Riverbed NPM+ vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

Riverbed and Splunk are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Riverbed is ranked #41 with an average rating of 9.0, while Splunk is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3. Riverbed holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Splunk’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Riverbed users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Riverbed NPM+

Read 2 Riverbed NPM+ reviews

965 Views
830 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 80 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

10,049 Views
3,115 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Riverbed NPM+

Splunk Observability Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and Riverbed NPM+ are competing products in the network performance monitoring and management space. Splunk Observability Cloud seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with multiple data sources, while Riverbed NPM+ provides more detailed network insights.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud offers real-time data analytics, centralized monitoring across multiple environments, and seamless integration with various data sources. Riverbed NPM+ offers deep network analysis, detailed traffic insights, and specific diagnostic capabilities which cater to environments needing precise network control.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Observability Cloud deployment is streamlined with end-to-end support, facilitating quicker setup and ongoing assistance. Riverbed NPM+ provides a range of deployment options with more demanding initial setup due to its detailed configuration capabilities. Splunk is often easier to deploy while Riverbed's models require more configuration but offer extensive network management.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud generally has a moderate setup cost with advanced analytics providing a good return on investment for multifaceted monitoring needs. Riverbed NPM+ can have higher initial costs but its extensive diagnostic features can justify the price for networks needing detailed analysis. Pricing favors Splunk for budget-conscious buyers, while Riverbed may yield greater ROI in environments requiring detailed diagnostic capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Riverbed NPM+ vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Riverbed NPM+ vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

March 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

Riverbed NPM+

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

41st

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

28th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

8th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Container Management (5th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Riverbed NPM+ is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	1.3%
Riverbed NPM+	0.5%
Other	98.2%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Satyam Kumar

Senior Technical Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Provides deep packet visibility for tracing failed transactions and helps improve enterprise-level monitoring

Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution. Additionally, within Riverbed Portal, there is an Application Map module that could be improved. It can show the application's architecture and connectivity to the network. The applications map feature needs enhancements for better customization since currently, it is quite limited. The enhancements I recommend are not for the entire Riverbed product suite, but specifically for the application map feature within the Portal of Riverbed NPM+. This Portal is one of the dashboard modules and while there is potential for improvement, it must be enhanced significantly to provide better functionality. Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary. For instance, if I transfer money and a transaction fails, tracing that transaction ID is not captured in AppResponse. I have raised this concern, and if this feature is implemented, it would greatly benefit banking customers, especially because it is not available with their competitors either.

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Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

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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

"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."

"Alluvio Network Performance Management is good for troubleshooting."

"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."

"The most valuable thing that we have seen within our group is the ability to ingest all this raw data and have it organized in a certain way so that different groups can get effective alerting from this massive amount of raw data that is out there."

"Once configured correctly, the analysis reporting the Splunk APM provides is better than that of the other APM tools."

"The dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are amazing, and if you configure them correctly, they are amazing, and it is quite fast as well."

"The most valuable feature in this solution is the log searching."

"I manage six tools, but Splunk Observability Cloud is one of my favorites, and I aspire to build my career specializing in it because it has great features, more attention in the market, and is a relatively new tool with promising growth."

"The most valuable feature is dashboard creation."

"Splunk APM helps us to find errors immediately and resolve them."

"The features I have found most valuable are log searching and log analytics, both of which are quick features."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"Alluvio Network Performance Management is good for troubleshooting."

"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."

"Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary."

"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."

"The main improvement I would suggest for Splunk Observability Cloud would be offering the ability to implement custom apps, specifically allowing Python scripts that Splunk Cloud could host."

"It would be beneficial to have more enhanced features with capabilities to adapt more integrated applications. Improvements in dashboard configuration, customization, and artificial intelligence functionalities are desired."

"One thing I recently ran into was that the logs on the server most often get Gzipped after they have been rotated. We found that we were not monitoring some of the things, so we had to go back and pull them in. Right now, it pulls one at a time, untars it, or unzips it, so I cannot look at the entire history. There can be an improvement in that area."

"Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms. These categories of dashboards would be very helpful for customers."

"To improve Splunk Observability Cloud, I wish they could develop more in the area of pricing and cost transparency, provide a smoother learning curve, and enhance the log management experience, ensuring that log navigation is not solely focused on metrics and tracing but also has good search performance to understand larger data sets."

"If it is a new deployment and you have a medium client with about 2,000 users or computers or servers, it will take about six months just to install and configure."

"They need more EDR functionalities."

"Splunk Observability Cloud has not yet completely improved our operational performance for our company's resilience as we are just starting out, however, it will help us ultimately to reduce incident time."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is high and I would rate it one out of ten."

"It is expensive."

"The solution's pricing is costly."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."

"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."

"The pricing is reasonable."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Healthcare Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	53

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alluvio Network Performance Management?

The pricing of Riverbed NPM+ is indeed high, particularly as I work with enterprises in the banking sector primarily in India and the Middle East, and I have also interacted with clients in Europe....

See all answers

What needs improvement with Alluvio Network Performance Management?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Alluvio Network Performance Management?

Riverbed NPM+ has many primary use cases, making this NPM solution totally different from other tools like SolarWinds. They have a solution called AppResponse, which is not an agent-based solution ...

See all answers

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

ThousandEyes vs Riverbed NPM+

Compared 8% of the time

New Relic vs Riverbed NPM+

Compared 6% of the time

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Avantra vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Kentik vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More Splunk Observability Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

March 2026

Download Riverbed NPM+ product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2026

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

Alluvio Network Performance Management

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

Overview

Riverbed NPM+ is a SaaS-delivered service that uses Riverbed Unified Agent to collect decrypted packet data at every user and server endpoint. It fills visibility gaps caused by encrypted tunnels in Zero Trust, remote work, and cloud-native environments. Taking an agent-based deployment approach ensures flexibility, simplicity, and scalability. With this AI-driven Network Observability, Riverbed takes a revolutionary step towards faster issue detection and higher service availability.

Riverbed

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

Riverbed NPM+ vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

March 2026

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