The Dynatrace ‘Untouchables’ team took to the Las Vegas stage at this year’s Perform conference to deliver the biggest product updates and launches planned for the coming year.
Made up of five experts form the Product Management field, the Untouchables team explained each element of Dynatrace’s new platform. Led by Florian Ortner, Chief Product Officer at Dynatrace, his fellow four members include Guido Deinhammer, Senior Director Product Management and Pawel Brzoska, Alexander Sommer and Simon Scheurer, each of which are fellow Directors of Product Management at Dynatrace.
Management Zones
Before customers can do anything else, how on earth are they meant to carry out effective operations if there is no route management? To work effectively, a company needs focus and context and that is exactly what Dynatrace has built with Management Zones.
Led by Untouchable Guido Deinhammer, this addition to the platform creates a holistic view of all the processes, applications and servers running through the company. It offers an easy way to identify the problem through an integrated system; instead of different teams looking for the same error, they can work together to find the problem.
Management Zones, available in Public Beta in March, use context of both the problem and the team in order to filter who needs to locate the problem. During the demonstration, Deinhammer said:
“The system is built to focus on what is relevant to a team,” Guido said. “Once alerted, the system can publish the problem description and those who need to be included can start a conversation within the system to bring expertise on how to solve a problem.”
Log Analytics
What was once a long haul process to carry out, Dynatrace has now made simple and quick. In comparison to past systems, Dynatrace has created a one-agent stream to log all content from an organisation’s database and systems. Metaphorically, Pawel Brzoska compared the log analytics capability ‘as easy for you as getting your morning coffee’.
Log analytics is a single agent operation that can analyse the performance of any aspect of the business and pinpoint the element of the application that is responsible for the problem. Compared to older systems, when developers would have to trawl through mass amounts of analytics to identify the problem, Dynatrace’s approach uses AI to identify the problem in a matter of seconds or minutes.
The capability allows customers to view the different levels of the full stack and monitor which teams are talking to one another, how many processes are running and exactly what they are doing with one another. It creates a singular location for organisations to monitor actions and processes across the company in one place. It enables auto-discovery of log files and brings easy access to the data and in doing so betters monitor performance.
This is just the start of what is to come, according to the Brzoska and the team at Dynatrace, with more capabilities being added for analytics. Other additions for cloud platforms and capabilities for charts and tables will also be added in the future. Log Analytics thrives on less is more, seeing only what is needed and is available in Public BETA in March.
Digital Experience
At the heart of all Dynatrace’s capabilities is the customer.
“Who cares about the products, if your customers don’t have a good experience,” Alexander Sommer asked the audience.
With the new platform, Dynatrace has introduced a new view bringing a multi-dimension analysis view to customers. The platform brings a better experience by reducing the time it takes to find and solve a problem, with real-time monitoring available everywhere through the platform.
User monitoring and back end monitoring works together to find the best data and solution. In the new platform, business impacts are automatically fed back to the customer. The digital experience is important to create a platform that allows customers to look at everything in a modern way. Additionally, a perk to the Dynatrace platform is that customers can create a personal view rather than a standard platform applicable to everyone.
Key performance metrics are brought in with the digital experience, to analyse the behaviour, activities and performance. The platform allows these metrics to feed back the necessary information to better the experience, thus improving time, cost and quality efficiency for the customer and user. Key performance metrics and analytics will be available in GA in March and in BETA in February.
Session Replay
Seemingly one of the most favoured capabilities from the new platform is the ability to replay the user error in real-time. In doing so, it allows the owner to pinpoint the exact moment that the error occurred and identify who is responsible for the problem and therefore how to fix it.
Creating this capability changes the way companies assess and solve errors in formatting and processing business offers. For example, if a user is trying to book a holiday and cannot continue after clicking confirm, it will send an alert back to the main dashboard. The company can then replay the exact instance and find the exact moment the problem occurred.
Welcome to Dynatrace Session Replay! Here’s a brief sneak peek. #Perform2018 pic.twitter.com/seZ5eZLjSK
— Dynatrace (@Dynatrace) January 30, 2018
“We added session replay to Dynatrace to jump to where the problem occurred and look at what was happening and figure out the best way to find a solution. Session replay brings better visibility to a broader team, its gone form engaging data into actions and the next stage is engaging with customers which is what session replay allows,” Simon Scheurer, said.
From the replay, all the relevant information will be sent back to DevOps teams to help them improve applications and the support process in the future. Easy management, access and capability is what stands Dynatrace out from the crowd boosting the capability to more companies. Session Replay will be available for early access in early March.
Available in March this year, Scheurer said: “Session replay gives customers every move every click and entire visual experience and we did it the Dynatrace way.”
Each of the four capabilities announced at Perform 2018 will enable a reacting and shaping capability from an organisation to best solve a problem. The aim of the capabilities is to build a culture that becomes ‘as easy as walking’ and instead of just operating a system, Dynatrace must be built into the fibres of the company so it is always on and always running.
