Dynatrace: Leading the charge in shaping the future today

Is Dynatrace an American company? This is a common question among many Google searchers. The answer is yes! Dynatrace is a publicly traded technology firm headquartered in Massachusetts. Its software platform guarantees organizations can seamlessly transfer money, ensure packages arrive at their destinations, and facilitate smooth air travel around the globe. Behind the scenes, Dynatrace is responsible for ensuring that the everyday digital lives of billions of people run smoothly.

However, the product is designed and built in Austria, where the company was founded in 2005. Co-founder Bernd Greifeneder is still the CTO today and leads the R&D department from here. These teams constantly defend Dynatrace’s market leadership in this specialized tech space, in which the company has been ahead of big names such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft for 14 years. Dynatrace was named a leader in Gartner's magic quadrant for the 14th consecutive time in 2024.

Greifeneder's innovation formula is based on his experience: "As a rule of thumb, you have to reinvent yourself as a company every seven years." The trick is to outline the next development steps, while operations continue to refine the status quo. "We've been doing AI for ten years and have developed three different types so that we can give precise answers to our customers and not hallucinate. The AI detects problems or bottlenecks, precisely identifies root causes of errors or security gaps and provides prioritized suggestions for solutions." A core team is already working on the next-but-one product generation. "These are ideas, a small team starts experimenting with them, and yet it takes up to five years to fully implement them in the product, despite our strong R&D budget," says Greifeneder, describing the lengthy process. Innovation work is a marathon, even if it involves a lot of sprinting.

One of the biggest challenges is scaling up the innovation work. Today, approximately 4,700 people work at Dynatrace. "Every time the organization doubles, we had to reinvent ourselves structurally," says the CTO. "We turn Conway's Law on its head and build the software in such a way that it remains innovative and scalable. "The declared goal is to build the product in such a fresh and agile way that the organization's size does not have an impact. The teams are structured so that they have enough autonomy, says Greifeneder. An important key to this is that all developers work more or less in the same time zone. Because: Software development is a creative process."

This creativity is also rewarded: "We offer internal inventor bonuses," says the CTO, "half of them go to the team, not just to key people." Since its foundation, the company has pursued a consistent patent strategy: "We register around 15 inventions a year. We currently have 150 patents." In addition, research programs have been set up with universities in recent years.

See the entire list: Top 20 Internationals (Dynatrace on top).