There should not be a case where we make a change and certain features get disabled, or certain featured get enabled.

    We have used technical support in the past, but the support is limited. Though, I have never had an issue that the technical team has not been able to solve. I show them the problem, then they see the problem, and solve it. That is what is very successful for me: no back-and-forth with support.

    Support can ask in a list what information they want from me and what problem I am facing, then I will explain it. This will help us to solve problem more quickly than just chatting.

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

    Before, I came to that account, they had a network monitoring tool. They also had some JV monitoring tools, so two different things. There are some network-related issue you can take from the network monitoring tool, some with a JVM and some you need to take from Java.

    For the end user, application, or web tier, the monitoring was not there.

    I have used, as a part of my team back home in India, CA Wiley. We did a PoC implementation with it. I did a PoC of Wily in 2005.

    How was the initial setup?

    The deployment was simple, as well as the upgrade.

    The first upgrade was little bit complex because you have a data you need to maintain. With an initial deployment, you are starting from scratch and have nothing to worry about. When you upgrade, you need to plan well in advance what you want see.

    We needed to do see what was intact, because when we moved from 6.1 to 6.3, the migration tool that they had, it was not quite solid or sound. Now, they have a good migration tool whatever they developed.

    The challenges that we face were not that big just minor challenges, since we did a PoC with the tool. Therefore, we could migrate easily with minimal impact on the end user.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    When I came in the picture for this particular engagement, the client had already done a PoC with Dynatrace. However, if I say Dynatrace right now, it is a total different flavor, as I am currently using AppMon.

    When I came here and I was working another engagement, I attended some training for DC RUM which was a Compuware APM to Dynatrace. Now, it has totally changed since when I started using it for deployment. Everything is fine. As compared to the Wiley, it is not an apple to apple comparison. 

    What other advice do I have?

    Make sure your application team or the development team is going to use the tool. If your application or development team is not going to get any benefit in the sense of not being involved in this particular APM monitoring, then the benefit will be less. For example, if you implemented a solution and your monitoring team is using it, then to achieve the full-fledge benefit, your application development team should use it, because during the development itself they will see that these are the challenges we are facing. They will fix the problems during the development instead of in testing.

    This will save time for any application for release, because the development team will fix the problems before the release of anything. This is the foremost thing that they need to consider whenever they are going for the solution.

    The other thing is an organizational point of view. You need to have some center of excellence, which will be dedicated for the APM. It is not okay for some part-time people to just be looking on. There has to be a dedicated team if you have this tool in your organization.

    Only then you will get whatever you are expecting out of this tool.

    AI's playing the key role in the way all the monitoring solutions are going now. They are computing all this information which is available and providing information it for human beings to try to solve problems.

    The AI is playing a key role otherwise just imagine. Previously, you would need to analyze all the logs for an error and coming out with the solution would take hours. Nowadays, because of the AI, the log analysis and everything has been done in backing. You can use your experience logic, take that information, and solve the problem.

    If I had just one solution that could provide real answers, not just data, the immediate benefit would be time to resolve issues that would be useful for the team. To solve the problem for the end user, because from his point of view, the problem should be resolved quickly. So, this is definitely an advantage for the end user as it is for the team.

    Support team could use the information and will be able to pinpoint the issue, who the user is, and where their location is. When we have these issues with this technology, the issues will be resolved more quickly because you have the information regarding what went wrong, what is the error, and what stage the problem is at.

    Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: What is their market share? Where are they standing? Are they a leader or they just initially starting? Because based on the customer's budget, if they want to sell out or work with a type of market leader's solution, then we will definitely look at that particular area.

    However, there are some company that might not want to sell out. We see this in some companies, which are in their startup faze. The investment will be minimal, but the challenge is that you won't be able to get the features that other companies at the top are offering.

    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner.
    PeerSpot user
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    Dynatrace
    April 2025
    Learn what your peers think about Dynatrace. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
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    it_user815292 - PeerSpot reviewer
    VP at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    It has helped us by reducing the number of incidents that we have had in the past
    Pros and Cons
    • "It is a robust solution that would help anyone get to the solution and resolution pretty fast.​"
    • "It has helped us by reducing the number of incidents that we have had in the past."
    • "The analytics feature provides us some information, but is limited for now. We want to see how we can consume the data further down and have analytics guys look at the datacenter information.​"

    What is our primary use case?

