Tough Questions: The Intro

DISCLAIMER: I am a current employee of Dynatrace, but all views and opinions expressed in this article are my own and not necessarily shared with the Dynatrace company or its affiliates as a whole.

"How are you different than your competition?"  This is the question I am guaranteed to get asked during every single engagement.  It is also the question I hate the most.  REALLY?! I view my job as showing organizations there is a better way for application development.  When I am engaged in an account I am not thinking "how can I show my tool is superior to another they are checking out", I am trying to prove if you introduce this new wrench into your toolbox, life can be so much easier!

On the other hand, it is a fair question for a someone investigating any solution to ask.  However in all fairness, I personally could say what ever I want at that moment.  The real proof to the differences should not be based on what an individual representative of any company can state, but what can they show (I get the irony in the fact that I am sharing these details over a blog post).  In this next series of blog posts, I am going to go over the tough questions all companies should be asking New Relic, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace.  Why these three?  Well, not only are they Gartner's leading APM vendors (all in the top right of the magic quadrant), they are also the three I feel comfortable discussing the major concerns most companies encounter throughout utilization of the solution.

If you are investigating any of these mentioned solutions.  I strongly encourage you to ask each of them the listed questions pertaining to each solution.  We all have our skeletons and all do some slight of hand when it comes to topics we are not 100% confident in.  I am hoping to put some light on all points of concern for each APM solution provider to help the industry make the best decision possible.


I started writing this and realized there is a common pattern in some areas.  Here is a protip;  Never ask a "Can" questions.

• Can your product follow transactions?
• Can your product integrate with Jenkins?
• Can your solution monitor SAP?
• Can you give visibility into web servers, browser, mobile app, or mainframe
• etc.  

Instead ask "How" questions.

• How do you follow transactions?
• How does your integration with Jenkins look?
• How can your solution monitor SAP?
• How do you get visibility into the web servers, browser, mobile app, or mainframe?

Every vendor can answer yes to a "Can" question.  A "How" questions forces visibility on the technical way a vendor is going to accomplish that feat.  Some (to most of the time) the answer to the "how" questions will show that the vendor will not do what you want.

Continue to New Relic
Continue to AppDynamics
Continue to Dynatrace