FuturWork X D'Ieteren - End-to-End Monitoring on Business-Critical Applications: How Futurwork Deployed Dynatrace at Scale for a Belgian Enterprise

Context

A large Belgian enterprise running business-critical applications across a heterogeneous infrastructure : Windows, Linux, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes had no unified observability layer. Monitoring was fragmented: teams operated in silos, alerts were reactive rather than proactive, and there was no single source of truth on application performance or infrastructure health.

The Capacity & Monitoring team needed to be reinforced with a dual mandate: own the end-to-end Dynatrace rollout across the entire application estate, and serve as a reliable backup for daily production operations using IBM Workload Scheduler and the RVS Transfer Tool.

The stakes were high. Downtime on these applications had direct business impact. The organisation needed a monitoring consultant who could operate at both strategic and hands-on levels from designing the observability architecture to triaging production failures at 7am.

Challenge

Three structural problems were blocking the organisation from achieving real observability:

1. No E2E visibility across the stack.
Monitoring existed at the host level but not at the service, process, or user journey level. Application teams had no dashboards, no anomaly baselines, and no alerting tailored to their specific SLAs. The gap between "the server is up" and "the business transaction is working end-to-end" was invisible.

2. Technology sprawl with no extension coverage.
The environment included custom integrations and third-party technologies not natively supported by Dynatrace OneAgent. Without a structured extension strategy, these components were effectively dark — unmonitored, unalarmed, and unknown.

3. Budget opacity on Dynatrace Platform Subscription.
The DPS (Dynatrace Platform Subscription) model was in use, but there was no process to analyse consumption, forecast costs, or flag unexpected spikes. The organisation was flying blind on its own observability budget.

Solution

Futurwork embedded a Monitoring Expert directly within the client's infrastructure team. The engagement covered five parallel workstreams:

1. Full E2E Monitoring Deployment

OneAgent was deployed and lifecycle-managed across every platform in scope: Windows servers, Linux hosts, AWS and Azure workloads, Google Cloud instances, and Kubernetes clusters. This wasn't a partial rollout every node was brought into the Dynatrace environment with consistent configuration.

Synthetic Monitoring was configured to track application availability from both internal and external vantage points, covering the actual user paths that matter to the business. Real User Monitoring (RUM) was layered on top to capture live end-user performance metrics, session behaviour, and front-end errors.

Business Observability monitoring was implemented to close the loop moving from infrastructure-level metrics to genuine business transaction visibility. Application teams were engaged directly to define monitoring requirements and build alerting profiles calibrated to their specific needs.

2. Dynatrace Extension Management

A structured extension programme was established to cover the gaps left by OneAgent. Custom extensions were uploaded, configured, and monitored for runtime health. Troubleshooting workflows leveraged logs and events in context enabling the team to diagnose extension failures without context switching between tools. The full lifecycle of installed extensions (deployment, versioning, deprecation) was documented and maintained.

3. Platform Administration

The Dynatrace environment was hardened operationally:

• TAGs were created to organise and filter entities across the monitored estate, making dashboards navigable and alert routing precise.
• Network zones were configured for performance and security segmentation.
• Log Monitoring was activated and scoped appropriately.
• Anomaly detection was tuned for every component type: hosts, services, processes, databases, web applications, custom metrics, and extensions.
• Alerting profiles and notification channels were set up end-to-end.
• Access Management was configured to enforce least-privilege access across teams.
• Cluster health and system notifications were brought into a routine monitoring cadence.

4. DPS Budget Governance

Working directly with the Dynatrace Account Manager, the consultant established a DPS analysis process: reviewing historical usage, tracking cumulative costs against forecasts, and using cost monitors to surface unexpected consumption increases before they impacted the budget cycle. This gave the infrastructure director visibility and control over observability spend for the first time.

5. Production Operations Backup

In parallel, the consultant operated as a backup resource for daily production:

IBM Workload Scheduler: Daily health checks, planning new jobs, adapting existing job schedules, running and re-running jobs on demand, and resolving jobs in error state.

RVS Transfer Tool: Daily health checks, defining new file transfers, adapting existing transfer configurations, initiating transfers, and diagnosing transfer failures.

Results

MetricBeforeAfterApplication coverage in DynatracePartial (hosts only)Full E2E across all platforms and layersSynthetic monitoring checkpoints0Configured from internal + external locationsRUM activationNoneActive across business-critical web applicationsExtension coverage0 custom extensions managedFull lifecycle management in placeDPS budget visibilityNoneMonthly review process with cost monitor alertsAnomaly detectionManual / reactiveAutomated across hosts, services, DBs, metricsProduction operations resilienceSingle point of dependencyQualified backup resource operational

The organisation moved from reactive fire-fighting to proactive observability. Application teams gained dashboards they actually use. The infrastructure director gained budget forecasting capability. And production had a qualified backup resource who could step in on IBM WS and RVS without a learning curve.

Key Technologies

• Dynatrace — OneAgent (multi-platform), Synthetic Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, Business Observability, Extensions Framework, Anomaly Detection, DPS Cost Management
• IBM Workload Scheduler — Production planning, job management, error resolution
• RVS Transfer Tool — File transfer operations and troubleshooting
• Platforms: Windows · Linux · AWS · Azure · Google Cloud · Kubernetes

Futurwork's Approach

This engagement reflects how Futurwork operates in infrastructure and monitoring consulting: we don't send a CV — we embed a consultant who owns the outcome.

The profile placed was neither a pure admin nor a pure developer. The role demanded Dynatrace expertise at Advanced level, production operations credibility with IBM tooling, and the communication skills to work simultaneously with application teams, the infrastructure director, and the Dynatrace Account Manager.

That's the type of consultant Futurwork sources, vets, and places. Not because it's easy — but because that's what the problem actually requires.

Related Expertise

Futurwork Consulting | Infrastructure & Cloud · Cybersecurity · IT Strategy & Governance
Operating in Belgium, France and Spain building the European consulting model that's independent, collaborative, and technically credible.

Looking to reinforce your monitoring team or run a Dynatrace deployment at scale?
→ Contact us at hello@futurwork.be

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