Hello Marco! Shed some light on your life’s journey.
I grew up in Germany and moved to the U.S. with my family as a teenager. From a young age, I liked to tinker, which mostly translated to taking things apart to see how they worked - and often getting into some trouble when I could not reassemble something.
My interest in computers and tech started when I took my first programming class in high school. During my spare class time, I recreated the classic game Pong in BASIC. After high school, I completed a course of study in Automotive Technology before moving on to University and earning a business degree.
During my years of study, I took a job in a call center where I provided technical support over the phone. I moved into IT operations after a year or two, and this is when I came across my first monitoring tool (if you can call it that), Tealeaf. I was hooked instantly by the possibilities of using data to gain insights in real time. It wasn't long before I came to know that more powerful tools were out there. Some of you may recognize tools like DC-RUM, Appmon, and Gomez. The rest, as they say, is history.
What is your professional background?
I work at Farmers Insurance, where I lead the enterprise-wide observability practice. Our Enterprise Observability is responsible for providing observability solutions capable of covering a wide range of technologies including legacy systems, modern cloud-native applications, and everything in-between. We act as the centralized team managing observability strategy and tools from cradle-to-grave.
How does Dynatrace fit into the picture, and what was the biggest challenge Dynatrace helped you overcome?
About two and a half years ago, as several tools in our portfolio at the time (none of which were Dynatrace) were coming up for renewal, we evaluated the Dynatrace SaaS platform to see if it could help us consolidate and simplify our observability stack. What we found changed everything for us, quite literally.
Within six months or so, we had transitioned all of our APM into Dynatrace SaaS, followed closely by the totality of our private and public cloud infrastructure. It wasn't long before we realized that Dynatrace could not only accommodate our logs as well, but that the combination of Davis AI and unified observability on Grail could be transformative.
As I write this, we're on the cusp of achieving game-changing unified observability of infrastructure, applications, and logs while also realizing economies of scale and simplified administration. Now, it's possible for our IT teams to have all their observability signals in one place, empowering them to see their whole environment, accelerating efforts to deliver the best possible software, and enabling speedy detection and remediation when issues do arise.
What makes Dynatrace Community important to you?
I view the Community as a valuable resource that supplements "official" documentation when it comes to keeping current on all things Dynatrace, while also providing a forum to engage with the Dynatrace team and other users of the platform via the various community forums.
The thing I like most is the sheer variety of novel use cases that members of the Community regularly share, as these provide great inspiration for our team. I also personally like to frequent the Q&A sections to learn about the many creative ways other folks solve problems, while also sharing what I have learned with others.
"The thing I like most is the sheer variety of novel use cases that members of the Community regularly share, as these provide great inspiration for our team. "
My best advice for anyone just getting started in the Community would be to dive in head-first, as I have found the Community to be very welcoming regardless of skill level. I also recommend checking out the various sticky threads where there's lots of good ongoing engagement.
Tell us something about you that most people don’t know. What is your biggest joy or passion in life?
I would say the biggest thing most people don't know about me is that I am an avid animal lover. I have an especially soft spot for furry, four-legged friends (hint: cats and dogs).
My wife and I have been pet-parents continuously for nearly 25 years now, and I don't see us slowing down. As I write this, the permanent pet population at our home includes four cats, four dogs, and one chinchilla. As of a few days ago, we are also fostering a further three young kittens for our local shelter until they are old enough to be adopted.
When I need a break from all the animal fun at home (yes, it happens!), I like to relax by taking to the local trails on my mountain bike or taking my kids on window-shopping trips.
What achievement are you most proud of?
Among the achievements of which I am most proud is becoming the first in my family to earn a university degree, upon which I have built a successful career. In the professional space, I am quite proud of building a highly capable team that consistently delivers next-level observability within our enterprise while navigating the inherent complexities that accompany large corporations.
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