August 30, 2019

Technical review: Dynatrace and OpsBridge integration through ZigiOps

More technical details about our Dynatrace and MF OpsBridge integration

Blog
Dynatrace
OpsBridge

Introduction

In todays fast-paced and technology-driven business landscape, organizations face the challenge of effectively managing their IT operations to ensure seamless performance, reduce downtime, and meet the evolving needs of their customers. This is where IT Operations Management (ITOM) systems come into play. ITOM systems offer a comprehensive set of tools and capabilities designed to streamline and optimize IT operations, empowering companies to enhance efficiency, improve service quality, and drive cost optimization. In this article, we will explore the key reasons why companies turn to ITOM systems and the benefits they can unlock in managing their IT infrastructure and services. From streamlined operations to enhanced security, ITOM systems are revolutionizing the way businesses approach their IT environments, enabling them to scale and succeed in a digital world.

That is why comprehensive monitoring tools like Dynatrace and Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager are easily found in the tech stack of various enterprises.

Overview

Many OpsBridge users count on Dynatrace for monitoring some fragments of their environment together with the native Micro Focus data collectors and other tools. In order to improve their overall visibility and reduce the number and duration of outages, there is a variety of measures to be taken.

By far the most recognized one is combining all the data sources into a single console where it can be processed accordingly. This is why a good integration between Dynatrace and OpsBridge is extremely important.

ZigiOps also allows other Dynatrace integrations  with ServiceNow, JIRA, BMC Remedy, and more.

zigiops-integration-with-various-systems-logos

Benefits of Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge integration

The Dynatrace  Micro Focus Operations Bridge integration can offer numerous benefits, as it allows you to combine the capabilities of both platforms to enhance your IT operations and overall business performance. Here are some of the advantages:

  • Comprehensive Monitoring: By integrating Dynatrace, a leading application performance monitoring tool, with OpsBridge, an IT operations management platform, you gain comprehensive monitoring capabilities. This combination provides insights into the performance of applications, infrastructure, and services across your entire IT environment.
  • End-to-end Visibility: The integration enables end-to-end visibility of your IT landscape. You can monitor not only the application layer but also the underlying infrastructure, network, and cloud services. This holistic view allows for better root cause analysis and faster issue resolution.
  • Proactive Issue Detection: Dynatrace excels in detecting performance anomalies and potential issues in real time. When combined with OpsBridges alerting and incident management capabilities, you can identify and address problems before they significantly impact end-users and business operations.
  • Efficient Incident Management: The integration streamlines incident management processes. When Dynatrace detects performance issues, it can automatically trigger events in OpsBridge to create incidents, assign them to the appropriate teams, and track their resolution progress.
  • Simplified Collaboration: Integrating Dynatrace and OpsBridge fosters better collaboration between development and operations teams. With a shared understanding of application performance and infrastructure health, teams can work together more efficiently to address issues and optimize system performance.
  • Performance Optimization: By leveraging the data collected by Dynatrace and combining it with OpsBridges analytics capabilities, you can identify performance bottlenecks and optimize resource allocation to improve overall system performance.
  • Business Impact Analysis: OpsBridge provides a business service management perspective, allowing you to understand how IT issues impact critical business services. This integration helps prioritize incident resolution based on their business impact.
  • Capacity Planning: With Dynatraces insights into resource utilization and OpsBridges capacity planning capabilities, you can optimize resource allocation, ensure sufficient capacity, and plan for future infrastructure needs.
  • Real-time Dashboards: Combined reporting and dashboard capabilities from both platforms enable real-time monitoring and reporting, providing stakeholders with up-to-date information on IT performance and system health.
  • Cost Optimization: By proactively detecting performance issues and optimizing resource utilization, the integration can lead to cost savings by avoiding downtime, reducing the need for emergency fixes, and optimizing infrastructure expenditure.

Keep in mind that the specific benefits of integrating Dynatrace and OpsBridge may vary depending on your organizations unique requirements and the scope of your IT environment. However, in general, this integration helps enhance IT operations, improve system performance, and drive better business outcomes.