    We have been using Dynatrace for almost two years now. Our primary focus is to understand where the critical bottlenecks are. We have a wide range of applications running on technologies right from mainframe: the client server, cloud, Node.js, etc. 

    In order to accommodate all these things, we were looking at one simple product which would help us with all these issues that we were facing. Before choosing Dynatrace, we did a survey of the market to understand what other products there were. 

    We ended up choosing Dynatrace because of fantastic capabilities, which it provides. Our business is critical to our customers. With a variety of technologies and different groups, we are experiencing more diverse issues.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The issues are identified well ahead of time because there are a series of operations that form the upstream and downstream applications. The earlier we catch an issue in one of the upstream applications, we can handle it and put a mechanism in place to effectively handle the downstream applications. Without that in place, if something breaks in upstream, then we are definitely sure that some application in downstream will be affected. This is really critical.

    What is most valuable?

    PurePath. In addition to routing mechanisms, they have set up the latest profiles and the latest threshold for alerts that go to several teams, including development, support, and infrastructure teams. This helps us be ahead of the game before something happens.

    What needs improvement?

    A couple of things that we have actually pointed out in the past:

    1. The log analytics, which OneAgent should be carrying forward.
    2. Getting the data out of Dynatrace and consuming it in development for other analytical purposes. The analytics feature provides us some information, but is limited for now. We want to see how we can consume the data further down and have analytics guys look at the datacenter information.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We have been running it for more than two years now. We have never had issues with the platform. One hiccup was the front-end server being low in memory because many users logging and running a wide range of reports. So, we limited that to some information by moving some of our users to the platform. In terms of stability, we have never had any issues.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It is scalable. We initially started with fewer agents because we just wanted to have the development team working with this new product. Therefore, we started small and have not had any issues scaling up to what we have. We never had any incidents because of it neither in VM or physical boxes.

    The role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems is definitely very important. The sheer volume of data we are creating from across all these systems is one of the critical pieces of the enterprise window that happens from 4:00 to 7:00 PM EST, where we send out all the NAV updates to various clients including NASDAQ. There are a variety of products which have their own limitations and quality of information. It is necessary to focus all the important technologies into a single source so we can follow the timelines and know exactly who is going to call us.

    With the new managed OneAgent, that is what we're looking at. Currently, we are on AppMon, so we need the AI metrics in place at least until the process of OneAgent to manage the elements that is there. Then, we will see the critical elements and information.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We had to use technical support before, primarily in the areas of adding additional features to the product. For example, we have some applications in Python. We do not have support for Python, which is not really the product, but more adding features on top of the product.

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

    We have used siloed monitoring tools in the past and some of them are already part of the infrastructure vertex system. Then, some are home grown, so we have a good system which is homegrown and looks at various metrics. It is a challenge because we have to write one solution which can handle everything, and our timeframe and resource constraints are a long process in writing. 

    How was the initial setup?

    I was not involved right at the beginning. It was not complex at all. We had the Dynatrace agent helping us in person with the issues.

    What other advice do I have?

    Look at Dynatrace. It has helped us by reducing the number of incidents that we have had in the past. It is a robust solution that would help anyone get to the solution and resolution pretty fast.

    Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: It came down to a critical component because we have numerous applications with different problems from apps or databases. Before the APM platform for narrowing down the problem became a critical issue, so at this point it was narrowing down and pointing to the exact core component. That was very critical.

    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_user815337 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Monitoring Team Lead at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Auto-discovers everything; within seconds you see the business transaction and how it's mapped
    Pros and Cons
    • "What I like about it, is how it auto-discovers everything rapidly; within a matter of seconds you get to see the business transaction and how it's mapped within the product itself."
    • "We're not quite there yet, but the thing I would like to see is to really have that view of how issues relate to the business. Often enough, the tools that IT have for IT stop at the IT level. They cannot go into the business level part. They can't understand, because they don't have the information that the business needs to provide them with - for example how much an hour of downtime costs the business. For us, in IT, it's an hour of downtime, but it equates to money and equates to hours lost and equates to a lot of things, and often enough we don't have that information. This is where I would like to see us going."

