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IBM Application Performance Management vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM Application Performance...
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (56th)
IBM Security QRadar
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Application Performance Management and IBM Security QRadar aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Application Performance Management is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 0.6%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
IBM Security QRadar, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 5.3% mindshare, down 8.8% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Application Performance Management0.6%
Dynatrace6.0%
Datadog5.2%
Other88.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Security QRadar5.3%
Splunk Enterprise Security7.2%
Wazuh5.8%
Other81.7%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Daniel Tamiru - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Database & System Administration at Awash International Bank
A multi-functional solution but has poor stability and performance-related issues
We are using version 4 of IBM Application Performance Management, and it is deployed on-premises. We use it for internet banking and mainly for application performance on-site. For example, if we face performance-related issues in one of our software or managed services, we use this solution to…
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten."
"The transaction tracking feature from IBM is the most important feature for us. It is something that provides a terrific value for us and our clients. It has a lot of data sources and agents that are collectors. It is also stable."
"It's easy to use."
"Because we have partnerships with other partners, I can share a bit about what I've noticed with IBM APM compared to other vendor solutions. Specifically, with IBM, the visibility into detailed process information is more tangible. On the OS level, APM displays all processes (or the top 10 processes) that are consuming CPU or resident memory. This is the most important thing that is not always available with other vendors."
"IBM Application Performance Management helped us increased our response time by 80% and cost 60% less."
"The initial setup was straightforward and took minimal effort."
"The most valuable feature is the breakdown that it provides, such as a description of the fields for a particular transaction."
"The support is very good. We get support whenever we need it. Sometimes they respond immediately and sometimes it will be within 24 hours. We can ask them to please do it right away and they can get a request done within an hour or two."
"I think this is a good product for enterprises because of the performance and out-of-the-box rules and use cases. If they want to reach the maturity level early, they can use these out-of-the-box rules and use cases. That will help them a lot."
"I like the graphical interface. It's so good and easy."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics has easy architecture, has a good portfolio and integration."
"This is a distributed application, meaning that a customer can stack small and then scale it so that they can expand pretty effectively. You can use, basically, the same product in an SMB or a large enterprise."
"The ability to add extensions is the most valuable feature. For example, extensions that provide valuable test ports."
"Most valuable features include the granularity of information."
"It comes with many rules disabled. You can tune them and modify them according to your enterprise needs and avoid false positives."
 

Cons

"The demo that was provided to us is not working very well. At times, there are errors."
"With APM, we noticed that the agent can cause a lot of issues for the application, making the agent very unreliable. Many issues are happening, and we've had to discuss it with support to try and get a fix. It affects application availability, and sometimes actions fail because of the agent, degrading the performance of the application."
"It's still missing some platforms. For example, if you look to applications itself, it is missing the interface."
"They should focus on potentially enhancing the dashboard to make it more contemporary and adding some customization options. Furthermore, there might be room for improvement in the pricing policy."
"The stability is not great and should be better."
"Technical support can be slow and needs improvement."
"Its web user interface is a little bit old in comparison to other solutions, such as New Relic, and it should be improved. Its scalability and technical support should also be improved. Currently, it is scalable, but only in a vertical way. They provide good technical support, but the initial steps for a new case can be improved to fasten the resolution process."
"A lot of information that we receive for the devices is IP-based, but it would help if we could have a default dashboard in which we can add more details about the assets for which we are receiving the information. For example, if it is a Windows or Linux device, we only get the IP for that particular device. We don't really get the name and other details of that particular device. For that, you have to drill down into your own asset management system. It would be good to have a place where we can probably add this information so that we don't have to look into other tools."
"IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics could improve machine learning use cases because they are limited and most of the use cases are rule-based. They should develop more use cases, such as in Securonix or Exabeam because they will detect a threat. Using machine learning is mainly on the correlation rules, but if you think about Exabeam or Securonix, they detect using machine learning or machine learning-based algorithms."
"Sometimes it takes time to load queries, but other than that, it performs excellently."
"They should provide more manual examples online so that I can learn it myself."
"QRadar needs to be more specialized, along the lines of what other SIEM solutions are."
"The interface is very old. IBM should remake it into a more modern interface."
"IBM needs to invest more into the collaboration with other vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As I previously indicated, I initiated the IBM and uncovered all its elements. Consequently, I'm not inclined towards a licensing approach."
"IBM APM is one of the cheaper products on the market, while everything necessary to get started is included in the license."
"The licensing fees can be paid every six months or on a yearly basis."
"IBM has subscriptions plans that run for one year."
"I feel that the price is reasonable but compared to other products that are on the market, such as an offering by Microsoft, it is more expensive."
"A good approach would be to begin with an On Cloud subscription, then later on do a more exact sizing."
"It is a perpetual license that we have for the event collector. The licensing is done based on the number of events and flows that you receive on this particular device. These are perpetual licenses, which means once you purchase them, they don't expire, which means that the support to IBM is definitely renewed after every one year. We have an enterprise agreement with IBM, which puts the cost in a totally different category as compared to someone who is not an IBM partner and is approaching IBM for this solution. We were able to get massive discounts. To give you an idea, we recently purchased 30,000 event licenses, and it costs around $480,000. It is definitely not a cheap product. We have licenses for about 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second. All the appliances and their events and flows are basically clubbed together and charged or rather calculated through a single source. The console receives all the details from all the event processes that we have globally. So, the license that we have is a single license for 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second, but that can be managed centrally. I was only part of the secondary purchase, which was 30,000 events per second for about $480,000. You can calculate how much we paid for 270,000 events. Reducing its price would be a compromise. We have already used a lower-priced product in the form of NNT, but we had to get rid of it because it was not doing the job that we actually wanted to do. You get what you pay for."
"The price could be better. I bought a subscription for three years."
"IBM Security QRadar is a very expensive tool."
"found other solutions, with more features at the same cost or less. You don’t have to leave the Gartner Magic Quadrant to beat their price."
"The maintenance costs are high."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Retailer
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
Pricing and the license of EPS were managed by the governance team. I was not responsible for managing those. I was supposed to put up the requirement of the license needed to integrate that amount...
 

Also Known As

IBM APM
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mibtree, EatDrinkDeals.com, IT Performance Advisor
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
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