Enhancing Dynatrace Application Performance Monitoring: Strategies for Comprehensive APM Solutions

dynatrace application performance monitoring

Dynatrace is a frontrunner in the realm of Application Performance Monitoring (APM), celebrated for its dynamic approach to automating performance issue detection and harnessing artificial intelligence for profound insights.

Yet, deploying Dynatrace comprehensively can be hindered by certain factors. 

Enterprises often don’t deploy APM tools such as Dynatrace across the entire technology stack—databases, load balancers, networks—due to cost constraints. They typically deploy limited licenses to pinpoint only the most critical performance, availability, and scalability issues.

This approach might miss key components, potentially diminishing the effectiveness of monitoring and management strategies and adversely affecting user experience, revenue, and brand reputation.

That’s where Application Performance Management solution providers like Avekshaa come in to enhance the utility of APM tools. As adept users of Dynatrace and with decades of industry experience, they expand APM capabilities using their intellectual property, proven methodologies, and micro tools.

This piece serves as a roadmap for augmenting the Dynatrace APM tool with an Application Performance Management solution like Avekshaa to empower enterprises with a cost-effective strategy to ensure their business apps and IT systems perform optimally, remain available, and scale as needed.

The Role of an Application Performance Management Solution

According to McKinsey & Company, improving customer experience can lead to a reduction in customer churn by up to 15%. Application Performance Management can be instrumental in improving customer experience.

Application Performance Management aims to consistently enhance the Quality-of-Service (QoS) for production applications by facilitating full-stack observability. Proactively boosting Performance, Availability, and Scalability (P-A-S) helps avoid unexpected P-A-S failures in essential business applications, ensuring a continuous, exceptional customer experience.

Here are some ways in which Application Performance Management helps in delivering the promise of exceptional customer experience:

Shift Left-Shift Right Strategy

Traditional APM focuses primarily on identifying and resolving issues post-deployment, often leading to missed opportunities for optimization and increased operational costs.

By embedding performance engineering early in the development phase (Shift Left) through architecture, design, code review, and continuously monitoring and optimizing applications in production (Shift Right), organizations can proactively manage application performance, leading to more stable and efficient systems.

Ensuring Quality-of-Service Excellence

Ensuring consistent quality of service is challenging in complex, dynamic IT environments, where performance can vary widely across different components.

A comprehensive APM strategy prioritizes quality of service by continuously monitoring and adjusting system components to meet performance targets.

Leveraging tools like Dynatrace can pinpoint areas for improvement, such as reducing login times from two seconds to 500 milliseconds or increasing service availability from 98% to 99%, enhancing user satisfaction through proactive performance optimization. However, an APM solution shall help in identifying ways to achieve this Q-o-S excellence.

Proactive Performance, Reliability Engineering, and Capacity Planning

Modern applications, particularly those with microservices architectures, face significant challenges in performance and reliability due to their complexity. Proactive engineering practices integrated into the DevOps workflow are crucial for early identification and mitigation of potential issues. 

This comprehensive strategy includes pre-production performance testing to address issues ahead of time and capacity planning to effectively forecast and prepare for future system demands.

For example, for an e-commerce platform integrating UPI payments, simulating peak transaction loads before launch can verify the system’s capacity to handle high traffic and payment processing volumes, ensuring smooth operations during critical sales periods.

Integration and Third-Party System Coverage

Applications often interact with external systems and services, but traditional APM tools may not fully monitor these interactions, potentially leaving blind spots in overall application performance.

Extending APM capabilities to cover both downstream and upstream systems ensures comprehensive monitoring of all external integrations. This approach provides insights into how third-party services affect application performance and user experience.

For a mobile banking application integrating with a payment gateway, extending monitoring to cover the gateway’s response times and availability can help identify bottlenecks or downtime that impact transaction completion rates, allowing for timely corrective actions.

Configuration Review and Optimization

Optimal configuration of application and infrastructure components is crucial for performance, yet manual configuration processes are prone to errors and inefficiencies.

