Dynatrace drops dev observability gauntlet for Datadog
Dynatrace and Datadog both plan to ship live debugging tools as they vie for developer attention in the observability market.
LAS VEGAS -- Dynatrace launched a new observability package for developers this week and plans to roll out live debugging of code in production to compete with a tool in preview from rival Datadog.
The new Observability for Developers package from Dynatrace includes dashboards and other common tools, such as snapshots, exceptions and profiling as well as integrations with the Backstage developer self-service portal and IDEs. A forthcoming version of the product will include Dynatrace's latest distributed tracing based on its Grail back end, which automatically correlates traces with log data. Finally, within 90 days, Dynatrace will ship a Live Debugger as part of the developer package, based on its acquisition of startup Rookout in 2023.
Live Debugger was introduced at this week's Perform user conference to applause from the audience during a keynote presentation by Bernd Greifeneder, founder and CTO of Dynatrace.
"[It] sets non-[disruptive] break points [into production] so that the developers can step through the code line by line to review what's actually going on," Greifeneder said. "Without having to bounce any server, without having to interrupt any production process that's going on."
One industry analyst thought of competition with Datadog when he saw the news about Dynatrace Live Debugger and Observability for Developers. Datadog introduced a Live Debugger in preview in June 2024 that will also use AI to generate tests within developer IDEs.
"Developer self-service isn't a technological marvel, but that allows [Dynatrace] to stand its ground and compete against Datadog," said Andy Thurai, an analyst at Constellation Research. "And they claim the troubleshooting time can be cut down by 40% with no additional code. Nothing else needs to be done."
Datadog has established strong appeal among developers, Thurai added.
"They've closed a lot of gaps [over the years], they're very developer-friendly and their sales team has been very aggressive," he said. "[Competitors] are losing accounts to them."
Also on the roadmap for Observability for Developers is a new Error Inspector app that troubleshoots front-end web applications, according to Greifeneder's presentation, which didn't go into detail about how that app will differ from Dynatrace's existing error detection features.
Thurai and another analyst in attendance at Perform, Rob Strechay of TheCube Research, noted that Dynatrace didn't do live demos of Live Debugger or other newly announced products from the keynote stage, and sounded a note of caution that the live debugging products will need to prove themselves in real-world environments .
Still, "assuming the new Live Debugger works the way it's said to work, this is a massive help to the developer of applications, such as GenAI, that are distributed, on-premises, at the edge and built on different platforms and clouds," Strechay said.
Vying for developer hearts and minds
Developers at Dynatrace customer Mitchells & Butlers PLC, a bar and restaurant company in the U.K., have already had access to Dynatrace observability tools but will welcome the Live Debugger and newly packaged dashboards, according to the company's digital readiness manager Mark Forrester.
"We have multiple vendors involved in [software] delivery, so to be able to understand the root cause [of issues], potentially [down to] the line of code would be very helpful," Forrester said in an interview following a breakout session at Perform. "The app developers are going through a … transformation at the moment [to switch from third-party products to apps developed in-house], so [they] obviously are keen to see the information that we're pulling out from Dynatrace."
Some Dynatrace customer attendees are taking a "wait and see" approach with Live Debugger.
"I need to see it in action to really believe it's going to provide value," said a senior manager of enterprise architecture at a digital financial services company in an interview at Perform, who requested anonymity because of company policy prohibiting him from speaking with the press. "That's one of those [things] where I think in a time of need, it can be really valuable. Otherwise, it sits on the shelf."
Another Dynatrace customer had qualms about potential security risks with live debugging.
"Live Debugger is good, but it scares me a little bit in production, because [I'm worried that it] creates a security hole," said Jeff Scelza, staff site reliability engineer at Credit Acceptance, a financial services company based in Southfield, Mich. "But for testing and QA, it could be associated with Dynatrace's [Software Development Lifecycle] SDLC Events based on OpenTelemetry."
A Dynatrace official stressed that Live Debugger does not introduce security vulnerabilities.
"We acquired a company called Rookout from Israel two years ago [as the foundation of Live Debugger], and I think one of their first customers was the Israeli government," said Andreas Grabner, developer activist and a fellow of technology strategy at Dynatrace, in an interview. "I'm pretty sure if we make it into the Israeli government, we are probably doing a good job [with security.]"
In the meantime, Scelza said he has been happier with Dynatrace than with other tools he's used in previous jobs, in part because of its auto-instrumentation with OneAgent that doesn't require separate monitoring data collectors for different application languages, as well as SDLC Events, of which he has been an early adopter.
Scelza added that he's been impressed with the recent improvements to Dynatrace Davis AI CoPilot as well, which some of his company's developers tried out earlier this year following its general availability in October.
"Since we enabled it [in September], it's able to answer more [complex] queries," he said. "A lot of developers, when I show it to them in my presentations within the company, they're like, 'Well, how do I get access to that?'"
Beth Pariseau, senior news writer for Informa TechTarget, is an award-winning veteran of IT journalism covering DevOps. Have a tip? Email her or reach out @PariseauTT.