    What is our primary use case?

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

    Its performance has been wonderful.

    How has it helped my organization?

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

    What is most valuable?

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

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

    What needs improvement?

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

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

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

    How is customer service and technical support?

    I've never had to use technical support.

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

    How was the initial setup?

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

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

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

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    CA and AppDynamics.

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

    What other advice do I have?

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

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

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

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

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

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user815283 - PeerSpot reviewer
    IT Manager
    Real User
    Quickly identifies when transactions start to slow or run into issues
    Pros and Cons
    • "​The stability for the solution is pretty solid overall."
    • "Being able to get down to the individual code level to see where transactions are taking time. It has helped troubleshoot issues immensely and other tools can't provide this."
    • "Some of the main benefits are being able to quickly identify when transactions start to slow or run into issues, or hiccups if you will."
    • "The initial setup was relatively complex because we were trying to implement into environments that they did not yet support."
    • "The messaging layer is not really capturable and measurable right now."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our primary use case for the solution is in our development environment where we look at how new applications rewrite or transaction flows work, and to see what the performance is. Then, we also monitor the same performance in production.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Some of the main benefits are being able to quickly identify when transactions start to slow or run into issues, or hiccups if you will, then we are able pinpoint them. Some of the other benefits are when we are trying to push large loads through in our test environment and everything comes crashing to a halt, then it will pinpoint where the bottleneck is.

    What is most valuable?

    Probably what everyone else loves: PurePath. Being able to get down to the individual code level to see where transactions are taking time. It has helped troubleshoot issues immensely and other tools can't provide this.

    What needs improvement?

    The messaging layer is not really capturable and measurable right now. We have had this this ask for years. Examples would be like IBM DataPower devices, literally just translates message types. It would be nice to see what the weight is on there to put some sort of measure on them. 

    EMS or JMS: Really with JMS base transports, there is not much there. I know a product or two ago, they added a visualization piece, but it does not actually measure anything.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    More than five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability for the solution is pretty solid overall. 

    We did have some issues in an earlier version, probably 6.0 or 6.1. We have not had issues in the more recent ones. Thus, stability seems to have improved over the past few years.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The new Dynatrace product looks like it is more scalable. We are currently using AppMon. The tool definitely allows for scalability, but you do need to have decent hardware on one side, then you also have to have the knowledge. You have to be able to implement this type of application and go into its environment. There are different ways to do that with each AppMon agent. It will be interesting to see if the new Dynatrace product resolves these issues. 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We use technical support several times a year. They are always quick to respond. They have been able to handle the majority of our issues. We lay out all of our issues, and the few times they have not been able to help us was just because the product was still in development. 

    They are one of the better customer supports that we have worked with in the technology world.

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

    We have used some siloed monitoring tools. Some of the challenges that we faced are integrating with systems external to it, such as ticketing systems.

    I do not believe they were using an APM solution before. The need to invest in a new solution was because the development was moving quicker and we had more tight resources. We had to sit there and be able identify if it was quicker than spending the little resources we did have, mainly trying to figure out where the bottlenecks were.

    It was selected a while back, and I was not the primary on the project. I know they were looking for something that could get code level information and could measure response times inside the application. They wanted it to break down each step of the way, not just have a large bucket of data, e.g., have the whole thing take four seconds and know each step taken.

    How was the initial setup?

    At the time of the initial setup, I was a programmer analyst and our team was bringing in several tools. So initially, I assisted a little in the testing and rolling out.

    This was probably more than five years ago. It was relatively complex because we were trying to implement into environments that they did not yet support. We wanted to try pushing the boundaries in making it compatible. Therefore, it was not as simple as some of their other setups would be.

    What other advice do I have?

    First identify which issues, or information, you are trying to get. After doing that, get advice on the solutions out there, including Dynatrace, since Dynatrace is by far one of the leading APMs. Depending on every company's needs, you should definitely always evaluate a few competitors. 

