No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (4th)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (14th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)0.8%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.4%
Other97.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

DS
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Service health has been monitored and visual insights support proactive telecom operations
The installation process is the first aspect I dislike about Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence). If you do not configure it correctly, you will encounter issues in the search head. Because we use a distributed environment where each component has its own specific roles, installation is critical and requires careful attention. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is built with many applications. It is a compressed file, and when you extract the Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) app, you receive approximately 19 apps. Some applications, add-ons, and packages must be installed on specific components. If you do not configure an application correctly, it will not work. Sometimes we encounter issues during installation because of this complexity. I believe the installation process should be more uniform, meaning it could be deployed across all components to avoid post-installation issues. Sometimes after installation, you receive errors, and users cannot access Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence). We have experienced this type of issue due to installation errors. I believe there is currently room for improvement regarding scalability. When we create Glass Tables containing many searches, the Glass Tables sometimes fail due to memory constraints, and we receive error pages. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) should have a lightweight version to address these concerns. I would rate current scalability as medium.
AS
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We liked the built-in calculation of health scores."
"The KPS used to automate the integration policy is the most valuable feature of Splunk ITSI."
"The predictive analysis feature is quite useful, as it helps identify potential issues before they impact services and allows for proactive action."
"Our mean time to detect is down to five minutes."
"ITSI's KPI and correlation search aspects are powerful, and the service creation suits the project well. It allows for good segregation of the monitoring solution, and up-to-date quick-time monitoring. We're notified quickly when something goes wrong."
"The service analyzer view and automatic creation of incidents are valuable."
"Splunk Episodes are valuable because it correlates and aggregates all the information, and you do not have one million events to look at and triage, so it is quite convenient."
"I particularly like the preview feature because it provides a prompt experience for impact analysis."
"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"We haven't had any issues with stability."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
 

Cons

"While integrating services and KPIs in ITSI is straightforward, I found it challenging to analyze them with the service analyzers; specifically, using the deep dive feature to pinpoint the exact source and time of an issue proved difficult."
"Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) can be improved through alerts and additional features."
"I see areas for improvement in Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) such as cost, which is high."
"Splunk ITSI consumes a lot of CPU resources."
"There are areas in Splunk ITSI that have room for improvement, such as the episodes, the speed, or the accuracy."
"The end-to-end visibility in Splunk ITSI is limited and has room for improvement."
"There should be entity conflict resolution, specifically regarding duplicate entities. There should be case sensitivity for various keys amongst entities, specifically host names. We need IT metrics-based indexes and more content packs. I know they are coming out with these features"
"Splunk ITSI lacks out-of-the-box solutions for enterprise users."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
"They just need more capability. A few areas still need more enhancements in the technology capability space."
"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is based on data usage."
"The cost of the modules is a bit high for non-global companies, making it difficult for them to afford Splunk ITSI."
"It is interesting. I am not involved that much lately, but if I recall correctly, you license primarily on the volume of data that you are using in Splunk ITSI, but there is no way Splunk can ever check if that is true, so that is interesting. We are not doing it, but someone can pretend to just use 10%, and it would be super cheap. It is tricky, but it is more tricky for Splunk than for us."
"Splunk is pretty expensive, but it gives you a decent insight into the data. It is easy to learn, and ITSI has a great interface. You can run those queries and pass the data. I"
"It depends on how big an organization is. If we have a lot of resources, the licensing needs to be upgraded. If we have a small environment, the licensing cost is definitely going to be less."
"Splunk ITSI is an expensive tool, and we need to purchase the utility license."
"Splunk ITSI is expensive."
"Splunk ITSI is a pay-per-use service that is priced fairly based on the amount of data we use."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
From a pricing perspective, it is not that bad because we get it from a distributor and do not purchase it directly from Splunk. We get it from a distributor who gives the pricing to a partner and ...
What needs improvement with Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
In terms of improvements for Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence), I would suggest adding more out-of-the-box plugins and adapters, especially as there is a high demand for observability and dashb...
What is your primary use case for Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
I use Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) as a manager of the managers, a tool sitting on top of all the other observability tools. It gets the alerts feed from all the sources such as Splunk Ent...
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...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
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 priva...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TransUnion, Cox Automotive, Carnival Cruises, Leidos, Econocom, National Ignition Factory, Entrust Datacard, Molina Healthcare, United States Census Bureau
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.