Splunk AppDynamics Reviews

The most valuable features are transaction correlation, application flow map, business transactions, and the key metrics that are displayed on the dashboard.

It gives a complete, end-to-end visualization of an environment. That's where it is a little easier to analyze any issue in production compared to the other APM tools. That's the key difference between the other tools and AppDynamics.

The first thing is that they are going in the right direction. That's the great thing because they're linking IT with business. That's why we mostly like it because the other APM tools are just talking about your IT. They're not linking that context to the business. You have your monitoring; your instrumenting; you're doing a byte-code instrumentation; you're doing a threat analysis. You have enough information. All you need to do is just play around with the data and give the visualization of business. What other APM tools are not giving, AppDynamics is great on that point.

As far as the features that we're expecting, the main thing is the universal agent that I’ve mentioned. They're not clear on what month or what year. I think next year, but they're not clear on the release date. That's one killer that we're really expecting. Because that will save a lot of time for an enterprise like us to go for a massive deployment. That's one of the key features I can say that we're looking forward to.

Stability is good so far. We haven't experienced any issues. But after a recent controller upgrade, we experienced a couple of downtimes of the controller, which is not good. On the agent side, not much. We do not see agents stop all of the sudden. We haven't experienced any such things. But in the APM space, the agent is a little tricky, so we have to be a little careful with the agent. With the previous experience around the Dynatrace agent we had, that killed the entire box. The box was completely down.

With this tool, we are taking a few more precautions; meaning, we're not going to production with the agent as of right now. We're putting enough load, enough applications, enough boxes and testing it for 2-3 months. Once we get confident, only then are we planning to go for the production.

Apart from the stability side – as I mentioned, the controller was down a couple of times recently, and the agent is working fine – the agent overhead is not good. It's taking a minimum of 200-300 MB per JVM or per CLR, which is the case with any of the APM tools in the current market. But we expect the overhead to come down. Then, it'll benefit us a lot. For an enterprise like us, we have a lot of shared environments. A box has 50-60 JVMs. A box has 300, 400, 500 virtual machines. In that case, if the overhead is 2-3 personned, we end up killing the box because we have the VM environments.

How we look at scalability is in the controller's scalability. I think AppDynamics is not really there yet. The scalability should be very easy. I think that's what our expectation is. I think it's not even there yet. Controllers won't talk to each other. In a keynote session at a recent NetApp conference, someone was talking about or mentioned controller-to-controller communication. Once that is there, as long as controllers talk to each other, the scalability will become a little easier. That's on the controller side.

On the agent side, the scalability is the main focus area for us now, because we have 100,000 boxes, and we can't really deploy agents app-by-app, machine-by-machine, or manually. We can't really do that. Our approach is automated deployment. But with AppDynamics, the really tricky part is, they expect the application to be modeled in a certain way. They want us to define the app name, tier name, and node name, which is a little tricky.

I can just do mass deployment of agents, but then I have to do configuration also. That is where I think we're a little lagging, so we're working closely with them. We end up developing our own automation scripts to achieve that stage. Again, at that keynote session, people were talking about a universal agent. I think that might really solve the problems from both the deployment and licensing angles.

With their support, if you raise a ticket, the response is very good. But the concern is the consulting days. I think they're offering some consulting days. In the first year of a contract, they offer a certain number of consulting days. After that, the consulting days are free. But to book a consultant, I think we need to book the consultant at least one or two weeks in advance. We can't really do that in the enterprise. A lot of things will happen. All of a sudden, we need support. That's a little tricky. We shared the feedback with AppDynamics. One or two days is what we can spend, but one or two weeks is really a problem.

For us, a large enterprise, the audits and the compliance issues; these things are serious concerns. We have 6,000 applications. We have 100,000-plus boxes. If management asks us, "Hey. Can you tell me what happened with a certain number of the boxes? Why did they go down?” Or “Why did certain applications go down? Can you please pull up the reason? Or can you tell me all of the applications a X person has accessed? Which boxes did he touch? Which routers did he touch?" We have no clue in a large enterprise like us. That's where instrumentation is key for us.