    The role of AI is important probably for most organizations regarding IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems. However, AI is loose term ranging from pretty basic to pretty complex. The more human interaction is reduced and just the issues are shown and reported on, it helps. Everyone is moving to the cloud and having central transformation along with all those other buzzwords of the year. Obviously, our company is doing the same.

    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_user815349 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Senior Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Gives us data to measure the business impact of events and incidents
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable component of it is taking that guessing out of troubleshooting problems. We no longer have to rely on an architect, or an application person, or someone's memory of how the transaction moves throughout the infrastructure and the different dependencies that it has on it. We can see it right there and we find out more that we ever imagined."
    • "We like the user's experience piece: being able to see, from the browser perspective, the user's behavior; being able to answer questions from our customers about why such and such happened, why the performance was slow, why we had an error."
    • "I'd really like to see more dashboarding abilities. The ability to do workflows within dashboards, being able to start at a high level and click into it with custom dashboards. I think most of the time, we are creating our own custom dashboards, and I'd just like to see more ability with that."
    • "I would also like to see it baselining more metrics out-of-the-box. We have a lot of rich data, but if someone says, "Well how did that look last week?" If you're looking at a problem and you see, for example, a long SQL statement, is that the root cause, or is it always slow. it's difficult to get historical data."
    • "I think scalability is what we're struggling with. I would say it's okay, but there's a little bit of room for improvement."

    What is our primary use case?

    We purchased Dynatrace to give us an end-to-end picture of transactions from the end-user, all the way back through all the infrastructure, and tag it all together - and it's worked out great.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The main benefits are that, obviously, we can see the transaction throughout the entire infrastructure.

    One of the things that we're embarking on is, we're trying to measure the impact to the business of infrastructure events and incidents, rather than using gut feeling or emotions of whether we feel there was an impact, or asking our customers, how were you impacted. We have data now to prove it. So it's just taking the emotions out of it and just providing the facts of the impact, of the incidents or events.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable component of it is taking that guessing out of troubleshooting problems. We no longer have to rely on an architect, or an application person, or someone's memory of how the transaction moves throughout the infrastructure and the different dependencies that it has on it. We can see it right there and we find out more that we ever imagined.

    We like the user's experience piece: being able to see, from the browser perspective, the user's behavior; being able to answer questions from our customers about why such and such happened, why the performance was slow, why we had an error. Many of our customers are business partners. They're not a customer online that couldn't shop or something. They're customer service representatives, maybe, or a customer service team, that is experiencing slowness, so they're reporting it very quickly and letting us know. We're able to see those transactions and it's helped with our mean time to repair.

    What needs improvement?

    I'd really like to see more dashboarding abilities. The ability to do workflows within dashboards, being able to start at a high level and click into it with custom dashboards. I think most of the time, we are creating our own custom dashboards, and I'd just like to see more ability with that.

    I would also like to see it baselining more metrics out-of-the-box. We have a lot of rich data, but if someone says, "Well how did that look last week?" If you're looking at a problem and you see, for example, a long SQL statement, is that the root cause, or is it always slow; that kind of thing. It's difficult to take that and say, "Oh the SQL statement was fine last week and it's now slow and it started slow at this specific time." So, it's difficult to get historical data, unless you know in advance what your problems are going to be.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I feel, overall, it is very stable. We have some response-time issues from the product or from the UI, and getting all that massive data back. But overall, the stability, the availability of it, is good.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I think scalability is what we're struggling with. I would say it's okay, but there's a little bit of room for improvement.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We've spoken with tech support several times. We've used them to answer questions and to help us get more value out of Dynatrace. We've also uncovered bugs and they've been able to help us identify those and support has come out with fixes for them. It's been good overall.

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

    We didn't really have a short list. We had another solution that we were using and it just really wasn't fitting the bill anymore and Dynatrace just slipped in. We just started evaluating it and we liked it, so we just went forward.

    How was the initial setup?

    I think with anything that's of a massive scale, there are complexities - even just trying to understand the product. Obviously it's a new product and you're trying to architect something you don't know. There are definitely challenges and hiccups that occur with that.

