The Dynatrace Innovate event in Amsterdam earlier this month highlighted the company’s push to broaden observability beyond just IT operations. Analyst Gartner describes observability platforms as essential tools for organizations to monitor and enhance the availability, performance, and resilience of their applications and services. Gartner also emphasizes that investing in these platforms can prevent revenue loss and accelerate product development while boosting brand perception.
While IT operations and platform engineering teams have primarily used these tools to track metrics across the IT landscape, Gartner suggests that business analysts can also leverage observability platforms to analyze key business metrics. The central goal remains improving the reliability of increasingly complex IT architectures that keep modern businesses running smoothly.
At the event, Deutsche Telekom discussed its use of Dynatrace for its OneApp and OneShop applications. OneApp helps customers manage data, contracts, invoices, credit, and orders, while OneShop simplifies e-commerce transactions. With Dynatrace’s insights, the telecom giant can anticipate and resolve potential disruptions across its entire IT infrastructure.
During his keynote, Dynatrace CEO Rick McConnell underscored the critical need for business resilience, particularly in light of recent IT outages. He emphasized that observability and application security are non-negotiable components for successful business operations. “Observability has never been more mission critical than it is now,” he stated. “Software must just work perfectly.”
Last year, EDF leveraged Dynatrace’s observability platform to enhance the performance and reliability of its digital services for over 5.2 million customers in the UK. By consolidating multiple tools into one unified platform, Dynatrace supports EDF in identifying and addressing inefficiencies in its tech infrastructure swiftly, improving customer experiences and self-service capabilities.
Observability can also link directly to business metrics. According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report on observability platforms, these tools enable monitoring of business processes, from user journeys like login to checkout, to tracking conversion rates and customer onboarding. Retailer Next is one such example, utilizing Dynatrace across its on-premise and cloud IT systems. They run customer services on Kubernetes in Microsoft Azure while managing back-end systems on-site.
Next is integrating Dynatrace with ServiceNow to assess how IT failures affect its business processes. The company benefits from a flexible licensing model, allowing it to activate features as needed during international expansion. Alex Preston, technology development director at Next, noted that observability provides more detailed insights than traditional business intelligence. “Observability gives us a business feedback loop,” he said, explaining that different demographics respond uniquely to features, which BI might overlook.
Preston highlighted the challenges when trying to understand niche markets, especially when they represent a small audience. “We only get one chance to make a foothold in these markets,” he pointed out.
GigaOm analyst Jon Collins added that effective operational management is key to navigating the upcoming technological shifts. Organizations aim to harness their existing systems to capitalize on AI opportunities, driving increased investment in technology. Yet, current IT setups—covering data, infrastructure, cloud, and applications—often impede progress. Collins remarked, “Solving this first needs visibility, then prioritization.” Organizations need clear answers to urgent questions: “What do we have?” and “Why is it holding us back?” This is precisely the challenge Dynatrace aims to address with its tools.