Conducting regular configuration reviews and optimization exercises ensures that all components are finely tuned for optimal performance. This involves analyzing configuration parameters across the technology stack (application servers, databases, load balancers) to identify and implement improvements.

A review of database configurations might reveal that adjustments to connection pool sizes or query cache settings could significantly reduce latency and increase throughput for a high-traffic e-commerce platform, enhancing the shopping experience for users during peak sale periods.

This rapid detection (low MTTD – Mean-Time-To-Detect) coupled with predefined response protocols (reducing Mean-Time-To-Resolve) ensures minimal disruption to transactions, even during peak shopping seasons.

Leveraging Significant Industry Experience

Organizations often lack the specialized knowledge required to fully exploit APM tools and interpret the data they produce effectively.

Drawing on significant industry experience, seasoned APM solution providers can offer insights and best practices that augment the core capabilities of tools like Dynatrace. This expertise ensures that APM strategies are aligned with industry standards and tailored to specific operational contexts.

One such distinguished APM provider is Avekshaa, which has earned the trust of numerous esteemed enterprises in India, including Axis Bank, ICICI Bank,  Reliance Jio, IndiaBulls, and IndusInd Bank, among others. Let’s see why!

dynatrace application performance monitoring #1: Avekshaa

What Sets Avekshaa Apart As Your Application Performance Management Solution Provider?

Avekshaa Technologies stands out in the Application Performance Management (APM) field with its unique blend of proprietary solutions, extensive expertise, and unwavering commitment to client success. Discover the key factors that elevate Avekshaa above the competition:

1. Robust Knowledge Base: With a repository rich in over 5,000+ resolved issues, Avekshaa brings unparalleled expertise spanning 60 industry sectors. This extensive experience enables the swift and effective resolution of intricate challenges related to performance, availability, and scalability.

2. Proprietary P-A-S-S Assurance Platform: Avekshaa’s P-A-S-S (Performance, Availability, Scalability, and Security) Platform, built on unique intellectual properties, provides a sustainable edge in technology. This platform sets Avekshaa apart, offering a holistic and advanced solution for application performance management.

Source – P-A-S-S™ Assurance Platform

3. Micro-tools developed by Avekshaa: These tools accentuate the diagnostic capabilities of APM solutions. These tools allow for a more granular analysis of performance data, enabling precise identification and resolution of issues.

The AWR Parser can analyze database workload reports to identify inefficient SQL queries, while the Thread Dump Analyzer can pinpoint deadlock situations in application threads, enabling targeted optimizations.

4. High Customer Retention Rate: A remarkable 70% repeat business rate demonstrates Avekshaa’s ability to build trust and deliver consistent value. This statistic highlights the company’s dedication to quality and long-term client relationships.

5. Comprehensive Full-Stack Observability: Avekshaa’s strategy includes a deep focus on full-stack observability, ensuring every layer of the technology stack is monitored and optimized. Reducing Mean Time to Detect(MTTD) and Mean Time to Repair(MTTR) enhances system availability and performance, positively affecting the bottom line.

6. Focus on Cost Efficiency: Avekshaa prioritizes solutions that reduce the total cost of ownership. By optimizing infrastructure and full-stack costs, the company ensures clients receive the most efficient and effective solutions, irrespective of technology or vendor.

7. Trusted by Global Enterprises: Garnering trust from industry giants, Avekshaa is recognized for its unwavering commitment to the highest standards of service and reliability. This prestigious trust positions Avekshaa as the go-to partner for businesses across the globe seeking excellence in application performance management.

Avekshaa’s strategic focus on comprehensive observability, alongside its efforts to minimize operational costs and boost system reliability, firmly establishes it as a leader in the APM sector.

