3171: Dynatrace Perform: AI Observability, and the Future of Autonomous IT

[00:00:04] Welcome back to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast, where we're diving into the latest innovations shaping the worlds of business and technology. And today I'm thrilled to be recording live from Dynatrace Perform in Las Vegas. And I'm even more excited to welcome back to the show, Steve Tack, Chief Product Officer at Dynatrace, so he could complete his hat trick of appearances on the show.

[00:00:29] And Steve has been instrumental in driving Dynatrace's product strategy, ensuring that organisations can better navigate the complex world of observability, AI and cloud-native security. And we've enjoyed some fantastic conversations over the years, but today marks the first time we're recording face-to-face at Dynatrace Perform, and there is lots to discuss. So many big announcements coming out of the show this year.

[00:00:54] Especially with AI transforming IT operations, the evolution of AIOps and the increasing importance of context in security, I think there's never been a more crucial time to explore how enterprises can adopt a proactive rather than reactive approach to IT management.

[00:01:14] And of course, Dynatrace has made some big announcements this year, from expanding its AI-powered observability capabilities to enhancing cloud security posture management, or CSPM. All of which we're going to attempt to unpack today.

[00:01:30] So whether you are tuning in from your office, your morning commute, or halfway across the world, get ready for a deep dive into the future of enterprise IT, and join me in learning why AI and observability are increasingly looking like the perfect pairing. And also, how businesses can move from simply collecting data to making smarter, faster decisions with it. But enough from me. It's time to beam your ears all the way to the show floor, where Steve is waiting to talk with us today.

[00:02:00] So a massive warm welcome back to the show, Steve. We've spoken many times over the years, but I think this is the first time we get to meet in person at Dynatrace Perform. But can you remind everyone listening that has missed our previous conversations a little about who you are and your role at Dynatrace too? Yeah, well, thank you for coming to Vegas and joining us. My name is Steve, and I'm the Chief Product Officer for Dynatrace.

[00:02:22] So I spend a lot of my time both working with customers and others in the market around the problems and needs that they have, and then using that to shape the roadmap and our investment themes at Dynatrace. Well, it's great to be recording this in person with you today. We're recording at Dynatrace Perform in Vegas. But for the people around the world listening in their hometown or their commute thousands of miles away on the commute to the office,

[00:02:47] can you set the scene and tell them more about exactly what the event is and also the big product announcements coming out from the keynotes this week? Absolutely. So Dynatrace Perform is where we bring all of our best customers, prospects, technology alliance partners together in one spot to really dig into what the world's evolving towards within observability,

[00:03:10] unified security, the role that AI is playing, how they're evolving their processes and driving really their enterprises forward. So we're tackling some great topics this week, sharing the news around the product advancements, like you noted. And I'm happy to drive through a couple of those in whatever level of detail you'd like.

[00:03:29] Well, predictably, of course, I'm hearing more and more about AI's role in creating a more autonomous enterprise IT, solving problems like alert fatigue, which every IT team feels right now. So what excites you most about the opportunities of leveraging AI in observability? Because that phrase together, AI and observability, that seems to be a big thing. Yeah, it's huge. And you can really understand how enterprises are struggling.

[00:03:53] Just when you look at cloud native, AI native architectures, the scale, the dynamism, the change that they're rolling through really does outpace a human's ability to do it on their own. So at Dynatrace, I like to really talk about AI in terms of three themes. So the first is AI operations and the use of AI to better detect anomalies, solve root cause, things along those lines. Those are areas that Dynatrace has really excelled in for years.

[00:04:21] And we continue to reinvent and invest in those areas. The second part is then about observability of AI workloads. And I think that's an area where there's a ton of interest right now as people adopt LLMs and drive AI native services back to their organizations. They're really looking at how can we operationalize this? How can we scale it, secure it, et cetera? And then the final piece is AI in terms of expanding it out to more audiences.

[00:04:50] So using it as a natural language interface, allowing people to engage with AI and Dynatrace specifically that they haven't had the opportunity to in the past. So it goes from a very technical topic to expanding across those business and technology integrations and intersection points.

