Splunk AppDynamics Reviews and Pricing

Business43cc

Business Transformation Consultant at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 29, 2019

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A good monitoring solution for medium-sized businesses with fairly good pricing

Pros and Cons

"AppDynamics is scalable. They can monitor billions of transactions because they're not monitoring all transactions. They're monitoring samples. So, they can offer good monitoring for the huge sites."

"The solution could improve the server size for AppDynamics to include middleware products, which is doesn't yet cover. If they add middleware for sophisticated sites, AppDynamics would be the global choice."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for monitoring. We are monitoring the customer experience of our banking solutions for external customers.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are customer management and user experience management.

What needs improvement?

The solution could improve the server size for AppDynamics to include middleware products, which it doesn't yet cover. If they add middleware for sophisticated sites, AppDynamics would be the global choice.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for 1 year.

Buyer's Guide

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable, but it comes with a cost if you add more applications. Technically, it is scalable, but from a cost perspective, it costs much more if you add more.

They can monitor billions of transactions because they're not monitoring all transactions. They're monitoring samples. So, they can offer good monitoring for the huge sites.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is very good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for AppDynamics wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard either. It has a medium level of difficulty. Deployment takes about three months.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing isn't bad, in comparison to Dynatrace, which is much more expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend the solution strongly for those with medium-sized businesses. It's not for enterprise solutions or enterprise businesses. It's a great solution for the non-enterprise client.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.

it_user112596

Application Support Engineer with 51-200 employees

Jun 2, 2014

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Useful metrics and amazing snapshots of transactions are two reason why we chose AppDynamics over CA and Compuware.

How has it helped my organization?

We have been able to proactively correct issues from newly launched applications without even receiving complaints from the end users, and the amazement of users when you notify them personally that an error they never reported has been corrected is priceless.

What is most valuable?

The detailed metrics that are collected about the JVM and the transaction snapshots, those have been most valuable to us to correct complex bugs.

What needs improvement?

The granularity of historic data could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The Java agent never was the cause of any application crash since we've used them.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far we have never reached the limits of AppDynamics Pro, it scales at our pace.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: AppDynamics is one of those rare companies that put the customer experience first. Once you become a customer you are appointed a technical account manager that helps you get the most out of your investment. I have a conference call with mine every other week and it really improves our understanding and use of the solution.Technical Support: Very good, we never had any major issue and we have always been helped promptly.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use a comparable solution before, we choose AppDynamics when we initially compared the different Application Performance Management solutions.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up AppDynamics is a breeze. We never encountered any installation issue nor with the Java agents, machine agents or the controller. We always installed the components ourselves without any help other than the documentation.

What about the implementation team?

As mentioned before we implemented it ourselves without any external help.

What was our ROI?

Our ROI is very good, the areas that profited the most were productivity, customer experience, software quality and bug fixing time.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

AppDynamics was chosen over several competitors which we evaluated: CA Wiley and Compuware dynaTrace.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the AppDynamics Pro usability, stability and customer experience as the best. This solution is very advanced and they keep on improving the features that make it great. Once you use AppDynamics it feels like you were standing in the dark before. Implementing it is a breeze even if you never used it before, and out of the box it gives you so much useful information that you only need to fine-tune it. I never heard of any other product that is up and running this fast.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.

it_user99882Engineer with 201-500 employees

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Jun 25, 2014

I would say the clear title of AppDynamcs vs. other major competitors would be a clear indication that this is a gamed review. It makes it is searchable and easily shared in multiple channels. There are other such reviews that have a very similar structure. If this is a typical review I would expect to see very similar posts from other competitors in the space. I just don't see that. Do you see posts with titles like "We picked New Relic over AppDymamics, CA, and Compuware"? or We love CA APM better than AppDynamics and New Relic. No. Only in cases of AppD do you see this. I would discount most of these types of reviews as they are not an accurate portrayal.