Success Story: Avekshaa and Dynatrace in Action

A prominent private sector bank in India encountered significant hurdles in ensuring the quality of service for its essential applications, such as Internet banking, mobile banking, payment apps, and CRM systems. The objective was to boost the performance and reliability of these digital services to guarantee customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Solution by Avekshaa Technologies: Leveraging its Application Performance Management expertise alongside Dynatrace’s advanced monitoring capabilities, Avekshaa Technologies addressed these challenges. The strategy was comprehensive, targeting critical areas within the bank’s IT infrastructure and application suite for optimization.

Integration Techniques and Results:

  • Payment Transaction Success Rate: Improved dramatically from 93.9% to 99.9%, enhancing customer trust and significantly reducing transaction failures for a smoother banking experience.
  • Scalability and Cost Reduction: Achieved 30-40% scalability improvements, along with reductions in infrastructure and overall costs, demonstrating more efficient resource utilization.
  • Enhanced User Experience: Response times for critical applications improved by 25-30%, leading to a faster and more responsive user experience, crucial for retaining customers.
  • Increased User Productivity: A 95% decrease in calls related to performance, availability, and scalability issues was reported by the call center, indicating higher system reliability.
  • Improved Conversion Rate: The loan application to disbursement journey saw a 20% improvement in conversion rate, reflecting a more streamlined process.

This narrative underscores the effectiveness of Avekshaa’s Application Performance Management solutions in complementing Dynatrace’s monitoring capabilities. The strategic enhancements not only resolved existing performance issues but also prepared the bank’s IT infrastructure for future growth and resilience.

Discover how Avekshaa, in conjunction with the Dynatrace APM solution and the P-A-S-S™ Platform, can elevate your application performance, aligning technology with business goals. Transform your IT operations for lasting achievement by engaging with Avekshaa’s experts now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some commonly asked questions:

1. What is Application Performance Monitoring?

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) involves monitoring software and telemetry data to track essential performance metrics of software applications. APM is utilized to guarantee system availability, enhance service performance and response times, and enhance user experiences.

2. Is Dynatrace an APM tool?

Dynatrace has earned the title of the leader in the field of Application Performance Management (APM).

3. What is Dynatrace used for?

Dynatrace stands as a game-changing platform, providing unified observability and security through analytics and automation. With the power of causal AI, it excels at automating DevSecOps on a large scale, delivering precise answers that empower teams to innovate and succeed in today’s cloud-centric landscape.

4. How do I check my Dynatrace performance?

If you pick a user action, you’ll land on the user action overview page for detailed analysis. Alternatively, clicking ‘View Full Details’ in the bottom right corner provides a comprehensive performance and user action analysis across multiple dimensions.

5. What are the features of Dynatrace APM?

The following are the features and benefits of Dynatrace APM.

  • Automatic Discovery and Mapping: OneAgent technology maps your application landscape in real-time.
  • Real User Monitoring (RUM): Advanced analytics for understanding user behavior and interaction patterns.
  • End-to-End Observability: Integrates with cloud platforms for a comprehensive view of your tech stack.
  • Root-Cause Analysis: AI-driven Davis correlates data points to identify and assess the impact of issues.
  • Code-Level Insights: PurePath technology offers deep insights into application code.
  • Infrastructure Monitoring: Covers both on-premises and cloud environments.
  • Real-Time Metrics: Provides immediate data collection and analysis.
  • Mobile and Desktop Monitoring: Tracks user interactions across platforms.

6. What are the features of Dynatrace APM?

Benefits of Dynatrace Application Performance Monitoring:

  • Comprehensive Monitoring: Offers a full-stack view for identifying performance bottlenecks.
  • Enhanced User Experience: Real-time monitoring of user interactions for immediate issue detection.
  • Advanced Error Detection: In-depth diagnostics for quick issue resolution.
  • AI-Powered Proactive Resolution: Predictive problem-solving with automated anomaly detection.
  • Unified Monitoring: Consolidates tools into a single platform for operational efficiency.
  • Business-Oriented Insights: Links performance metrics with business outcomes for strategic IT decisions.

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