Our model is, we're shifting towards platform. Once we shift towards the platform, we want to offer instrumentation as a built-in stack in it. For that, there are two key things. One is explicit instrumentation, and the other is implicit instrumentation. For the explicit instrumentation, we already developed a solution last year. We’re now planning the implicit instrumentation. That's where we did a lot of market research. Our technology labs did a lot of market research. That's when we also went to the Gartner Report. Then, we finally chose AppDynamics.

Initial setup was straightforward. There are two angles to it. The controller setup is pretty straightforward. The agent setup is also straightforward, but only if you are a simple tech startup or you have only one e-commerce application. For those kinds of companies, I think it makes sense. All they need to do is spend 2-3 days to set up everything. But in our case, we have 6,000 applications. I think AppDynamics is expecting the application to be modeled in certain way. I think we were asking them about this as well. I was expecting to get an update at that conference that they are moving away from that application modeling to something else. Once they move to that, I think that is also going to speed up the initial setup process.

There weren’t really any other vendors on our shortlist at the time. We are using Introscope extensively in production and we are using Dynatrace extensively in the lower-end environments. If this tool works out well, we're probably going to replace the other two.

As far as the most important criteria when selecting a vendor like AppDynamics, we have different stakeholders. Each stakeholder has their own use cases. The development team expects certain use cases. The support team expects certain use cases. The SWAT team expects certain use cases. Engineering expects certain things. TA expects certain things. We evaluated the tools from all the angles. On top of that, the future is cloud. The future is platform as a service. So, we want a tool that supports that era. That's where AppDynamics is the winner.

The main point is every company is a software company. Invariably, you talk about it. Every button click is important. What if a customer shares feedback with his colleagues, friends or family? Every button click is important. Having said that, you should know what is happening out in your environment, out on your machines, out on your applications. So, application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and end-user monitoring are definitely very important.

We have our own use cases. According to those use cases, we chose AppDynamics. But whatever the product, don't get married to any product; whether it is CA APM, Dynatrace or AppDynamics. Even now, we're not married to any tool. We will always go with a tool which is going to fit in to our model. That's our message to anybody who's researching this case.

One important thing to note is that my rating doesn't mean AppDynamics is not great. AppDynamics is great. It is going in the right direction. At the conference, the CEO or somebody mentioned that they can't shove this product and develop everything that people are expecting for release by 2020. It's being done in a phased manner, in iterations. So far, whatever they have release to us, that's what the rating is for. That will probably be higher in the coming years. With the features that it has and with the expectations that we have, that's the rating we can say. And on top of that, AppDynamics gets the highest rating of any vendor in the APM space. If I rated the other tools, I'd rate them lower.

The main use case for AppDynamics in our company is monitoring and managing the performance of our web and mobile applications. 

We use AppDynamics to identify and resolve performance issues, such as slow loading times or transaction errors. It also helps us track the availability of our applications and ensure an optimal user experience for our customers. 

Additionally, we use AppDynamics reporting and analytics to make informed decisions about the scalability and sizing of our infrastructure, allowing us to provide quality, reliable service as we grow.

AppDynamics has improved our organization in a number of ways. 

First, it gives us complete visibility into the performance of our applications, allowing us to proactively detect and fix issues before they impact users. This has significantly reduced downtime and improved user experience.

Additionally, AppDynamics provides us with detailed information about the performance of the underlying infrastructure, including servers, databases, and external services. 

This has allowed us to identify bottlenecks and optimize resources, improving operational efficiency and reducing unnecessary costs.

The most valuable features of AppDynamics are its real-time monitoring capabilities, deep problem diagnosis, transaction mapping, reporting and analysis, and real-time alerts. These features allow us to proactively detect and fix performance issues, optimize our infrastructure, and make informed decisions to improve the user experience. 

