Dynatrace today launched UFO -- a device that lights up when issues are detected in application code. When all is well, the UFO lights are green, moving to red as problems are identified to warn engineers of code degradations that could impact the user experience or increase operational costs, Dynatrace says.
The UFOs surfaced at Dynatrace Perform 2017, a conference for the company's partners and customers.
The UFOs arrive as Dynatrace and its rivals promote application performance monitoring (APM) to IT service providers, DevOps teams and businesses that are going digital.
Dynatrace competes with multiple APM rivals -- including AppDynamics (which Cisco Systems is acquiring for $3.7 billion), New Relic (which is extending from APM down to infrastructure monitoring) and potentially DataDog (which is extending from infrastructure monitoring up to APM).
How Dynatrace UFOs Work
The UFOs visualize quality at every stage of the development process, with a separate device for each application or feature team, the company says.
- The top ring of LEDs monitors the ‘trunk’, i.e. the performance of the application as it moved through development, Dynatrace says.
- The lower ring monitors the ‘current sprint’, showing the status of the application once it is in production, Dynatrace adds.
If there are issues that impact digital performance, the LEDs turn red, alerting developers or IT service providers to problems that are impacting the end-user experience. Among the interesting twist: Dynatrace released UFO's design specifications so developers can build their own – assuming they have a 3D printer.
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