[00:05:07] And there's also been a few announcements here around how Dynatrace is expanding its AI ops capabilities to accelerate things like problem resolution and ultimately enable customers to adopt a more proactive than reactive approach to remediation. So can you expand on what that means for teams? Yeah. Well, so the concept around autonomous operations or preventative is not actually necessarily new.

[00:05:33] Like this is something that the industry has aspired to for a while, but the way I kind of think about it is the raw ingredients weren't there at that point in time when we talked about it years ago to really deliver on it. And it's kind of like people talk about their ideas on YouTube and how they can make that possible. But without high-speed internet, without JavaScript, it wasn't possible. So I really think we're at the point in time now where the ingredients are coming together.

[00:06:00] And you have with Dynatrace not only the ability to have precise answers from our AI operations capabilities, but then also the workflows to provide that ability to preempt the problems and really do that closed-loop view as well to ensure that it's resolved. We're meeting the business needs in terms of scale and moving that forward. And so that's really around things like predictive AI.

[00:06:26] So enhancing the Dynatrace Davis AI engine to understand things like seasonality and scheduled demand. And are we auto-scaling our Kubernetes clusters appropriately to meet that demand? And driving through examples like that. So it's a super exciting time because we're hearing from customers how they're leveraging that, how they're baking it into their processes. And part of it is they also needed to have the right cloud-native architectures to advance. And that's kind of why I made that analogy about the ingredients that are coming together.

[00:06:55] It's been an aspiration for a while, but now you can see the ability to deliver on that promise. And another big topic here is security. There's a great line in the keynotes today around the importance of context in security. And technology often gets a bad rap for removing context in our world, but now it seems to be bringing it back, which is a fantastic thing. And security portfolio with cloud security posture management or CSPM are also big themes here. So can you tell me a little bit more about these announcements? Yeah.

[00:07:26] So it is context is king, and we really see that coming through. If you look at what was happening prior, there was just such a data deluge that you really couldn't make your way through that data. And that's where Dynatrace does bring logs, traces, metrics, business events, metadata, the topology information all together to give that. Now, how does that then apply to security? I guess starting with one perspective that the observability and runtime is really what makes that unique.

[00:07:55] A lot of the security practices are maybe more tests before you push to production or they're static points in time. And we think there's a huge benefit of having that runtime view. And with Dynatrace, there are three parts that we're bringing forward. So in kind of a shorthand, the first one is vulnerabilities and exploits. And that's something that we've been doing for a little while now, making sure that we see at runtime, are there any threats, any packages, libraries that might be a potential issue that could be exploited?

[00:08:25] Second part is, back to your context point, log analytics. So there's a lot of data in those logs. But now we can bring that into context with traces and help people do the forensics and more the exploratory analytics that when there is a problem driving that forward. The missing piece, which we just recently added, we announced, is the cloud security posture management.

[00:08:46] So are there misconfigurations that might be at play across your multi-hybrid, hyperscaler environment that now we can bring in and really complete that picture? So it's all about the runtime view, but having the right data to drive the right answers from as well. And of course, one of the best thing about attending any tech conference is the conversations that you have on the show floor, far away from the keynotes.

[00:09:09] I mean, I've sure the last couple of weeks you've been focusing everything on delivering all these messages only to hear different conversations on the show floor. So I'm curious, are there any trends in the kind of conversations that you're hearing and having with your clients? What are people talking about this year? Is it automation, agentic AI, AI observability, or is it something else? You hit the nail on the head with AI observability.

[00:09:31] I mean, that is the one because if you think about just how much it's in the bloodstream right now in media, every organization is trying to figure out how they can harness AI for an advantage to give a better experience to their users. And it's so – I mean, the change is so rapid in this environment right now in terms of what we've seen, how it's evolving. The services provided by AWS, GCP, and Microsoft. So that's really got people on their toes because they see the opportunity.