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it_user2667

VP of Systems Engineering at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 5, 2012

AppDynamics…A Freeware Competitor to Dynatrace, Foglight and Introscope

This review is for AppDynamics Lite.

I had an interesting beginning discussion with AppDynamics. They are a competitor to Dynatrace, Quest Foglight and CA Introscope in the area of J2EE application visibility. They have a product called AppDynamics in both a freeware Lite Version and Enterprise Professional Edition that dig into the JVM and provide analysis and measurements of run-time performance.

The product is agent based. It’s a simple configuration in which you can modify the Tanuki Wrapper (wrapper.conf) to add a small set of parameters for start-up. It includes a web-based console interface which you can evaluate how much time is being spent where in the byte code. It’s pretty standard fair in terms of showing call trees and SQL statements. What I like is that it provides a quick and narrow window to HotSpots in the code so you don’t have to muck around with the interface. It also provides you the control to do deeper profiling (sampling) like Foglight does so that you can get a complete profile (with overhead of course). You can define User Experience thresholds (which they all provide as well), but it’s right there in plain site.

Beware that the freeware version is limited to 30 “Business Transactions” which are identical to starting points of a PurePath. It’s not just Servlet requests. I saw JSP and JS references as well. You can prune them down to account for your 30. You can also rename them. For example, the request (/webapps/blackboard/execute/courseMain) could be renamed Course Home Page. This way you could target your 30 most important pages and limit your profiling to just these 30. Of course this is only a per JVM basis. The enterprise version connects all of the JVMs together so that all tiers and and Continuous monitoring can take place.

There are other features in the Enterprise version which I haven’t been able to evaluate just yet. I will get an Enterprise license shortly. This includes the following features:

Distributed/SOA related bottlenecks
Deadlocks
Payload/Input Data related errors
Memory / GC Behavior Monitoring
Memory Leak Detection
Memory Content Analysis & Accessor Tracking
Object Instance Tracking & Thrash Detection
24/7 Monitoring of Custom Caches
Correlated Event Data (Payload, User Data, Hardware)
Alerts & Notifications
Incident Queue
Incident Workbench
Other workflow related features

How to Set-It Up
First thing you need to do is download the freeware version. Send the zip file to your server that you plan to instrument. Unzip the packages (both the viewer and the agent are in one package). Then you will need to unzip both packages. I took the simple route and set up the agent under (/usr/local/appdynamics) and the viewer under the (/usr/local/appdynamics/viewer) directories.

Modify the Wrapper.Conf
It’s easiest to modify the Tanuki wrapper by adding the following parameters. Make sure to add the host IP for the viewer. In my case, I used the same server which I instrumented, but you do not have to.

wrapper.java.additional.25=-javaagent:/usr/local/appdynamics/javaagent.jar
wrapper.java.additional.26=-Dappdynamics.viewer.host=10.103.66.148
wrapper.java.additional.27=-Dappdynamics.agent.logs.dir=/usr/local/appdynamics/logs

Modify the Catalina.Policy
You will get a Security exception if you don’t add the following into the Catalina.Policy. It took me a solid 20 minutes to figure this one out. Luckily I’ve seen this with Foglight and Dynatrace in the past, so it was easy to overcome.

// AppDynamics Grant
grant codeBase "file:/usr/local/appdynamics/-" {
permission java.awt.AWTPermission "accessClipboard";
permission java.awt.AWTPermission "accessEventQueue";
permission java.awt.AWTPermission "showWindowWithoutWarningBanner";
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "exitVM";
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "loadLibrary";
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "queuePrintJob";
permission java.net.SocketPermission "*", "connect";
permission java.net.SocketPermission "localhost:1024-", "accept,listen";
permission java.security.AllPermission;
permission java.io.FilePermission "*", "read,write,execute";
permission java.util.PropertyPermission "*", "read";
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "getenv.*";
};

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user76002Director of IT at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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Jun 15, 2014

What I remember is this free license can be used only for "one instance" for storing few minutes of recent data and not for deploying across your environment. Each user gets only "one license", which is not practical. Once you get to enterprise version, its the same cost as Dynatrace, Introscope and Foglight. Did they recently change the policy?

