A quick reference to the key terms and concepts used in Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS) billing, usage, and account management.
Account Management provides forecasting, alerting, drill-downs and real-time insights into your usage patterns. You can also manage Dynatrace license and subscriptions, Dynatrace users, SSO access, and monitor Dynatrace platform adoption and environment health.
An annual commitment is the minimum amount of money you agree to spend each year as part of your DPS contract. DPS agreements are typically signed for 1–3 years.
The usage of Dynatrace capabilities are recorded as Billing Usage Events (BUEs) in Grail. Further usage details are stored there as BUE attributes. You can access those via Account Management, or by building your own dashboards that have DQL queries.
Dynatrace calculates licensing costs based on an environment's consumption of Dynatrace capabilities. For example, the Application & Infrastructure Observability category includes four capabilities: Full-Stack Monitoring, Infrastructure Monitoring, Mainframe Monitoring, and Foundation & Discovery. You can find them on your rate card.
The use of Dynatrace leads to consumption of capabilities, which we measure in different units of measurement.
All usage is collected and rated using the subscription's rate card. As a result, usage is transferred into costs, expressed as a monetary value. Cost is the result of usage multiplied by the price point on your rate card of the respective Dynatrace capability.
Your Dynatrace Platform Subscription provides a budget summary that forecasts costs through the end of the subscription period. The algorithms use seasonal forecasting techniques, looking at past usage and predicting future usage based on repeating usage patterns and costs.
Dynatrace meters usage each time you use a capability. Usage counts the amount of units you consume for a specific Dynatrace capability. Each capability has a different unit of measurement, for example, "memory-gibibyte-hours" for Full-Stack Monitoring.
On-demand usage occurs after the minimum annual commit is reached. Dynatrace never charges penalty-style overages. Instead, customers who consume more than their minimum annual spend commitment can continue to use the platform on an on-demand basis, billed monthly at the same rates as pre-paid consumption.
The rate card is a structured pricing list that outlines the cost per capabilities under the DPS model. Your individual rate card is part of your purchase order and is accessible in the Account Management portal. Each platform capability has a price point defined in the rate card.
A Dynatrace Platform Subscription agreement is typically signed for 1–3 years, with a minimum annual commitment. Each platform capability has a price point defined in the rate card that's included with your agreement.