[00:09:59] But then it's how do we actually deliver on it beyond sort of the proof of concept. So that's one really big theme. The other big theme, and I'll introduce it and maybe we'll come back to it, is just around the way they're organizing themselves. What's the structure? What's the team topology to make sure that they can move fast but also without removing any of the collaboration that's needed across these topics?

[00:10:24] So when you put all those things together, the announcements you've made, the conversations you're hearing, how are you at Diana Trace responding to those needs, those requests and calls for help, and also evolving with those requests? Yeah, the key part for that is really close interaction with customers as we drive through this. So this might be a little bit more behind the scenes in how the sausage is made. But we drive preview programs. We drive very early stage.

[00:10:51] Our interactions with customers start well, well before any sort of just an early release beta program, things like that. But it's really the co-creation and the design. And that's putting ourselves, the customer, and then their strategic partners like an AWS or one of the other hyperscalers in the room to make sure that we're staying ahead of the needs or at least working our way through those evolutions together. So that's really the key part for us. And we're currently three years into the AI hype that we've seen over the last few years.

[00:11:20] But I think we are beginning to see maturity and a focus on things like ROI, measurable improvements from those AI projects. So how do you see things like enterprise AI, observability? How do you see all these things evolving in the next year to meet these goals and requirements of any tech project? Yeah, very good question. And I think what's really started to change is that we've gone from exploration. We've gone through proof of concepts.

[00:11:48] And you're starting to see some of these programs being driven at scale. And with an enterprise, obviously, you have to consider is it resilient? Is it secure? Are we not leaking anything to an LLM to be trained on, et cetera? So there's a lot of – I don't want to say boring things, but like the right sort of controls being put in play. But you're starting to see people get comfortable with that and starting to drive them forward.

[00:12:12] And that's where customers like this afternoon, Northwestern Mutual is going to be on stage talking about some of the ways that they're harnessing AI and then how Dynatrace helps them with the observability of those AI and LLM-based services to make sure that they're delivering on the promise back to the business. So, yeah, we're years into the hype. I think in tech, you sometimes run into those situations where it either fizzles out or continues to expand and gain momentum.

[00:12:40] And definitely AI is on the latter side of that in terms of how they're using Gen AI and other types of AI to drive those business results. So it's a super exciting time. I love hearing about what the customers are doing. I always learn here at these sessions as well. As much as we try to do with customers, you always – yeah, it's just really – it's inspiring to see what they're doing. And to bring to life everything we're talking about here today, whether it be the customer conversations, the big announcements, the work you're doing, there will be a lot of business leaders listening

[00:13:09] that are kind of caught between two worlds, the old way of doing things and where we're heading. Do you have a use case that will just allow people listening to envision how enterprise IT will be used, how it will work in the future, AI observability, what all this means inside the typical enterprise? Yeah. Well, it's another one of those common themes that we started to talk about a little bit ago. It's really about how these teams are converging and working more closely together.

[00:13:37] So we've heard about DevOps. We've learned through those experiences. But one of the really cool trends that I think has a power to deliver on those areas is platform engineering. And so how do we create self-service style engagements with the development teams so that they can move fast, but yet they still have the proper security observability structures around that? How do they have the right automation driven as part of that as well?

[00:14:04] And so I think if I'm an IT leader, if I'm a business leader, I'm trying to understand how do I achieve that speed? How do I deliver on these new projects like AI initiatives that are taking root and growing and driving it forward? And so we'll hear many different examples across that. People are really looking towards how do we give those development teams the autonomy to drive, but with all the right enterprise control around it as well. And so that I think will be a very key theme that we see throughout the show.

[00:14:34] And I think your passion and excitement for everything that you do really came across on stage today. It's the kind of enthusiasm I've not seen since I think Dave Anderson did full stack maybe on stage. Maybe that's something we could do next year to knock you out of the pot. But what is it that excites you about everything that we've talked about today? So the thing that's exciting for me, and actually someone was asking me this last night, what I love about Perform is it's a little bit of an opportunity to reflect how far we've come on the last year.

