Latest Dynatrace announcements convincingly demonstrate that customer focus pays off!

By Rich Ptak

Dynatrace went private late last year; the change is clearly paying off for them and their customers. CEO John Van Siclen managed a record breaking year with a 31% growth in net-new customers, and 95% revenue growth in emerging (BRIC) markets. The list includes Adobe, KLM, Samsung, Alibaba, Swiss Life, etc., demonstrating cross-industry appeal. New growth along with a 91% renewal rate by the existing customers gives them a base of more than 6000 customers. Dynatrace was once again named the world’s APM Market Share leader, seizing 12.5% of the market share in a highly competitive space, with revenues more than $100M ahead of their nearest rival. Additionally, the Dynatrace APM Community has grown to more than 103,000 members with 1,000 new sign-ups per month.

They attribute their success to a strategy based on four beliefs:

1. It all starts and ends with the digital customers’ experience – it’s the delivery of the digital service to the end customer, not just the performance of the backend application or quality of the product that matters;
2. It’s all about preventing problems, not simply reacting – recognizing and acting BEFORE the customer is affected;
3. Gap-free (end-to-end) data is essential – need to capture, leverage and exploit all available data from whatever source to enable a digital business;
4. The goal is DEV/Ops not merely ops – functions must communicate, coordinate and collaborate for success.

In our opinion it’s the degree to which they integrate these beliefs into their operations that makes them so successful. The focus on the customer permeates everything. They understand that their success depends on their ability to help customers succeed. And, that means providing the best customer experience possible.

Their focus was obvious throughout the business review; with nary a word about a product except as it impacts, benefits and contributes to the success of customer operations. Specific details of implementation and a demo are there if you want them. But, the major focus is on demonstrating their knowledge of what the customer is trying to do, and then demonstrating that Dynatrace is the one that can help them do it.

So, Dynatrace’s total focus is on helping digital businesses be successful by helping them become experts in three disciplines. These are: 1) optimizing and understanding the customer experience delivered anywhere, anytime and anyplace, 2) the continuous delivery of new digital capabilities by facilitating, actionable communication and collaboration among business, operations and development staffs, and 3) optimizing application performance by simplifying operations based on the complete visibility of what is taking place across the delivery chain.

  The strategy to accomplish the task they’ve taken on is as follows:

1. Provide complete visibility in real-time of the experience of all targeted customers for all relevant devices,
2. Break down barriers between Business, Development and Operations staffs with the most comprehensive coverage of enterprise use-case and insights into competitor performance,
3. Apply their extensive expertise to leverage built-in and external analytics applied to all available, relevant data to optimize performance,
4. Crowd-sourced testing networks, for high fidelity measurement of customer experience,
5. Provide fastest Time-to-Value with easy-to-use tools for analysis and reporting such as self-service Quick-start guides for users.

Dynatrace shows no indication of slowing down. They are strengthening their ability to monitor and report on user experience and behavior monitoring in a merger with Keynote. Clients will have the most timely and accurate information to assure an optimal experience for their users and customers. We recommend you check out the Dynatrace website for product details. We’ll conclude with congratulations to the company for finishing their year so far ahead of their competition.