Similar message, different company: Datadog has developed a cloud monitoring service that let's you "see it all in one place" -- your servers, clouds, metrics, apps, team, etc. So what's different here? About $31 million in Series C funding, which the company disclosed earlier this year.
Datadog already allows small, midsize and large businesses to monitor Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. But the bigger opportunities ahead may involve Docker and other container technologies that allow developers to more easily move applications from one system to another.
"Single dashboard," "one dashboard for all" and "single pane of glass" concepts aren't new. We've heard that rally cry during every stage of IT... from mainframes to client-server, Internet and now cloud-mobile. But with each new wave, the effort to deliver that single pane of glass to IT managers becomes more difficult.
Why? Because we've never had more platforms (mainframe, cloud, Windows, Linux, VMware, iOS, Android, etc.) running in such a distributed way (cloud, hybrid, on-premises, mobile anywhere). Painting a dashboard to properly monitor and manage all of those platforms involves deep pockets and plenty of creativity.
A lengthy list of software vendors delivers single panes to small business IT managers. Distelli delivers the single pane to DevOps. IT operating specialist NetEnrich says it can monitor a range of third-party clouds for customers. Heck, even Google Cloud Monitoring can increasingly keep tabs on third-party clouds like Amazon Web Services. And now Datadog is the latest "single pane" company raising big dollars.
Still, I wonder: Has the single pane of glass finally arrived? Will the real pain -- cross-platform IT management from one dashboard -- ever truly get solved?