Why implement Dynatrace?

Implementing Dynatrace offers a wide range of benefits, making it a valuable tool for monitoring and optimizing the performance of your applications, infrastructure, and services. Here are some of the key benefits of Dynatrace implementation:

  • Real-time Application Monitoring: Dynatrace provides real-time monitoring of your applications, giving you immediate insights into their performance, response times, and user experience. This helps you identify and address issues before they impact end-users.
  • Full-Stack Visibility: With Dynatrace, you get full-stack visibility, from the application code to the underlying infrastructure. This holistic view enables you to understand how each component interacts and affects overall performance.
  • Automated Root Cause Analysis: Dynatrace uses artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to automatically detect performance anomalies and identify root causes. This accelerates troubleshooting and reduces the mean time to resolution (MTTR).
  • User Experience Monitoring: Dynatrace monitors real users interactions with your applications, providing valuable data on user behavior, errors encountered, and performance bottlenecks. This insight allows you to optimize user experience and satisfaction.
  • Cloud and Microservices Monitoring: For organizations leveraging cloud environments and microservices architecture, Dynatrace offers specialized monitoring and insights, ensuring a smooth and efficient transition to these modern technologies.
  • Scalability and Performance Optimization: Dynatrace helps you optimize your applications performance and resource utilization. With its detailed performance metrics, you can identify and address scalability issues and fine-tune resource allocation.
  • Alerting and Incident Management: The platform provides customizable alerting, allowing you to set up thresholds and receive notifications when predefined conditions are met. This helps IT teams proactively address potential issues.
  • Business Impact Analysis: Dynatrace offers a business service management perspective, showing how IT performance directly impacts critical business processes. This information enables better prioritization of IT efforts based on business impact.
  • DevOps Collaboration: Dynatrace bridges the gap between development and operations teams by providing a common monitoring platform. This facilitates collaboration, improves communication, and accelerates the delivery of high-quality software.
  • Cost Efficiency: By optimizing application and infrastructure performance, Dynatrace helps organizations save costs by avoiding downtime, reducing the need for emergency fixes, and optimizing resource utilization.
  • Digital Experience Monitoring: Dynatrace provides insights into the performance of applications across various devices and geographies. This digital experience monitoring helps ensure consistent and reliable user experiences globally.
  • Continuous Delivery and Automation: Dynatrace seamlessly integrates with continuous delivery pipelines, enabling automated testing and performance monitoring throughout the application development lifecycle.

Overall, Dynatrace implementation empowers organizations to deliver exceptional digital experiences, achieve higher system reliability, and optimize the performance of their applications and infrastructure. It supports IT teams in efficiently managing complex environments and driving better business outcomes.

Why implement Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager (OpsBridge Manager or OBM)?

Integrating Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager (OBM) can bring several benefits to your IT operations and management processes. OBM is an end-to-end monitoring and event management solution that provides a unified view of your IT environment, and when integrated with other tools, it enhances its capabilities further. Here are the benefits of integrating Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager:

