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CARY – a Dynatrace use case.

Application Performance Management

Ein Mann lacht froehlich waehrend er über ein Headset telefoniert

Nowadays, it’s a given for many that web applications such as online banking, shopping and Netflix work without problems and communicate with each other. Yet is it really so simple and selfevident? How can error-free communication between the applications be guaranteed and how were we able to guarantee these processes for CARY, our video solution for care institutions?

APM (application performance management) provides the right solution for exactly that. It monitors applications and their interfaces and automatically sends an alert as soon as serious errors occur.

Our video solution, CARY, is a connector which communicates both with the API (application programming interface), i.e. the programming interface of Webex, with the API of Calendly. The aim is to ensure successful appointment booking for care homes. Reliable monitoring of the interfaces as well the monitoring of CARY itself is guaranteed with the APM solution from Dynatrace.

 

How was Dynatrace used with CARY?

Dynatrace ensures that an alert is sent as soon as an error occurs during the booking of an appointment. This message is sent via its own Webex chat room to the respective project leader or product owner, or directly to the developer, who can then find the error easily and fix it. The benefit lies in saving time, as the intensive search for the error that is undertaken by the APM solution is often completely automated.

Through the deep integration in the CARY web application, metrics from the infrastructure (server, database, etc.) and metrics of the application itself (CARY), as well as the API responses from Webex and Calendly, are correlated and the origin of the error is defined. This is also called a root cause analysis and is nowadays supported by enterprise solutions such as Dynatrace and AppDynamics by using AI.

Thanks to this monitoring strategy, it was possible to identify, rectify and optimise problems during the development process of CARY. Furthermore, indirect issues on the part of the Webex API were identified which required CARY’s code to be altered as we could not make changes to the API of Cisco ourselves.

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What is planned in the future?

In the future, RUM (real user monitoring) is to be introduced in this area. Through this, userspecific data such as location, operating system or user behaviour can be collated and analysed.
The cooperation with Dynatrace will be expanded further in future projects, whereby the main focus will be on banks and insurance companies – preferably, however, with companies that develop and operate their own software.