What is our primary use case?
I use this product in projects that we do for other companies. We use the most updated version of the solution.
We're using Elastic to get information for several points of observability and several projects and solutions. We're using it broadly in lots of systems. For each solution, we're defining the observability points and the data we want to capture in each point. We're deploying Elastic as the tool to capture the data in each of these points in these transactions, and then putting that in the database. It allows us to analyze not only the number of transactions and quantities, but also the business content of each payload of the transactions in order to have business KPIs, not just technical KPIs. We have more than 300 data capture points in several systems.
This has been used by an IO monitoring team. We have two types of users: technical guys that are monitoring the stability of the systems where this tool is used, to see if we are having issues on the operation. This is the IO management team, and there are around 40 users. The second category is people related to business that are actually using this to capture business information, like the amount of transactions, credit sales, the average value of each operation, and things like that. In that sense, there are about 100 people looking at business dashboards.
The use is much heavier with the first group. They are tuning systems and deploying new data capture points, etc. Although there are more people in the second group, they are using it more to get the information and use it for tech and business decisions, but they are not heavy users in that sense.
What is most valuable?
It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible. We have been able to easily deploy it in the data capture points that we want. After you capture the data payload of each transaction, it's also easy to do the search in the database.
What needs improvement?
It could come with more detailed or sophisticated dashboards that are pre-defined and that could speed up when you start looking at the data of the transactions. If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful.
I would like to see an automated deploy tool, like Dynatrace has, that would allow you to have the parts of the system where you want to do the observability and they would deploy very quickly and kind of outer connect with the systems.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for 12 months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good. We didn't have trouble installing and getting the data from it. There haven't been any major incidents, just the normal tuning that you doing as part of the deployment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We are still increasing the number of data capture points, but so far it's quite stable.
We have plans to increase usage in two dimensions: Horizontally because we are getting the same data points expanded to other instances of the same systems. We're not creating anything new. We are just deploying the same data capture point in different instances of the same solution.
We're also expanding vertically. We are creating new data capture points. When we start monitoring the solution, we kind of start having ideas of how to better view the operation. It's a little bit of a learning process when you start monitoring and seeing new opportunities.
How are customer service and support?
The available documentation and the skill level that we have in the team has been enough. So far, we haven't used technical support yet.
How was the initial setup?
Setup was straightforward to start getting the data and doing the searches that we want. I would rate setup 4 out of 5.
In comparison, Dynatrace is more automatic in terms of the deployment.
The implementation strategy was to deploy it system by system, point by point. We started looking at the systems that could have the best result for starting using this as observability tool. The idea was to deploy gradually and start getting results ASAP with the most critical transactions, instead of doing a major design of everything and deploying all at once with a bunch of transactions at the same time. It was gradual to start getting results as fast as possible.
Our technical team was about six to seven people. There were development guys because they are the ones that knew the systems and where to include the data capture points and then insert the API from Elastic that would be used to capture the data. The other guys were the IO management team and were monitoring the setup and building the database and dashboards.
What about the implementation team?
Deployment was done internally with our team.
What was our ROI?
It's quite cost effective depending on your objective. I would rate the ROI 4 out of 5 because it really reached the objectives and at a lower price.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would rate the pricing 4 out of 5.
So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have also used Dynatrace. Although Dynatrace is a great solution, it's becoming very expensive. They have increased the value of the licenses and the way they license, especially when we moved from on-premise to cloud. Because of the way they count the agents in the cloud for Dynatrace, it becomes really expensive. But Dynatrace is more ready as a solution. With Elastic, you need to code and program more things compared to Dynatrace.
Dynatrace is very well positioned in the market. I think they are becoming a little too confident in that differentiation, and are reflecting this in the license price, which is becoming prohibitive. I'm in Brazil, and our currency isn't in dollars, but the license is in dollars and is becoming more expensive. The exchange rate hasn't been favorable in the last few years.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.
The very positive features are the cost effectiveness and the range of things that you can implement. An improvement would be the ability to speed up the deployment, like Dynatrace. In that case, Elastic would have the cost effectiveness and would be easier to implement.
My advice is that you should first understand what kind of observability objectives you have in managing your environment. See if what you want to do is really being covered by each solution. If you're doing something that isn't that sophisticated, you don't need to pay the price of Dynatrace or Datadog. You can reach your objectives with something much more cost effective. Sometimes you don't need to buy a really expensive, sophisticated solution.
Understand your system landscape and what you want to do and what your objectives are before jumping into a specific tool. We put a lot of research into what we wanted to do and what was the best tool for our objectives.
You should also understand what you need to implement the selected solution: what sort of skills, how many people, if you have them or not in your team, and see if you need professional services before putting together the full business case to implement. If you don't have people that really know middleware and APMs properly, they tend to be quite expensive in the market. If you don't consider this properly, you may end with a big issue in fulfilling your business case. Human resource costs are not small in this sort of project.