Real-time monitoring helps us stay aware of any anomalies and respond quickly, avoiding costly downtime. 

Deep diagnostics allow us to quickly identify the root causes of problems, accelerating resolution time. 

The transaction map gives us complete visibility into the flow of our applications, helping us identify bottlenecks and prioritize improvements.

As for areas of improvement, AppDynamics could benefit from greater integration with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. This would allow the tool to automatically analyze and correlate application performance and behavior data to detect patterns and anomalies not evident to users. 

Additionally, the ability to track performance in multi-cloud environments would be valuable as many organizations are adopting hybrid cloud or multi-cloud strategies. In terms of additional features, it would be beneficial to include a capacity management module that allows operations teams to proactively plan and adjust capacity, avoiding performance issues related to lack of resources.

I have been using AppDynamics for three years

AppDynamics offers good scalability. The tool is designed to handle large enterprise environments, with the ability to monitor and manage complex, distributed applications.

We did not previously use a different solution. 

The product requires in-depth knowledge of the infrastructure and the application to be monitored. 

You need to install and configure agents on the appropriate components, which can take time and require a careful approach.

Before investing in AppDynamics, evaluate your needs, compare prices, consider long-term value, and make sure you understand the details of the licensing and support offered.

We did not evaluate other options. 

I'd advise users to make sure they dedicate enough time and resources to properly configure and customize the tool. This includes defining relevant metrics and thresholds, setting effective alerts, and customizing dashboards to reflect specific needs and goals. 

A proper setup will ensure that companies get the most value from AppDynamics and can take full advantage of its application monitoring and management capabilities.

We use the software for proactive incident detection, root cause analysis, and fine-tuning.

AppDynamics Database Monitoring's most valuable feature is the ability of the out-of-the-box to update the information, provide various metrics, and possibly include custom metrics.

The product's drawback is the licensing pricing. It could be better.

We have been using AppDynamics Database Monitoring for five years.

We encounter stability issues related to performance.

We have 100 AppDynamics Database Monitoring users in our organization. It is a scalable product.

Sometimes, the first line of the support team takes too long to escalate the issues to the second line. This particular area could be improved.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. It requires one executive and takes a few minutes to deploy it completely. It is a SaaS product and doesn't require maintenance.

I could implement the product myself as I have access to all environments in the company. I need the help of another team to provide credentials to proceed with the configuration.

The product generates a return on investment in terms of money and time. It reduces the average amount of time for resolving incidents. Time improvement saves around 20% to 30% of money.

AppDynamics offers a yearly basis license.

We have integrated AppDynamics Database Monitoring with ServiceNow and Grafana. We have been trying to integrate it with other ecosystems as it is mandatory nowadays.

I rate it an eight out of ten.

I am not a user, I am an implementer.

For EUC, one of the use cases would be to monitor online shopping from retail, for example, to understand the client's journey and if they are experiencing any difficulties in, at the very least, making their purchase or browsing, the front-end of a specific customer's online shopping.

The second would be internal applications to determine whether the application is living in an order that allows it to process its workloads. It's quite generic because we have so many different types of applications.

With Real-User Monitoring, the most valuable features are what I have described. We can see the customer's path from their computer to the backend systems. It gives us full visibility end-to-end, and if there are any issues, we can observe and record them to improve application performance quality. In addition to the EUC, you can add synthetic transactions, where you can see from every point if your application is performing adequately in terms of reachability if you are running a global site.

As AppDynamics partners, we are fully aware of the roadmap, but I would like them to enhance their SAP monitoring.

One of the features that I would like to see is centralized agent management in the platform console.

While I am not expecting it in the next release, I would want more centralized management of the agent in the platform and better support.

I've been working with AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring for six years. Since the existence of AppDynamics.

It is deployed both on the cloud and on-premises.

We don't have a specific version, we have several instances. I work for an MSP, and we offer these services to a large number of customers.

We have clients using the latest versions, as well as clients using older versions.

AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is stable if it's quick. Depending on where the application is hosted, for example, the same time it takes someone in Singapore to access an application is unlikely to be the same time it takes someone in the UK to access it.

Scalability is also important. That is not directly related to end-user monitoring, but it will be one of the business cases involving the use of microservices and the dynamic expansion of a solution.

In terms of technical support, they don't need to be faster, but they could be more usable. I believe they can contribute more than robots because they do not always adhere to the same standards. They can be a little more helpful, and I'm speaking broadly because they have good guys in there, but we don't always get the good guys, the good resources. To be honest, I can't say I have any complaints.

I am familiar with AppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic, and Datadog, which are the four main ones that we currently use.

When it comes to AppDynamics, we use all of it, all the stack.

The setup is straightforward. I don't see an issue if it's on-premises, but if it's SaaS, we don't install anything other than the agent.

AppDynamics does not usually do monthly payments. They do it on an annual basis, at the very least.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using this solution.

I would rate AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring a seven out of ten.

I'm familiar with agent-based database monitoring. It easily integrates and monitors various databases like Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, with minimal configuration. There are also some advanced, AI-infused use cases.

It's better to enable additional metrics and custom metrics if needed, depending on the specific application.

It's made a difference. The correlation between database and application performance allows us to proactively identify issues that could impact the user experience. This helps the application team improve the user experience and reduce the impact of any problems. The proactive monitoring from AppDynamics definitely helps.

ASM deployment feature is the most useful for me. As soon as you enable the prerequisites, you can deploy the tools. That's one of the major use cases.

The downside is that it's a little costly. And if you get stuck with a problem related to deployment, it can take some time to get it resolved. You need domain expertise support to troubleshoot issues. It's not easy to get things done if you run into trouble.

My experience has been good. Both are premium support users; so it's for a separate, additional price to the licensing. Since they're [Dyntrace and AppDynamics] part of the core monitoring ecosystem, especially with the premier experience.

There are different levels of supports. So, starting from your standard support to your 24/7 support, then you have your engineering support. In both cases, you have to go through an assessment before implementation in terms of what kind of application it is.

Positive

We used Dynatrace, which comes with full-stack observability. Full-stack observability has evolved to the point where, competitively, you can ask how AppDynamics and Dynatrace compare. Dynatrace takes a slight lead here. It can do dynamic baselining and anomaly detection.

It gives a little more transactional insights and is more comprehensive. There's a slight difference, but not a major impact, in terms of database monitoring on both tools. They are both competitive products. One way they try to compete is in terms of APIs, but the only difference I see is that AppDynamics has a slight advantage in one area. We don't have multiple agents, we go with the concept of one agent. Second, Dynatrace leads in observability, integrating with other on-premises and cloud systems.

They are both competitive enough in the same pricing range. They are not so different, they are both in the same range. If you go and negotiate, they are the same.

The deployment itself doesn't take much time. Once you install the agent and enable the prerequisites, you'll be able to start monitoring.

The deployment is a matter of days. If the prerequisites are in place, it's just a matter of days. But the only thing is, in most scenarios, the domain administration team might not be aware of what exactly they want to monitor. 

In that case, we have to do a detailed discovery to understand the database, the type of application it serves, and the issues they want to prioritize. Based on that, we determine the metrics to monitor from both the AppDynamics side and the database application side.

ROI depends on the criticality of the application. If your application is super critical and impacts the end-user experience, then investing in this tool will make a real impact, and you'll get good data management too.

It is expensive. If you opted for the MSP model, you will get premium support because you're already a premium customer to them. If you're not opted for the MSP model and are on a standard model, then it is a little costly. It depends upon the number of licenses you're procuring. Based on that, you might get a discount.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use the product to optimize application performance by monitoring database transactions and extracting insights for troubleshooting issues.

AppDynamics significantly reduced our organization's Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), enhancing team productivity.

They could align the product strategy to evolve as a complete solution similar to Cisco Observability.

