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Splunk Observability Cloud vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (7th), Container Management (5th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
16th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.3%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud2.5%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications2.3%
Other95.2%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Taiwo Ige - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"The features I have found most valuable are log searching and log analytics, both of which are quick features."
"Comparing to Cloud, Splunk Cloud, or any other solution, the most valuable feature of Splunk Observability Cloud is that it is entirely based on metrics."
"This product is very stable."
"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."
"We are happy with what we have, how it is deployed and how it serves the need we have deployed it to fill."
"The most valuable feature is log reporting."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to get information about all of the security measurements in my environment."
"Splunk Observability Cloud has helped improve our operational performance and company's resilience, which was their initial offering."
"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."
"We haven't had any issues with stability."
"Wavefront's monitoring tools and visibility into public cloud platforms are competing with the best out there."
"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."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
 

Cons

"Splunk would be better if some tools were integrated to be able to take action on security or network concerns."
"They need more EDR functionalities."
"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 can improve the flow system and the keyword language. It has predefined keywords, but they can be improved."
"The clustering part of indexes can be more refined."
"I've only experienced downtime, crashes, or performance issues when it isn't configured correctly."
"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."
"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise53
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
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...
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 ...
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

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
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 Observability Cloud vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.