How Computacenter is collaborating with Dynatrace to pioneer a services line around DevOps

Computacenter's James Morris and Dynatrace's Michael Allen on leveraging a tech megatrend to build out a dedicated services line

As solution providers increasingly look to build out services practices on top of thriving resale businesses, technology megatrends can provide a lever into working with vendors and growing revenue from existing accounts.

One such example is Computacenter's work to harness the growth of DevOps and digital transformation projects.

When the DevOps movement began to gain momentum, Computacenter saw not just a trend, but a transformative opportunity to revolutionize the way organisations operate in the digital age.

Reflecting on the journey which has spanned the past six years, James Morris, head of cloud sales at Computacenter (pictured), offers an insight into the company's proactive approach: "Five or six years ago, we realised that we had been undertaking DevOps projects for customers, albeit quite reactively. We were customer-led at that point—solve one problem, move to the next.

"Moving forward to three or four years ago, what we started hearing is, the buzzword digital transformation is was out there.

"We looked at it through a slightly different lens - how we think that manifested itself was actually empowering developers and engineers to build software better and faster, give them better experiences, make them more productive.

"So that is the crux of our developer philosophy - giving our large enterprise customers better platforms and processes."

This laid the groundwork for Computacenter to establish a dedicated services line around the burgeoning DevOps trend.

At this point, the services giant went on a hunt for suitable partners around which to build the practice.

"We began scouring the market for who we thought some of the leaders were, Morris says.

"Again, we were customer-led on this, we went to our customers and asked who they were using. Dynatrace came up. And at that point, we had done some work together, but it was more project-based.

"So in that period of time, several years ago, we started to work much closer together and look at how we can go and solve some of these problems for customers."

Michael Allen, VP of worldwide partner sales at Dynatrace, reflects on the synergy between the two companies: "Computacenter's vision resonated deeply with ours. They recognised the imperative of empowering developers and engineers, and we saw our solutions as instrumental in facilitating that transformation."

"Observability was the natural starting point, Morris explains.

"We needed comprehensive visibility across dynamic tech stacks, and Dynatrace's advanced monitoring capabilities provided the perfect solution."

The partnership between Computacenter and Dynatrace extended beyond technical integration to encompass cultural transformation.

"We offer tailored services around adoption to help customers fully harness the capabilities of Dynatrace's solutions and maximise the return on their investment."

For Dynatrace, the collaboration with Computacenter presented new avenues for growth and innovation.

"For every dollar of Dynatrace subscription revenue, there's anywhere between $3 to $5 in services revenue for partners around it. And in excess of $8 of ROI for the customer return above those costs, Allen states.

Platform engineering provides a new avenue for growth

The partnership continues to grow and open up new avenues for services expansion, particularly as platform engineering gains momentum among the DevOps community.

According to Gartner, 80 per cent of large organisations will establish platform engineering teams by 2026.

"I think we we see DevOps work evolve in a lot of customer organisations, with concepts like platform engineering. The cultural aspects of what DevOps is are now shifting to a platform approach. More and more at end-user organisations, you have teams of people whose day job it is to build that self-service capability and self-service platform for thousands of people to use."

A year ago, the two companies revealed a product innovation roadmap. So far, this has resulted in a services enablement programme, including training and best practice for developers, as well as the Dynatrace App Developer Specialisation, launched in August.

The next piece of the roadmap is set to come out in May 2024 and will include DevSecOps automation training, with further additions planned for later in the year.