We have been using AppDynamics Database Monitoring for seven years.

The product's stability needs improvement. They could stabilize the authentication platform. Additionally, they need to improve microservices monitoring and log analytics.

I rate the stability a seven out of ten.

We work with around 100 AppDynamics Database Monitoring customers.

The technical support service team could be more knowledgeable.

The initial setup process is straightforward. We need to deploy the agent on the box and connect it to the controller. There are various deployment options available.

We take assistance from managed service providers for implementation.

We buy the platform's yearly subscription. I rate its pricing a six out of ten.

In one of the scenarios, a retail company encountered transaction failure issues. The problem was not with the card or payment system but the database operations. By utilizing AppDynamics, the team traced end-to-end transactions and identified a database latency problem.

Monitoring the entire end-to-end system allows us to pinpoint performance issues in the database. Tracking the user journey helped us identify the issues between the middleware and the database.

The topology view feature helps in effective monitoring. However, this feature was developed six years ago and still needs to be updated. The application needs broader improvements and reshaping for this particular area.

Database scaling or migration projects play a supportive role throughout the development, monitoring, and troubleshooting phases. During development, it integrates seamlessly with the SDLC. It detects and resolves performance issues, ensuring database availability and minimizing downtime.

I rate it an eight out of ten.

We're a bank. We do use the predictive tools for the different products of the bank and the application which the bank utilizes.

AppD improves the productivity of Application Engineers, development teams, and other integrated items. Slowness or leak issue is a nut for the team now. Also, the team resolves or understands the network and query path every easy and resolves efficiently.

Our application uptime, increased by 10%, and overall productivity up by 30%.

Ticket or issue down by 12% over five years of use and experience.

Open to be applied and test any area and suite.

The tracing is the most important aspect of the solution. The way it traces the information within the particular application or within the particular infrastructure is great. That actually helps. Apart from that, all of the data that's in the production APM is good.  

Technical support is helpful.

The solution scales well.

The stability is good. 

We do have a combination of areas that need improvement. We do have the integration, such as end-user integration and experience that could be better. It is not just from the response point of view; it is more from the error and error detection point of view. This is due to the fact that these are all the banking applications as used by the banking staff, not by the end-user directly. Based on the banking staff feedback, based on the staff security or maybe dealing with the capital market, there needs to be some improvement.

They do provide the input growth on a daily basis in terms of what is coming in and how we receive the applications and how many we have. We've now started looking for a particular product that can make sure that it should connect with files and statements inside the product. 

The IO ratio, which we are looking for in terms of a report, is one of the concerns. We do monitor those details from AppDynamics, however, reporting and monitoring could be better.

There needs to be more analytics. That is what we are missing from the tool point of view. We need more information geared more towards helping us in making better decisions. When you do the coding that's for a banking situation or maybe in the incidents or capital market, it becomes very important that how much time I'm investing inside the transaction. A transaction which needs to be carried out for either confirming the payments or maybe either releasing the payments - these kinds of things. What I have seen with the use, as of now, is a bit of a lag when we are running on the global cloud or the public clouds, like Azure or the Google platform. 

Right now, we are fighting between three different stakeholders. With the networks, we have a different chat, with the vendors we have a different chat, and with the application team, we have a different chat. This approach doesn't provide a holistic view. Everyone has their own excuses and everyone has their own reasoning and conditions. 

If it can be able to intelligently provide all the things we need to look at, from a data point of view, that would be very useful.

I would say that I have between seven and eight years of experience, hands-on. However, later on in the time frame, over the last four or five years, I have not has as much hands-on experience with the tool. I'm more involved in various solution discussions and strategy building with the platform on top of the tool.

I would say it's very steady and for now, it's very reliable as well. It's stable. We don't have issues with bugs or crashes. 

The solution is very scalable so far in any testing scenario. It performs very well and gives us the expected output which we are looking to improve. 

