August is one of these parts of the year when a lot of people are going on holiday or travel. Traveling gives many valuable lessons because when you step out to see the world you can learn a lot.
Diego Morales is one of the people who travels a couple of times a year. The experience that he gets from the trips when exploring new, different places, meeting new people, and overcoming various challenges along the way he transfers to Dynatrace Community.
Community is one of these places full of people from all over the world where you can get to know different “cultures”, taste new “dishes”, share an experience, or just simply breathe in a “different environment” every day.
So we invite you to take a Community trip with @diego_morales – our Employee Member of the Month for August 2022.
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Can you tell a little bit about your professional life? What is your role in the company and what do you do in your job?
It all began a bit over 15 years ago at Dynatrace, starting in Support, then Consultant, then Architect in Services and now I am a Platform Extensions Architect. Before Dynatrace, I was a developer for a small company that hosted its own proprietary Doc sharing and Intranet software.
Every company and every customer has different tools where it is not possible to install a OneAgent or perhaps it is hosted by a third party. As Platform Extensions Architect, my main role is to assess customer needs, come up with solutions where we don’t have visibility, implement those solutions, and integrate those tools with Dynatrace to bring visibility into them. Once that data is on Dynatrace, Davis analyzes that data recognizes its source, and ties it into the entire topology seen by Dynatrace. This gives full visibility with metrics, events, topology, traces, etc. Another aspect of our role is to enable and empower customers to do that integration themselves with our guidance and/or workshops.
If you’re curious about Platform Extensions, more information can be found here.
Extensibility of Dynatrace as well as how quickly it is deployed without much configuration. It is amazing to learn new technologies all the time, encounter challenges, and find solutions to them, then put them into action quickly enough and provide value in a matter of days back to the customer, something that normally could take months in the development lifecycle. This quick turnaround is extremely rewarding.
Most of the areas of Dynatrace I use daily revolve around Dynatrace API, data sources using different programming languages, Unified Analysis screens, Extension Frameworks 1.0 and 2.0, OneAgent, and ActiveGates.
Have you ever had any interesting use case for the Dynatrace platform that you found to be particularly intriguing? Could you tell us about it?
We get a lot of intriguing and unique use cases but a particular one was integrating with IOT devices using Modbus. Modbus is a legacy protocol still widely used, especially by some electrical devices. I was asked to retrieve data about these devices such as frequency, power, etc. using Modbus and then be able to display these metrics on dashboards. It sounds simple but not knowing anything about these devices or Modbus, and the fact that they’re legacy devices, I was not sure it was even possible. The challenge was unique because it was not reading from a typical API, database or log. It was reading bytes directly from the devices. This was a particularly intriguing integration with Dynatrace.
What brought you to our community? What is your best memory about it?
Sometimes browsing through questions and answers here stirs solutions in my head that I need in my daily job. Creating certain extensions has made us SMEs in those tools and integrations, especially IBM MQ which is such a large product and highly customizable, and gets asked a lot, and thus we answer what we know.
That first “Accepted answer” tick is probably most people’s best memory. That acknowledgment and knowing you provided a concise, precise answer is satisfying.
This is a space to share knowledge with others who have similar ideas, new solutions, and better ways to do something.
This space is watched by folks at Dynatrace as well as our Partners and customers and we all help each other here.
Why do you think it’s worth being a part of the Dynatrace Community? Why do you contribute to the Community?
Posting a question and answering it to a large audience eliminates redundancy. It makes our lives easier, and the community members can contribute to the same answer. The main idea is to help each other in an open space where we all chip in. Anyone could benefit from a thread discussion because that may give you the answer you were searching for, not just the person posting the question. A global community of people with different perspectives provides a new set of eyes to an issue that perhaps has already been solved in their own experience, and this could be the right solution for someone else.
And how about your life outside IT – what is your biggest passion?
Traveling, hiking, exploring new places and architecture, new cultures. By far this is my biggest passion. This world has so many wonders, people from different backgrounds, so much history and I love experiencing it all.
Some people say that traveling can be expensive, but it does not have to be if you know when to do it and you pick the right locations. Some others say they’re waiting for the right moment, but it hardly ever is the perfect moment. The way I see it, the more I wait, the less likely it will happen, so I just do it without hesitating.
I tend to travel when time allows it. Even during Covid and shutdowns, I was able to travel to corners of Canada that I never visited before and explored new areas, hiked through mountains, forests, lakes, etc. There is so much I still need to see.
This year has already been fantastic and I’m already planning my next adventure through Argentinian Patagonia and the Peruvian Andes! As they say “Traveling is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” and this couldn’t be more true.
My other passion comes around Christmas time when I get to come up with a new project every year to do for my house. I try to make all decorations unique so a lot of them are hand-made. For the others that are purchased at the store, I alter them, so they’re at least somewhat different. Growing up, I remember driving by neighborhoods and watching light shows and all these houses that were decorated for Christmas. Some neighborhoods even had contests for the best-decorated house. Now I get to live the experience!
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. 😊
I don’t have a favorite song because my taste varies too much and constantly, depending on my mood. Regarding movies though, my usual go-to is fantasy and Sci-Fi. I find them such a great escape. I’ve always been fascinated by stars, in fact, I’ve done trips solely to go stargazing (I took a night sky photo with my phone and you can see Andromeda near the center and the Pleiades at the top) so anything Sci-Fi or Star Trek I’m always interested.
As Paulo Coelho said: “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it's lethal”.
Dynatrace is a never-ending adventure. Being a part of Dynatrace and Community is a never-ending learning and sharing experience where you can grow with others. And at the end of the day, Dynatrace Community is not only a community of users around the product but a worldwide group of people who have similar goals and want to develop themselves in many different aspects.
We’re happy Diego that you’re with us and that you support other Community members on their journey with Dynatrace. As you mentioned, it’s a win-win situation because by helping others and exploring new “places” we can learn and develop as well.
That’s why maybe at the end we will only say - let’s go to the stars all together! 😉
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