Broadcom DX Application Performance Management Reviews

CA APM is currently used in two areas of our business (SAP estate and SMART estate) but slowly we are delivering APM to a vast amount of people in the business. I think that is the biggest compliment I can give as more and more people are wanting to use APM.

I feel the ability to easily see a variety of metrics is great for us as a business, as we are able to view our systems in more depth. If there are any issues we are able to spot the exact problem very quickly. We are able to spot issues much quicker with the use of the out-of-the-box metrics given to us by CA. But we also develop that further with the use of the EPA Agent and expand what we can give and show the business by creating our own scripts. This has allowed us to develop our own self-monitoring and before anybody else sees the issue we are on hand to solve that as quickly as possible.

I don’t believe that there are many improvements from the product point of view, as the future upgrades which are coming will solve many of our issues.

No.

No.

The technical support is superb. They are always willing to help as well as give guidance as and when you need it. whether on a chat, face to face, or through the CA communities site where you can talk with other users.

Straightforward as we had a CA technician in with us to help us set up and tell us what was needed to be done and how we can do it.

Might seem quite expensive but definitely worth the money invested.

The CA APM product is great to show you how your business is doing and where improvements can be made. We are using this in our SAP estate and SMART estate and, as said above, we are exploring how we can deliver this product to more areas around the business helping our company grow!

The Webview because I can obtain more detail and CEM because I can quantify the business.

It helps us find the cause and the errors in our application quickly.

Team center can give more information.

5 months.

When we made the upgrade to 10.3 we have some problems with the new version.

No.

Is really good but sometimes the answer time is really slow.

The setup is easy. The problem begins when you need an specific installation.

When the installation begins, read the documentation because sometimes important configurations are not configured by default.

In our organization, it was very common to create crisis rooms where we gathered experts from all areas to investigate an application problem by allegations of users about problems of slowness and errors. After we started using APM in our environment, we managed to reduce the creation of these rooms by 90%.

• Detection of errors that occur to users
• Measurement of response time
• Transaction traces

Currently, we have in our park 600 servers monitored with the APM, and we have on average 2000 applications still to be included in the monitoring. As our environment is very large and we support all of them with a team of about 20 people, we cannot verify all the logs looking for these errors. So, we set up rules in APM to warn us when the application starts to present errors, and we already interact directly with the development team to handle these errors. This is also true for the average response time. The tracers use the same ones when a more in-depth investigation of the problem is necessary to discover the exact point of the problems that we are investigating.

The creation of a report is an area with room for improvement.

The reports are a key part of APM in my vision because it is through them that we manage to generate the evidence to direct the development team and operational support to address. However, we can not extract the information of the tool through reports. We have needed several times to use screen print screen, CTRL + C and CTRL + V. I cannot change the font, color, size, bold or any text I put in the report, I cannot change the page size among other things.

We have vital information in the tool that we cannot extract as topology changes, application topology design, type-separated error relationship, and so on.

We did have stability problems in versions 10.1 and 9.7.

We had many problems of instability, but when we upgraded to version 10.5, these problems reduced drastically.

At this moment, we have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent. Whenever I needed support, I had an excellent service.

We did not previously use a different solution. We just did a PoC.

All settings have always been pretty simple.

Negotiate a lot, but do not forget to buy the product because it is worth it.

We evaluated AppDynamics and HPE Diagnostics.

APM only worked here in the company because CA's after sales is very present here and acted as a true partner for us. I strongly recommend having someone from CA “together forever”, because at the beginning it was very difficult to understand what the tool was reporting.

My organization can find the correct solution to an alert the first time around. This shortens the resolution time.

I found the solution's end-to-end analysis and flexibility most valuable.

Java Console uses too much memory.

I have not encountered any issues with stability.

I have not encountered any issues with scalability.

I would rate the level of technical support as "Good."

We used a different solution in the past. We switched because of this solution's end-to-end analysis feature.

We did not evaluate other options, since there were no other solutions that we knew about with the capacity for end-to-end analysis.

In the newer versions of the application, they had something called a Triage Map. That basically breaks it down from a service perspective. You actually see it from a service perspective and then you see what components make up that service.

It really helps the business. They are not seeing individual servers or individual devices, they're seeing it from a service level, which is what everybody wants to see. It works the logic, the mapping, and how the application sticks to the database or the web server. It automatically creates that map for you.

• Acts as a troubleshooting-like application
• Deals with performance issues
• Helps in trending, like the data mine, the load which is running on the application servers
• Helps the development team to fine-tune and proactively manage the application.

Some of the reporting features. we are running maybe two versions behind, so we haven't explored the reporting functionality.

I believe the latest version of APM 105, there is a reporting capability, which we would like to leverage when we do the upgrade.