  • Single Pane of Glass: OBM integration aggregates data from various monitoring tools, systems, and applications into a single dashboard. This unified view enables IT teams to have a holistic understanding of the entire IT landscape, reducing the time spent switching between different tools.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring: By integrating with various monitoring sources, OBM provides comprehensive monitoring of diverse IT components, including applications, servers, networks, and cloud resources. This complete visibility helps in detecting and addressing issues proactively.
  • Event Correlation and Root Cause Analysis: OBMs integration allows for event correlation and root cause analysis across the IT infrastructure. This means that it can identify the primary cause of issues even when multiple symptoms are reported, enabling faster problem resolution.
  • Automated Incident Management: With OBMs integration, incidents can be automatically generated based on predefined thresholds or event patterns. This automation streamlines incident management, ensuring a rapid response to critical events.
  • Reduced Downtime and MTTR: Faster detection and resolution of IT incidents lead to reduced downtime and improved Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). The integration with OBM helps in minimizing the impact of outages on business operations.
  • IT Process Automation: OBM can be integrated with IT process automation tools to trigger automated workflows based on specific events. This reduces manual intervention and ensures consistent and timely responses to incidents.
  • Service Level Management: OBMs integration allows you to align IT services with business objectives by tracking and reporting on service-level agreements (SLAs). It helps in understanding the impact of incidents on critical business services.
  • Capacity and Performance Optimization: With OBMs monitoring capabilities, you can gain insights into resource utilization, capacity planning, and performance trends. This information aids in optimizing IT resources and infrastructure.
  • Proactive Monitoring and Alerting: By integrating OBM with various monitoring tools, you can set up proactive alerts based on specific conditions, enabling IT teams to take preventive actions before issues escalate.
  • Integration Flexibility: OBMs architecture is designed to support a wide range of integrations with popular monitoring tools, cloud platforms, service desk systems, and more, providing flexibility and extensibility in managing diverse IT environments.
  • Enhanced IT Service Management (ITSM): Integration with ITSM tools like ServiceNow or Micro Focus Service Manager enables seamless incident and problem management, ensuring efficient communication and collaboration between IT teams.

Overall, a Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration enhances your IT operations by providing a comprehensive, unified, and automated approach to monitoring, event management, and incident resolution. This, in turn, leads to improved IT efficiency, reduced downtime, and better alignment of IT services with business goals.

How to choose the right integration tool for the Dynatrace Operations Bridge Manager integration?

Integrating Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager (OBM) can bring several benefits to your IT operations and management processes. OBM is an end-to-end monitoring and event management solution that provides a unified view of your IT environment, and when integrated with other tools, it enhances its capabilities further. Here are the benefits of integrating Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager:

  • Single Pane of Glass: OBM integration aggregates data from various monitoring tools, systems, and applications into a single dashboard. This unified view enables IT teams to have a holistic understanding of the entire IT landscape, reducing the time spent switching between different tools.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring: By integrating with various monitoring sources, OBM provides comprehensive monitoring of diverse IT components, including applications, servers, networks, and cloud resources. This complete visibility helps in detecting and addressing issues proactively.
  • Event Correlation and Root Cause Analysis: OBMs integration allows for event correlation and root cause analysis across the IT infrastructure. This means that it can identify the primary cause of issues even when multiple symptoms are reported, enabling faster problem resolution.
  • Automated Incident Management: With OBMs integration, incidents can be automatically generated based on predefined thresholds or event patterns. This automation streamlines incident management, ensuring a rapid response to critical events.
  • Reduced Downtime and MTTR: Faster detection and resolution of IT incidents lead to reduced downtime and improved Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). The integration with OBM helps in minimizing the impact of outages on business operations.
  • IT Process Automation: OBM can be integrated with IT process automation tools to trigger automated workflows based on specific events. This reduces manual intervention and ensures consistent and timely responses to incidents.
  • Service Level Management: OBMs integration allows you to align IT services with business objectives by tracking and reporting on service-level agreements (SLAs). It helps in understanding the impact of incidents on critical business services.
  • Capacity and Performance Optimization: With OBMs monitoring capabilities, you can gain insights into resource utilization, capacity planning, and performance trends. This information aids in optimizing IT resources and infrastructure.
  • Proactive Monitoring and Alerting: By integrating OBM with various monitoring tools, you can set up proactive alerts based on specific conditions, enabling IT teams to take preventive actions before issues escalate.
  • Integration Flexibility: OBMs architecture is designed to support a wide range of integrations with popular monitoring tools, cloud platforms, service desk systems, and more, providing flexibility and extensibility in managing diverse IT environments.
  • Enhanced IT Service Management (ITSM): Integration with ITSM tools like ServiceNow or Micro Focus Service Manager enables seamless incident and problem management, ensuring efficient communication and collaboration between IT teams.

Overall, a Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration enhances your IT operations by providing a comprehensive, unified, and automated approach to monitoring, event management, and incident resolution. This, in turn, leads to improved IT efficiency, reduced downtime, and better alignment of IT services with business goals.

