Datadog Agent

Datadog 's main use case is end-to-end monitoring that helps check problems across infrastructure, application, database, security, and logs.

For example, when checking a problem with a mobile application such as an error from a user hitting a transaction, we check from the client-side mobile device and also from the back end for the API to see if there is latency or an error that triggers the problem. There may be an issue on the database, such as a locking query or high latency on query performance. For infrastructure, if the application is slow, it may be impacted on infrastructure monitoring by CPU and memory consumption.

Datadog  is a powerful observability tool that allows us to correlate and see problems on the infrastructure or application side. In an incident war room, we can see the correlation and the detailed root cause of the problem across real user monitoring, application, database, and infrastructure.

Datadog has positively impacted our organization because our customers are very happy using it. With silo monitoring, where infrastructure has separate monitoring, application has another, and cloud has another, it becomes tricky and complex. We cannot correlate the silo monitoring, and pricing is complicated. With Datadog, we can centralize and use one observability tool for monitoring all components across all features or modules, unifying the monitoring process.

Regarding specific outcomes, I observe that tools with Datadog's capabilities enable us to quickly achieve mean time to detect problems. We can specifically check the root cause analysis of issues from the infrastructure, application, database, or security sides. Mean time to resolve is improved with Datadog since it provides many suggestions and actions to resolve problems, which heavily impacts the business for our application customers when issues arise.

Datadog's best feature is real user monitoring.

I prefer Datadog's real user monitoring most because of its analytics capabilities. First, Datadog is recognized in the Gartner Digital Experience for real user monitoring. Second, the analytics capability is very powerful, enabling us to check the experience of customers first. We can also correlate with the back-end side of the performance for real user monitoring and application monitoring. Finally, the capability of metrics within real user monitoring provides many helpful insights for mobile developers to improve their mobile application performance.

Datadog could improve its pricing because it is very tricky, and most of our customers notice many hidden costs. Additionally, if possible, Datadog should offer deployment options not only for SaaS but also for on-premises solutions, which would benefit banking transactions.

Regarding pricing, it remains tricky with many hidden costs. For technological enhancement, there could be an on-premises option alongside the SaaS version. I also find setting up and configuring Datadog to be very complex.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that it is very tricky due to many hidden costs, so we need to check repeatedly for allotments and commitments regarding what we receive from the license.

My advice for others looking into using Datadog is to initially simplify the technical setup and configuration. Secondly, regarding pricing mechanisms, it would be wise to commit to clear allotments to avoid hidden costs for customers, as it significantly impacts pricing.

I believe Datadog is the largest single observability platform, with correlation as a differentiation factor, enterprise readiness as a measure, and cost management now being a key topic with a very clear roadmap and direction. I would rate this product nine out of ten.