But I think that was something which was missing. Right now, if I need to run some reports, I need to run some manual queries, which is very time consuming.

Hopefully in the later releases, which is out there, we can explore the reporting functionality. There are some features that I would have like to see, which are not there in the current version.

I haven't had any prior stability issues. The only issues I have usually, is more like a question. In other words, if this can be done or it cannot be done. But I don't have that many issues pertaining to performance or the system going down or anything. I really love the product.

There were no real issues with scalability. If you have proper scaling, it depends on how you implement the product. You need to make sure it's a scalable solution, depending on the number of agents that reporting to the manager. In terms of providing scalability, it should be fine. I haven't seen any issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

I have been here since 2010 and they have been using APM since. I really didn't have a APM solution, so this is the first time we've used an APM.

They use a database called Postgres, which is an open source database. When setting that up, we always run into issues. The application itself is not that complicated. You'll need to get it installed and then configure it. But when installing the database, we've seen a bit a lot of it, and there are issues with it.

We didn't really evaluate other options, but right now, we are in the process of doing it. Right now, we're trying to compare with AppDynamics. That's something we are working on.

They can surely give this try, but there are some other tools out there. When we implemented this back in 2009, there weren't that many competitors or vendors for APM. There were less nine years ago. There have been quite a few, like we have AppDynamics, you have Dynatrace, and they're pretty good tools too.

I would suggest that they can do a proof of concept depending on what the requirements are. Some features are good in one product, but the other product has something else to offer. It's still a good product, but then they can always look at some other solutions too, before making the final decision.

• Real-time information
• Historical info
• Smart instrumentation
• Customizable

• Centralized point to start studying a problem
• Fast analyses
• Getting quick solutions on most cases, but sadly, not for the hardest ones

• User interface customizable components
• Being able to establish relations with source code
• Being able to add some custom add-ons, such as graphical add-ons and/or computes
• 1.- To solve the lacks of nice graphical components i think that this area could be opened to parterns and community. If you develop some mechanism to add graphical
  components, with angular,etc, giving a template in some way that we can add your own html,css and javascript, community will generate his own widgets and share via marketplace, so they will improve your software and make it more visually appealing (same for java to workstation application). I attack some examples i have done to clarify objective.
• 2.- javascripts can be done now and added to introscope but it will better if you can add it and appear as an option same as sum, max, etc. I mean now you can create a javascript and select the metrics affected by one regex, but it will be nice to have the option to make a calculator that simply adds itself to the options and be applied on metric grupings just like sum, etc. And also share with all ppl.
• I will like to comment to you one more point. I think that introscope has to be more application focused, first question always is what applications are afectted/working,not servlets o jsp, so it will be nice that introscope has a mechanims to asociate a JSP, servlets, backend (DB schema), etc to 1 or more application or context, althoug it be manualy .

We have been using this solution for about four years.

Sometimes the workstation hangs or becomes unresponsive. However, the web application works worse, is ugly, and we prefer to use the workstation.

There were scalability issues. With a high amount of data, we found that there is some loss of information when asking for the CLW. We have an issue open on this and CA its working to solve it.

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10. They gave us fast answers when we asked for information, but there were delays to get a solution, even when the issue was clearly a bug.

The setup was easy. It was self-learning in my case.

I don't deal with pricing or licensing, but I think it is a bit expensive. However, the product is really good.

It is a very good product, but it has to fit their needs because it is mainly focused on JAVA/.NET applications, although it has agents for PHP and Node.js.

Before CEM, we didn't know when the users were having issues. We always learned about issues when the users called management and the managers informed us about the problems. That was an embarrassment.

With CEM, we call the users, help desk, and application support before a situation becomes problematic. Therefore, problems are deflected and embarrassments of not knowing what is happening are avoided.

The CEM (Customer Experience Manager) allows us to see user errors and proactively react to issues before they become problems.

Presentation and reporting should be improved. Very often, we use tools such as Kibana or Jaspersoft for dashboards and reporting on CA APM data because CA APM’s old interfaces do not reflect well in modern displays, compared to those new tools.

However, we are seeing an improvement with the introduction of Team Center. We would like to see the same type of graphics in the old reporting facility.

We have not had stability issues. The product is very stable and corrective maintenance is provided regularly.

We have not had scalability issues.

Support is average, but there is a great community that provides solutions almost instantly to any query.

We previously used IBM ITCAM.

It was a straightforward initial implementation. We started small and grew bigger.

Negotiate, negotiate, and negotiate.

We also evaluated IBM ITCAM.

Have a dedicated monitoring team.

Having implemented into production, we found that initially the application had quite a few incidents, alerts, and problems as we used monitoring to unearth some technical debt.

However, after implementing “smoke detectors” and resolving the technical debt, the applications have become much more stable, with fewer production incidents, fewer defects, higher reliability and quality of service.

