The finance industry generates lots of data. To ensure everything is working as it should, manage it correctly, and provide critical insights, someone must be responsible for monitoring this data with precision and by using the right tool. One of such people is our Community member – Kenneth Gillette – who, quoting his own words, learned that “performance issues are like puzzles that you have to solve on the computer.”
We’re happy to introduce the Community Member of the Month for January 2022 – @Kenny_Gillette, who is passionate not only about technology. Learn more about him in the below article.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Can you tell us a little bit about your professional life? Where do you work, and what do you do in your role?
I have been working at a financial company as a Senior Engineer/Dynatrace Engineer for over 4 years. Our team moved from AppMon to an all-in-one Dynatrace and we are very happy that we did. I have been in the IT industry for over 20 years and have been working with Dynatrace/AppMon for about 7 years.
I majored in Computer Engineering at the University of South Carolina. When I graduated from college, I started working in state government as a desktop support person and learned about server and firewall administration. In my next two roles after the state government, I really grew a love for figuring out things and performance issues and how to solve them.
I am passionate about teaching others how to use Dynatrace and other tools so that other staff can be independent in different tools. I do this by hosting monthly trainings for different groups at my company where subject matter experts of a tool teach other staff about a particular tool.
What is your story with Dynatrace? Why did you start using our products, and for what project?
I started using Dynatrace (AppMon) at my last company to look at performance issues and to have performance SLAs for certain pages on customer’s website. This is where I learned that performance issues are like puzzles that you have to solve on the computer, which is why Dynatrace, and I are great for each other. Dynatrace is the basic tool in our financial company for monitoring and we continue to grow and learn what we are able to monitor. We have two Dynatrace Guardians to help us utilize Dynatrace to its fullest potential.
Have you ever had any compelling use case for the Dynatrace product that you found out to be particularly intriguing? Could you tell us about it?
Yes, a couple of years ago, while we were still using AppMon, Visually Complete dropped about half a second and many teams were trying to figure out what caused this. I was able to use AppMon to find out that a 3rd party call was causing our VCT to drop by half a second.
What brought you to our Community? Why do you think it’s worth being a part of the Dynatrace Community?
I became involved in the Community because I was looking for guidance and expertise around the Dynatrace platform. On the Community, there are so many people from Dynatrace staff to Non-Dynatrace staff who are willing to help any person figure out an issue and/or solution in the product.
Being a part of the Dynatrace Community helps me learn, grow, and challenge me to improve Dynatrace at our company.
What part or parts of the Dynatrace Community do you like the most?
What I like most about the Community is the different ideas out there and people coming together to help solve problems and questions. I really like the PRODUCT IDEAS part of Community because our company can see new features that are planned in the future releases. Also, through the community, our team has been able to suggest some ideas. One idea that Dynatrace is currently working on is “Non-Admins should not see the yellow banner”. Thanks, Dynatrace, for listening to the Community.
And how about your life outside IT – what is your biggest passion?
My priorities are God, family then everything else. My family is the world to me. I have been married to the love of my life for 20 years. My wife and I are raising two teenage daughters who are 16 and 13 years old.
My biggest passion outside of God and family is teaching the next generation how to be men (keep God first, reading the Bible, how to treat friends/family, respect those in authority). I teach 7th-grade boys at my church, and it is very rewarding to see them grow as young men. Middle school boys are tough some days but, in the end, it is great to see them mature.
It would also be great if you could share with us your favorite movie, song, and/or a book. Let other Community members discover something new and interesting to watch/hear/read 🙂
Favorite book – The Bible. I finished reading the Bible in 2021 for the 4th time.
Favorite movies – Star Wars – The original trilogy (Empire Strikes Back being my favorite) which is why my home office is Star Wars.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you, Kenneth, for the help you provide to the Community. We appreciate that you have been with us for so long, and we are happy that you have grown with us along the way. We wish you further success. May the force be with you! 😊
4 Comments