How to choose the right integration tool for the Dynatrace Operations Bridge Manager integration?

efficiency and success of your integration projects. Here are some steps to help you make an informed choice:

  • Define Integration Requirements: Begin by clearly defining your integration requirements. Identify the systems or applications that need to be integrated, the data or processes that need to be exchanged, and the expected outcomes. Consider factors like data formats, communication protocols, scalability, security, and performance.
  • Understand Your Environment: Assess your existing IT infrastructure, applications, and technology stack. Consider the programming languages, databases, middleware, and APIs you are currently using. Understanding your environment will help you select a tool that seamlessly integrates with your existing technology.
  • Evaluate Integration Types: Determine the type of integration required  point-to-point, hub-and-spoke, or an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture. Depending on the complexity and scale of your integration needs, different tools might be more suitable.
  • Scalability and Performance: Consider the scalability and performance capabilities of the integration tool. Ensure that it can handle the expected volume of data and transactions without compromising on performance.
  • Ease of Use and Learning Curve: Evaluate the ease of use and the learning curve associated with the Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration tool. Choose a tool that aligns with the skillset of your development and integration teams, and that can be adopted without significant disruptions.
  • Flexibility and Extensibility: Look for a tool that offers flexibility to accommodate future changes and upgrades. It should be able to adapt to evolving business needs and new technology trends.
  • Security and Compliance: The Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration involves the exchange of sensitive data between systems. Ensure that the tool you choose adheres to industry-standard security protocols and compliance requirements, especially if you handle sensitive information.
  • Community and Support: Check the availability of a strong user community and the support provided by the tools vendor. A robust community can be valuable for troubleshooting, best practices, and sharing knowledge.
  • Cost and Licensing: Consider the total cost of ownership, including licensing fees, maintenance, and any additional expenses related to using the integration tool. Compare the costs with the benefits and the potential return on investment.
  • Compatibility and Integration Standards: Verify that the tool supports common integration standards like REST, SOAP, JSON, XML, etc. This ensures seamless integration with various systems and applications.
  • Vendor Reputation: Research the reputation and track record of the Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration tools vendor. Look for customer reviews, case studies, and testimonials to gauge the vendors reliability and customer satisfaction.
  • Proof of Concept (PoC): If possible, conduct a Proof of Concept with shortlisted integration tools. A PoC allows you to evaluate how well the tool meets your specific requirements and provides practical insights into its capabilities.

By following these steps and carefully considering your integration needs, existing environment, and the capabilities of various tools, you can make a well-informed decision to choose the right system integration tool for your organization. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the best tool will depend on your unique requirements and objectives.

Without an Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration is place

The lack of Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration can lead to several disadvantages and challenges for your organization. Here are some of the key drawbacks:

  • Data Silos: Without a Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration, data becomes scattered across various systems, leading to data silos. This makes it difficult to access, analyze, and utilize data effectively, hindering data-driven decision-making.
  • Inefficiency and Redundancy: Manual data entry in the connected systems and redundant processes become common when systems are not integrated. This leads to inefficiencies, increased workload, and a higher chance of errors.
  • Lack of Real-time Information: Without a Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration, data updates may not be synchronized in real-time across systems. This can result in delayed or outdated information, impacting decision-making and customer service.
  • Limited Automation: The Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration allows for automation of processes, reducing manual intervention and improving productivity. Without integration, automation opportunities are limited, and tasks may require more human effort.
  • Inconsistent Customer Experience: Lacking a proper Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration causes thecustomer data and interactions not to be unified. This can result in a fragmented customer experience and difficulties in providing personalized services.
  • Increased IT Maintenance Costs: Managing multiple standalone systems requires more maintenance efforts and costs. Integrating systems can streamline IT operations and reduce overall maintenance expenses.
  • Slower Time-to-Market: Lack of Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration can slow down development and deployment processes. When systems dont communicate effectively, integrating new features or applications becomes time-consuming and complex.
  • Difficulty in Reporting and Analytics: Integrated systems provide a centralized view of data, making reporting and analytics more efficient. Without integration, generating comprehensive reports or gaining valuable insights becomes challenging.
  • Security and Compliance Risks: Integrating systems allows for a consistent approach to security and compliance. Without proper integration, security measures might not be uniformly applied across all systems, leading to potential vulnerabilities.
  • Inhibited Business Growth: Limited integration can hinder the ability to scale and adapt to business growth. Organizations may face difficulties in expanding operations, entering new markets, or introducing innovative services.
  • Missed Opportunities: Not integrating systems may result in missed opportunities to leverage data and create synergies between different parts of the organization. Integration can unveil new possibilities for process improvement and innovation.
  • Complexity in Mergers and Acquisitions: In the case of mergers or acquisitions, lack of Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration complicates the consolidation of IT systems and data, delaying the realization of synergies and operational efficiency.