[00:15:02] And so we've got customers that are up on stage and they're talking about things that were concepts one or two years ago, and they're talking about what is delivering for them, how they're getting that value. So it's kind of like, I don't know if it's a leapfrog analogy or whatever, because obviously we're continuing to innovate throughout the year, every other week releasing capabilities to customers. But just seeing those announcements turn into this is how it changes the way they drive their business and the value they get from it.

[00:15:31] So I am excited. Love hearing the customer stories especially. That's my favorite part. Love hearing about how the partners have built offerings to help enterprise customers receive value as well. Yeah, it's one thing to announce something. It's so much more impactful to then see it put into practice. And obviously we're only a few days in here, but you're doing back-to-back interviews, keynotes, etc., wandering the show floor, maybe having a look around there. What are you going to be reflecting on that plane ride home? Anything you're going to be thinking about?

[00:16:01] Well, the business didn't stop just for Perform. So we took a pause midstream. But not to be repetitive, but no, what it's really inspiring is on the customer and partner side. I mean, it'll punctuate some things. It'll give us more confidence that some of these tracks are the right ones we're building down. There might be changes that we drive.

[00:16:30] The customer feedback loop is so critical to us in the way we think about those needs that we need to deliver back into the industry. So, yeah, development teams, observability, unified security, along with powered by observability, runtime data, these are all themes that I think are very durable, and you can count on us to continue to deliver across these areas and make sure that we're putting the customers first and focusing on making sure that they can deliver

[00:16:57] on these crazy new cloud and the iNative initiatives that they're driving. And there are so many big announcements coming out of the event this week. There'll be more throughout the year. Where would you like to point everyone listening that want to find out more information about anything we talked about and keep up to speed with the pace of all this? Yeah, well, of course. While we would love to have as many people here, and I'm glad that you're able to join us live, all of this is being live streamed, all of it's being captured. So we'll make sure to provide the perform replay information.

[00:17:27] But no, Dynatrace.com is where a lot of this information will continue to live. We try to be as transparent with the information as we can in terms of what we're delivering and would love anyone to watch the replays, get inspired, see how they can apply Dynatrace in different ways to their upcoming initiatives. Well, thank you for sitting down with me today and completing your hat-trick appearance as Tech Talks, David. I know you're busy. You've probably got to dash off for another interview now, but just thank you for taking the time to sit down with me.

[00:17:55] Well, thank you so much for joining us in Vegas, and I hope you get a lot out of the rest of the show and also get inspired by some of those customer and different initiatives that we'll all be talking about. Wow. Steve is an incredibly cool guy, and it is always a pleasure to have him join me on the podcast. But for me, this time is extra special because we've got to record it live here at Dynatrace Perform in Vegas. As for takeaways, I think AI in IT isn't just about automation. It's about intelligence.

[00:18:26] Whether it be predictive AI helping enterprises prevent issues before they happen, or enhance cloud security that brings much-needed context back into cybersecurity, I think we're seeing a next evolution of how technology can help IT teams work smarter, not harder. And as someone that's been in one of those IT teams, this is music to my ears. But I also love Steve's analogy today about having the right ingredients,

[00:18:53] and how those ingredients are finally coming together. Because yes, we've talked about automation and AI-driven IT for years now, but only now are we beginning to have the infrastructure, the cloud-native architectures, and the technology to make it a reality. So if today's discussion piqued your interest, you can catch all the keynotes and product announcements on demand. Head over to dinatrace.com to explore anything that was unveiled at Perform.

[00:19:22] And as always, love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the future of AI in IT? AI observability, AI ops, security. We've covered a lot there. Drop me a message on LinkedIn, X, or Instagram at neilchughes. My website techblogwriter.co.uk. And my email is techblogwriter at outlook.com. But a huge thank you to Steve and the Diner Trace team for inviting me along to perform,

[00:19:51] and to each and every one of you for tuning into the conversations that we're having. But until next time, stay curious, stay innovative, and I'll see you in the next episode bright and early tomorrow. Bye for now.