Elastic Observability vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Elastic and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Elastic is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.8, while Broadcom is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.8. Elastic holds a 2.7% mindshare in CMS, compared to Broadcom’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews

8,483 Views
3,308 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

3,591 Views
1,508 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Elastic Observability compete in the observability and performance management sector. Elastic Observability holds the advantage with its advanced analytics capabilities, suited for feature-rich environments.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers comprehensive application monitoring, predictive analytics, and workload optimization. Elastic Observability provides real-time insights with powerful log analysis, advanced data visualization tools, and extensive customization options.

Room for Improvement: VMware could enhance its analytics capabilities, offer more customization options, and improve its support for non-VMware environments. Elastic Observability could improve ease of integration with third-party tools, simplify its setup process, and enhance customer support for complex deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications integrates seamlessly into VMware-centric infrastructures and offers responsive support. Elastic Observability provides flexible cloud and on-premise deployment options, supported by thorough documentation and a strong community.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications involves higher upfront costs but provides significant ROI through integration and infrastructure efficiency. Elastic Observability offers a flexible pricing model and delivers compelling ROI due to its advanced analytical features, despite potentially higher setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

10th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

15th

Ranking in Container Monitoring

5th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (16th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

17th

Ranking in Container Monitoring

6th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 2.7%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Elastic Observability	2.7%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	2.1%
Other	95.2%

Cloud Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities

In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

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Ajay Shukla

Consultant at HCLTech

Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome

The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."

"I found Elk to be excellent for log analytics, security analytics, application code-level analytics, collaboration with DevOps teams, CI/CD, microservices, and Kubernetes, specifically cloud-native or cloud-specific tasks."

"I think Elastic Observability is already in very good shape."

"The most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities."

"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."

"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."

"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."

More Elastic Observability pros

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."

"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."

"Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal."

"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."

"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."

"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."

"There's a steep learning curve if you've never used this solution before."

"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."

More Elastic Observability cons

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."

"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."

"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."

"The product is not that cheap."

"We will buy a premium license after POC."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."

"We have been using the open-source version."

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 5% of the time

Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 5% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

February 2026

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2026

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?

Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.

What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2026

Free Report: Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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