In conclusion, the presence of Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration is essential for optimizing business processes, improving decision-making, and enhancing overall organizational efficiency. Failing to integrate systems can lead to various inefficiencies, operational challenges, and missed opportunities that may hinder your organizations growth and success.

Why choose the ZigiOps no-code solution for your Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration?

ZigiOps is an integration platform that stands out as a fully 100% no-code tool. This remarkable feature allows for quick and effortless implementation, even in the most complex IT infrastructure. The absence of any need for additional scripts or coding makes ZigiOps an ideal choice for non-technical users, resulting in significant time and resource savings without straining the budget.

Offering both flexibility and scalability, ZigiOps excels in establishing seamless bi-directional connections between some of the most popular ITOM, ITSM, Cloud, and CRM systems available. Specifically, it effortlessly enables the Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration, ensuring a smooth and efficient process.

With just a few clicks, ZigiOps acts as a Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration bridge, facilitating real-time information transfer and synchronization. This constant synchronization is crucial for keeping IT teams and end-users up-to-date on operations and their progress, promoting streamlined communication and collaboration.

Maintaining the highest data security standards, ZigiOps ensures that none of the data transferred between connected Dynatrace and Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager is stored. This commitment to compliance ensures data integrity and peace of mind.

By automating vital tasks and operations within the IT ecosystem, the ZigiOps no-code integration solution enhances workflow optimization, making it a valuable asset for organizations seeking seamless and efficient processes.

Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration configuration

Only a few simple steps are needed to configure the Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge integration through ZigiOps:

  • Install ZigiOps
  • Connect to Dynatrace and OpsBridge.
  • Configure the topology, metrics and problems polling intervals (each one of them is independent and can be configured separately).
  • Activate the integration.

More information can be found here.

Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration topology

ZigiOps can replicate the Smartscape Topology from Dynatrace into the Ops Bridge RTSM (or directly into UCMDB) according to all the Micro Focus standards and best practices.

However, the Configuration items (CIs) can always be modified according to the customer requirements  the CI type can be changed, new attributes can be added or existing ones can be removed.

dynatrace-micro-focus-integration
Smartscape topology in Dynatrace and Ops Bridge topology created by ZigiOps
jira-task-to-bmc-remedy-incident-integration-with-zigiops
Default mappings* in Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration

*all mappings can be changed by the customer

Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration metrics

Any metric collected by Dynatrace can be extracted by ZigiOps and loaded to Ops Connector DB (accessible through the Performance Perspective), a file on the file system or COSO (coming soon). Metric filtering is user configurable and is done through the ZigiOps UI.

Apdex in Dynatrace and Apdex in Ops Bridge Performance Perspective

Dynatrace Micro Focus Operations Bridge Manager integration  events

New Dynatrace problems (or events) can create new events in OpsBridge. All the necessary attributes for an event to be meaningful are present:

  • Title containing the Problem # in Dynatrace
  • Severity
  • Related CI (can be one of application, host, service or process)
  • Description
  • Drill-down URL to the original Dynatrace problem
  • Other custom attributes

Dynatrace Problems can also trigger new incidents in ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Cherwell, JIRA Service Desk or any kind of issue in JIRA.

zigiops-platform-screenshots
Problem in Dynatrace and Event in OpsBridge

ZigiWave at Dynatrace Partner space  here.

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