Cross-platform business transaction tracing, custom triggers, thresholds and alerting, and deep dive root cause analysis are the most valuable features.

Cross-platform business transaction tracing supports the ability to monitor end-to-end performance across the stack, providing granular insight into customer experience KPIs, which are a critical success factor for organizations. Business transaction tracing also allows identification and drill down into problems within the stack, reducing the mean time to detect and resolve problems.

Developing custom triggers and thresholds for problem management allow the introduction of “smoke alarms”, which can prevent severity 1 system failures, improve productivity (fewer war rooms), and increase application stability, reliability, and performance.

I would like them provide more guidance on specific tuning of monitoring options to avoid unacceptable overhead. This has proven to be a little bit of a challenge, particularly in the cross enterprise CICS monitoring overhead, which we are currently working through with CA. They have been very helpful in advising us with this.

We have had stability issues. Not all applications are equal, and what works well for one app may not be applicable to another.

“Chatty” apps, excessive monitoring, or sampling can cause memory issues and server crashes resulting in a little bit of trial and error to determine monitoring levels that have minimal impact on performance and stability of environments.

We have not had any scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent.

Other parts of the organization are using Dynatrace, but both products are very capable.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward, with good documentation and technical support, both via email and on-site.

There is some research needed to determine licensing costs, based on the number of DataPower instances for the Nastel agent, for example.

We didn’t evaluate other options as this was pre-determined via our group administration.

• Make sure you sign up for the appropriate training
• Ensure you have dedicated on-site resources to implement, build, and maintain the tooling
• Make sure you extend training to the production support, developers, and business stakeholders
• Develop a monitoring and alerting strategy, with a supporting roadmap and pipeline for deployment across business-critical systems.

While out-of-the-box monitoring is relatively straightforward, the value comes from custom implementation of alerts and dashboards that focus on specific application functionality.

Agent metrics and customization are valuable features for us because we can set the "resting" metrics to shutdown to prevent overhead.

The product has given us better visibility of the agent and communication of the WAS application to the MQ server.

It should be more user-friendly, especially the CEM part and the agent instrumentation. They should be easier for the customer experience. This is one of the key areas where other competitors, like AppDynamics, beat CA.

I have been using this solution for four years.

We did not encounter any issues with stability, but you should understand how it works and build accordingly.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10.

We did not use any other solution previously.

The setup was straightforward.

Pricing is a key element that needs to be noted in terms of the market for the solution.

We did not evaluate other solutions. We selected this five years ago as there were no other such options.

I have no specific advice except that it is a wise choice. Go for it.

The traditional Introscope portion of the product is the most valuable. It provides good visibility to the JVM and Java application.

We use CA APM for monitoring and alerting of our Java applications.

CA has very recently upgraded its “Browser Response Time Monitoring”, as it was previously known. CA has been listening to its customer requirements, and the Digital Experience Collector is a positive step forward.

Unfortunately, my application is Java version 6, and CA has removed support for Java 6 starting with CA APM, Version 10.5, where the Digital Experience Collector is available.

I have used this solution since 2008.

Because my application is running on IBM WebSphere and Java 6, there were ‘workarounds’ I needed to apply. CA would provide a distinct copy of the Java agent and the associated configuration files to avoid the trouble spots. Unfortunately, these workarounds also disabled important functionality, such as deep tracing.

I have not had any scalability issues.

Technical support is good. They work with urgency.

We did not have any previous solutions.

The support documentation has gotten much better over the last few years. Installation is not difficult, once you understand the different components of the APM solution.

Consider the needs of your application and compare a few vendors.

I recognize Dynatrace and AppDynamics as leaders for e-commerce application APM.

Do a thorough proof of concept.

If your application is not current and can’t be upgraded, you are at risk because CA is moving very fast to catch up with Dynatrace and AppDynamics on functionality. But in the process, they will leave behind older technology, such as support for Java 6.

I run an IBM WebSphere Commerce application, which uses Java 6, and I bumped up against several limitations. As my application is public facing and has a large breadth of URLs, it is difficult to configure for very specific URLs. Rather, I needed to implement “URL groups”, which are generalized URL buckets. In an e-commerce application, that might be “product pages”, “category pages”, or “checkout pages”. Implementing the URL grouping is not easy, and if you get it wrong, you’ll have what is termed a “metric explosion”.

A metric explosion means too many distinct metrics are collected, which can put stress on the Java agent and/or the Enterprise Collector. Cleaning up a metric explosion is complicated, unless you are willing to delete all your historically collected metrics.

Again, I experienced these limitations with version 10.3 of APM and lower. The 10.5 version has made improvements, but my Java 6 application is not supported for version 10.5, so I cannot effectively provide feedback on it.