Dynatrace Managed customers are increasingly seeking to access the latest innovations from Dynatrace. By transitioning to the Dynatrace SaaS platform, customers can benefit from recent innovations like Grail™, AppEngine, and Workflows. Our partner community plays a vital role in facilitating this transition by effectively communicating the benefits of SaaS and ensuring a seamless migration process.
During a recent webinar, Dynatrace partners had the opportunity to learn how they deliver greater value to their customers while expanding their account footprints. Peter Vinh, Senior Director of Product Management at Dynatrace was joined by Andre van der Veen, Technical Consultant for Dynatrace at Mediro ICT, to share valuable insights that can support Dynatrace partners in guiding their customers from Managed to SaaS.
Customer benefits of transitioning from Dynatrace Managed to SaaS
By helping customers understand the benefits of migrating to Dynatrace SaaS, partners are providing enhanced value to their customers. During the webinar, Peter Vinh highlighted a crucial point for partners to convey: the latest innovations on the Dynatrace platform, including Grail, Davis CoPilot™, OpenPipeline™️, and Workflows, are exclusively available to SaaS customers.
Beyond the benefits these capabilities unlock, there are also significant commercial drivers. Dynatrace SaaS presents a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), enabling customers to consolidate various tools, thereby optimizing costs and enhancing internal user experiences. This sentiment was later echoed by Andre van der Veen, who explained that TCO is one of the primary drivers for Mediro customers, alongside higher availability. By migrating to SaaS, customers can reduce hardware expenses, enabling them to concentrate on accelerating innovation with Dynatrace.
Key insights for partners to enhance customer engagement and accelerate SaaS migration
Vinh also highlighted the benefits of customer SaaS migration for the Dynatrace partner community. Moving customers from Managed to SaaS presents a valuable opportunity to grow customer accounts by delivering enhanced end-to-end value. Rather than maintaining a transactional relationship selling licenses, partners can provide continuous support. With quicker access to customers’ SaaS tenants, they can view issues from the customers’ perspective and collaboratively resolve challenges. Additionally, there is the potential for increased revenue through the sale of migration services and supplemental modules exclusive to SaaS.
Vinh provided valuable insights on how partners can enhance their conversations with customers, acknowledging the various roadblocks they might face. Here are his key recommendations:
Don’t wait for renewals. The conversation could take months, freeze windows could prevent new sign-ups in a certain period, and security teams could have a long list of questions that must be answered. It’s important to start early, working backwards from these dates to identify when to initiate the discussion.
Align to strategic initiatives. It’s important to engage senior business leaders and position the value of Dynatrace SaaS in a way that aligns to their strategy and objectives. Vinh highlighted the Dynatrace for Executives webpage as a great jumping off point for these conversations.
Reassure customers about their data. Van der Veen discussed that a key objection is often customer concerns about putting monitoring data in the cloud, and whether they will be able to access historical data from their Managed instances. He explained how those concerns can be allayed by discussing types of data the customer already stores in the cloud, showing how Managed clusters can be kept online for long term storage, and outlining the security certifications and standards that Dynatrace adheres to.
Start small if you need to. Some customers may have a complex environment, or multiple business lines that operate individually, making them reluctant to change. Starting with a small SaaS footprint can help to alleviate concerns, focusing on areas where capabilities like Grail can deliver the greatest immediate impact. This helps to prove the value, building the customer’s confidence, so the footprint can expand over time.
Use Dynatrace resources. Vinh also reminded partners of the support resources available to them, including the Dynatrace ONE team, customer success managers, Dynatrace University certifications, the community support, documentation, and assets on the partner portal.
Learnings from the frontline
Finally, van der Veen shared his first-hand experiences delivering Dynatrace Managed to SaaS migrations for Mediro customers. He was amongst the earliest adopters of the Dynatrace SaaS Upgrade Assistant, and provided helpful insights for other partners. His key points included:
- Communication is key, ensuring all stakeholders are bought into the value of moving to SaaS.
- Cleanse the environment prior to migration; removing unused dashboards, making sure the OneAgent version is compatible with SaaS, and ensuring only one person has administrative access.
- Restart processes after the migration to ensure it has been fully completed. Verify with the customer that the dashboards are fully operational, and data is coming through as expected.
Offering his closing thoughts, van der Veen highlighted that the value and benefits of upgrading from Dynatrace Managed to SaaS is huge for both partners and their customers. While the process may seem daunting, the tooling that is now available makes it much easier.
For further insights on how Dynatrace partners can help their customers move from Managed to SaaS, and for a demo of the Migration Assistant, watch the webinar on-demand.
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