Datadog APM -- the company's expansion into application performance monitoring -- has officially launched. Near term, the move allows Datadog partners to extend from infrastructure monitoring to APM. But as Datadog's platform matures over the long haul, potential competition with Cisco AppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic and other players could intensify.
Datadog announced its APM strategy in September 2016, began beta tests and delivered general availability this week.
APM is increasingly important for businesses that want to improve the customer experiences -- regardless of whether the application runs on-premises, mobile, web or in the cloud. APM is particularly popular with DevOps teams, while also starting to catch on with MSPs that are extending beyond device and infrastructure monitoring.
With that realization in mind, Cisco recently acquired AppDynamics for $3.7 billion in cash. (Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel had this reaction to that deal.) At the same time, the market is extending beyond point solutions -- especially as both Datadog and New Relic attempt to compete across APM and infrastructure monitoring.
APM and Application Troubleshooting
Armed with DataDog APM, DevOps teams and MSPs can "quickly troubleshoot issues in highly distributed, service-oriented applications that use microservices, containers, and run across hybrid cloud environments," the company asserts.
The SaaS-based platform, according to Datadog, supports:
- Automatic tracing of individual requests from end to end across hosts and services;
- flame graphs to identify the most frequently used code paths;
- customizable dashboards for data aggregation and correlation;
- built-in collaboration between dev and ops teams;
- smart alerting via email, SMS, and cloud-based collaboration tools;
- anomaly detection based on machine learning; and
- transparent tag-based aggregation of performance data from microservices, containers, and other ephemeral hosts.
Datadog Enterprise starts at US$23 per month per host and includes both infrastructure and application monitoring. Customers can choose hourly, monthly or yearly purchase agreements.
Next Moves
Although APM is a hot market, most of the major players are striving to expand their story beyond that niche. The overriding theme typically involves digital business optimization.
While I'm not an expert on features and pricing, early chatter from those in the know says Datadog's pricing model is quite aggressive -- which could give the company some APM momentum while striving to achieve feature parity with rivals.
