Being open is important in many different ways. Being open-minded, open to other cultures, different opinions, and change. Being open means being curious to hear what others think and say, and believing others have a right to share their beliefs and thoughts.
Especially these days, when we work worldwide, being open is important. This approach helps not only gain more insight into people but helps collaborate in a business, too.
A person who lives those values is @Tom_Eaton, our Employee member of May.
Read the article and see how being open helps him in his work and how his openness to other cultures helped him find… love. ❤️ 😊
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Can you share some details about your past? What is your story, how it happened that you decided to work in the IT / APM area, and how you became a Dynatracer?
When I was 8 years old, my dad bought an Amiga 500 home, and this was the start of my love for computers.
At the age of 14, I attended a programming club after school, which ignited my passion for programming. I learned Pascal and Delphi, making games like Snake and chat programs which I loved! I later went to college, taking Computing with Maths – I also started hanging around mIRC (an Internet Relay Chat) and helping people in some of the channels on programming issues for their customers, this was a community of like-minded people which allowed me to see challenges I might not have otherwise come across.
When I went to University, I studied Computer Science and had the best 4 years of my life. I took a sandwich course, so my third year was a placement where I worked for Dupont Teijin Films as a Programmer & Analyst, gathering requirements, and understanding the users’ issues. I used to travel to the factories to meet the users in person. This is where I saw the product being used which made it come to life for me.
After University I joined Accenture (the world’s largest IT consultancy firm), where I joined as a Solutions Engineer but was aligned to the testing team. I was devastated and thought I would be stuck doing functional testing, which I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy as I wouldn't be doing technical work. But during our introduction and boot camp, we met the UK Lead for Performance Engineering Practice and he talked us through Performance and Load Testing. I thought I have to be a part of this, as this is much more technical! I did this and then joined an account which I ended up staying at for 11 years. During my time here, I did Performance, Technical, and Loading testing, with Performance Engineering (using my programming background) and later Performance Monitoring (outside of the performance testing).
Four years ago, we assisted the client with a POC for APM Tool where we had three solutions compared: App Dynamics, New Relic, and Dynatrace. Dynatrace won, and I was the lead from the Vendor side to help Dynatrace in their European Region. Then, after 1-2 years as the Dynatrace ACE Consults left, I took over more responsibility until I was the global lead for the last 18 months. Dynatrace was the greatest platform and tool I had ever seen, and right up my street! It made reporting for loading testing 100 times faster and easier. It was easy to do Production application support and I loved to have a single view for all teams.
Then, 9 months ago, I joined Dynatrace, where I work for ACE Services as a Lead Consultant.
Can you tell us a little bit about your job? What interesting things you’re working on that you can share?
I currently work for an Insurance Broker Specialist as a Lead Consultant. I help them with their APM strategy, adoption, ITSM processes, supporting their technology estate, and just making sure they’re getting the most out of Dynatrace (we were one of the first ones onto Grail and I feel like DQL has taken over my life 😃 in a good way!). I go to the office once a month in London which is nice, to meet my stakeholders and clients.
One of the biggest areas of value we have found recently is Azure Logs. My client uses Azure as their cloud provider, and we’re ingesting 100’s if not now 1000’s of logs. It’s just a treasure trove of information for Production application support, Incident/Problem Managers, and DevOps teams, along with having security and operational views and forensics happening too. We’re only at the start of the journey as you can gets logs for 100s of the Azure services and they all have invaluable insights.
We’ve also been setting up SLOs across all their apps. We found the Smarter SLO Dashboard helpful. It helps explain and visualize the ‘Art of the Possible’ to C-suite and Leadership teams.
What makes you excited about being a part of Dynatrace?
It's about being along for the incredible journey ahead. It's a growing company, moving at the speed of a star and operating like a large enterprise company at the same time. Every day I learn new things, I get to give feedback that has real impact on product. I love that I work for a product, sales, and services company all at the same time and get to see the positive difference the product makes for clients.
I’m really excited for Grail and the next big update! It’s a fun and fast-paced time within the company.
How is the Community helping you in your job? Why do you think it’s worth being a part of the Dynatrace Community?
The Community is very important, as it brings people outside of Dynatrace (Clients, SMEs, Admins, Users & Partners) together along with the Dynatrace employees, which brings a wider feeling of togetherness.
I have found guides and answers to questions from my client within the Community space, which has been really helpful! Like API Guides for Excel or others asking similar questions and getting product managers’ responses.
What best advice can you give someone who just started using Community?
My main advice would be to be bold in posting and attempting to answer questions. Get your ideas on the product ideas / RFEs section, reply to the feedback threads, and help others, as they will help you one day!
Tell us something about you that most people don’t know. What is your biggest joy or passion in life?
No one on the Community or in Dynatrace will know that I love Indian culture. So much so that I’ll marry my Bengali fiancé in the next month in India. 
I travel to India 2-3 times a year and have been fortunate enough to visit each state, tasting 100’s dishes and enjoying loads of Hindu festivals. It was during my time at Accenture that I got to work with colleagues from India, and I learned how friendly and hospitable they are! I now have a lot of good friends who are Indian living all over the world.
I’ve watched over 170 Bollywood films now with a “to-watch list” of 100+ more 😃 – I like to keep a list of everything I have watched. It’s a great conversation starter.
What’s one thing on your bucket list? Your dream?
I’d love to climb Everest. I have dreamed about it since I was a teenager. The challenge of summiting is something I love to complete – I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime achievement that you could feel proud of yourself for doing.
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Tom, we’re very happy that you see Community so important and that you are such an active part of the place where all Dynatrace customers and partners are growing together. They’re improving with your help, remember about it!
And fingers crossed that you won’t only climb Everest one day, but you’ll be climbing in your career as well. Being such an open and committed person definitely will help you with that 😊
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