    I think, overall, the implementation of actually installing was fairly easy. Most of the problems, really, were organizational problems on our end. You know, change-windows being very small, and the testing requirements that we've put in place, caused the implementation to take a while. But the tool itself was pretty easy to implement.

    What other advice do I have?

    When it comes to the nature of digital complexity, and the role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems, we're not really using the cloud very much, so I can't really say for the cloud piece. But I do think that these transactions are more and more complex, and there's so much data. That's one of the great things about Dynatrace is there's so much data, and it's also one of the most difficult parts about Dynatrace, is there's so much data. So having that AI to bubble things up for you, so that you're not searching for a pin in a haystack is definitely the future, I think, for Dynatrace.

    We have used many, many siloed solutions and still do. It's hard to give  those up. The problem is, obviously, everybody is looking at their own silo and looking at their own monitors and, of course, it never looks like it's that silo's problem.

    One solution that could provide real answers, and not just data, is really what we're looking for. It takes the guessing out of monitoring and everybody is seeing through the same window. That's what our team is designed to do, come up with answers, not just provide a lot of data. Obviously, we can send out data to folks, but they're not looking for that. They want your opinion of what the problem is, or what the answer is, not just charts and data. So it's very valuable for our team.

    The criteria we were looking for when choosing an APM solution were the ability to gather metrics on a lot of different technologies and solutions. I was on more of the technical side. The financial side was kind of smoke and mirrors for me. I just evaluated the technical aspects and was looking for a solution that would give us an entire picture of the transaction.

    I would recommend Dynatrace, of course, but I would just mention again, that you have to kind of think about the story that you want to tell. Determine, in advance, the metrics that you're going to want to show over time, for that historical view of data.

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

    What is our primary use case?

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

    How has it helped my organization?

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

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

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

    What is most valuable?

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

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

    What needs improvement?

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

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

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

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

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Three to five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

    How are customer service and technical support?

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

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

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

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

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

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

    We also switched because of the coolest features and support.

    How was the initial setup?

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

    What other advice do I have?

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

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

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user815280 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Staff Performance Engineer at a tech company with 201-500 employees
    Real User
    We use it to find the root cause in production
    Pros and Cons
    • "We use it, in many instances, to find the root cause in production."
    • "Scalability has improved quite a bit from the beginning."

    What is our primary use case?

    We have used it for application performance management (APM). We have been using it for almost seven years now. 

    How has it helped my organization?

    We use it, in many instances, to find the root cause in production. It has definitely helped out in many important critical cases. 

    Business use case: One typical user could take down an entire post. Therefore, we had to institute Dynatrace to find out what is exactly causing it to pull down a question. For example, when you do not know if it is going down, then it causes an outage for the customers. 

    What is most valuable?

    It can actually prorate anomaly prediction (the problem resolution), which was happening in the production. It is quite detailed and deeper in the insights that it provides. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    More than five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Stability is pretty good. Everything run smooth so far.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability has improved quite a bit from the beginning. I have been using the product for so long, and it has transformed quite a bit and is now scalable. 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Initially, when we were onboarding the product, we had to use technical support, especially for contouring the system. We found the technical support to be effective and the resolution time to be good.

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

    I have used other APM tools as well, such as CA Wiley and SiteScope.

    What about the implementation team?

    We had support from the Dynatrace team. They actually flew to us and we were working with the developers. We spent about a week with them understanding the product.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We evaluated New Relic. We were already users of the software Wiley Introscope.

    What other advice do I have?

    Go for it. Implement the solution.

    They want everything in technology to be self-learning, so AI is the future. It is not just somebody who has to be enlisting for time to debug an issue, rather AI will help out at that critical point as to what the solution could be.

    Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: An APM solution has to be simple. We were actually evaluating other products at that point of time. One thing was the deeper insights that it could give. I should be able to pinpoint the issue and see the details. Dynatrace provides that and no other solution was giving any comparable. On top of that, we can't move over to the cloud, so we did not go with any cloud-based solutions. We wanted to have total control, so that was a requirement of the solution, too. 

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