We are using the solution for more than 600 small and big applications. We have around 78,000 people, including the back-end staff and the development team, that use the solution.

Overall, technical support has been very good. We're very satisfied with their level of support. So far, it's been very good for the bank.

Positive

We have used HPE BSM (now called MF APM). 

Due to these factors, we switch:

1. Costly

2. Implementation complexity

3. Multiple products and Integration

4. Not end-user friendly. 

I was not involved in the initial implementation. Nowadays, the way we approach the teams, sometimes it's very easy when it's an application with a known language like Python or maybe with Ruby or a kind of Java application. In terms of gateways inside the product, sometimes it is very tough, and sometimes it is very easy to get deployed. We're not using any out-of-the-box security. 

We have used model Train for the trainers and enforced all employees with operational training.

We achieve a great number, in terms of applications user availability increase by 30%. In treading, and agents, needs a smooth performance before the market starts. AppD provide a depth to measure any performances challenges, leak issue or even a chain linked issue story.

The pricing is a mixed bag. In some areas they are reasonably priced, however, in others, it's a bit expensive. 

We look for ease of implementation, diagnostics information shared, and controls to the team for working.

We're just an end-user of the product.

We're using the latest version of the solution. 

The deployment model depends on the solution or the size of the product which we are using, as the banks do have private and public clouds. In public clouds, we don't have much of the production instances. It's mainly the development. The free cloud and the cloud environment are completely on a private or in-house, on-premises solution with different ecosystems.

If a proper study has been done, and the solution makes sense for the company, I would recommend the solution. 

I would like to rate the solution at a seven out of ten. That consideration is mainly due to the fact that it covers a large portfolio of the product. It does have support for many other ERP tools. A lot of open customization is available and the product support team can help to customize the product. I've found this tool very useful and helpful on that.

The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is that you can easily determine the load on the application. You can find out how many users are using it, whether there are any response time issues, whether any errors are going high for your application's transactions, etc.

The solution's user interface should be improved. Since it's a GUI tool, traversing from the error to the root cause can sometimes be difficult if you are not thorough with AppDynamics. This could slow down the tool, thereby causing you trouble.

I have been using AppDynamics since 2016.

Most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors, use AppDynamics. The solution's user base is very high.

The solution's initial setup is moderately easy. Installing the tool on old applications like Unix and Linux should be much easier. However, there could be some issues installing the solution on the cloud. The regular pre-defined agents might not work, and you will have to customize and then use them.

AppDynamics was initially a startup. Later, it was sold to Cisco, which has been quite aggressive in its pricing. I would say the solution is affordable because it is widely used across financial service sectors.

Currently, the solution is on the cloud as well. You can have your cloud applications onboarded to AppDynamics without any issues. AppDynamics has its own SaaS environment and SaaS controller on which you can onboard your application. You will need to install some of the AppDynamics agents.

I used to contact the tools team, and they used to answer our queries mostly. If not, they used to take it to the support and then come back with their solution. Users need to list all the servers related to their application on which they want the AppDynamics agents installed. Depending on whether your application is cloud-based or non-cloud, you need to list all your servers. Then, a further installation process would be recommended.

To use AppDynamics, you need to understand the different flows. If an issue is currently ongoing, you need to check which GUI flow is being used. If you want previous data, it will be in the history, and that's a different flow. Working with the tool is tricky, but two to three weeks of continuous work on it should bring you up to date.

Suppose you are working in a bank. For your application, you can configure everything regarding the business transaction. For balance transfers, you can have one business transaction that will monitor balance transfers. There can be another business transaction that can monitor credit cards. You can configure different flows and transactions within the flows in terms of business transactions. Wherever there is an issue, that exact business transaction will start developing.

The integration of AppDynamics within our CI/CD pipeline has positively affected our deployment frequency and application quality. Whenever there is a deployment or release, we see some hiccups in AppDynamics. There will be some things going on on that server, which we can easily identify in AppDynamics. Only after we validate that do we give the next go.

Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.