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Abdulrahman Kazamel

Presales Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 17, 2020

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User-friendly dashboard, and the Business Journey feature is helpful

Pros and Cons

"The features that I like best are the dashboard and Business Journey."

"AppDynamics is dealing with a lot of products and technologies, so we need to have clear documentation."

What is our primary use case?

We are a solution provider and I am a presales engineer. AppDynamics is one of the products that we implement for our clients and have experience with.

At this time, I'm using it for training purposes, for the team.

What is most valuable?

The features that I like best are the dashboard and Business Journey.

What needs improvement?

AppDynamics is dealing with a lot of products and technologies, so we need to have clear documentation.

The community support needs to be a little bit better.

In the future, I would like to see the inclusion of better programming language options. This would allow for wider use, and make it more versatile.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with AppDynamics for about nine months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

AppDynamics is stable and we haven't faced any bugs.

How are customer service and technical support?

As we are not an AppDynamics end-user, our experience with technical support is different. At the same time, from a support perspective, I have dealt with the AppDynamics community. I would say that support from the community is good enough, although it is not amazing. I think that community support needs to be a little better.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not work with another similar solution prior to AppDynamics. We are a Cisco partner, so we keep moving forward with the same technology.

How was the initial setup?

The first time I deployed AppDynamics wasn't very easy because I didn't have much experience with Linux. However, aside from the Linux-related issues, I found it totally easy.

The deployment is really quick, taking just two or three days. However, we need more time for configuration. If the deployment is good then the configuration will take about one more week.

What about the implementation team?

We do the implementation in-house. We have three people who are working with it.

What other advice do I have?

AppDynamics is a good product and I totally recommend it. Once you feel that you have the full journey for your end-users and you are tracking them, it's awesome. Overall, I am very happy with this product.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

reviewer1069779

Project architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 24, 2020

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Stable and scalable with great business and session monitoring

Pros and Cons

"The analytics are great."

"The challenge in the installation is that you have to configure a lot of things manually. The way you install and configure it is not straightforward."

What is most valuable?

The analytics are great.
The business and session monitoring are great.

What needs improvement?

One thing that could be improved is the user interface. Things could be more intuitive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used AppDynamics Application Analytics for a few months. I have used Dynatrace for a few years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very good from a scalability perspective.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is great.

How was the initial setup?

It's difficult to install. AppDynamics uses multiple agents. The challenge in the installation is that you have to configure a lot of things manually. The way you install and configure it is not straightforward.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

AppDynamics is a great tool but Dynatrace is slightly ahead in terms of user-friendliness.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend it.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner

it_user560475

Lead Configuration Management Specialist at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 22, 2017

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Provides valuable metrics and integrates with other systems

What is most valuable?

The way APM works with the different applications, as well as the various analytics and metrics that it provides.

Right now we are not using it with any other products but we will soon be integrating AppDynamics with ServiceNow.

How has it helped my organization?

We just started using it so it is a little too early to tell but we have already seen how APM finds the issues with the different applications, which is very important for us. That has really improved a lot of business areas and business transactions for us.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been pretty stable for us so far.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't gotten to the point yet where we have tested the scalability since we just started using it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Nagios but we wanted more application analysis, which Nagios does not provide.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was not really straightforward. We were able to do it because we got help from AppDynamics. But it was definitely not straightforward.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend to my colleagues that they start using it as soon as possible for their applications.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user112602

Systems Engineer with 51-200 employees

Jun 9, 2014

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We looked into New Relic and Hyperic but chose AppDynamics for their metrics which provides us with a complete picture

Valuable Features

The fact that we can track all steps from a transaction and find the relation with the OS. With the metrics AppDynamics provides us with, we have a complete picture to draw conclusions.

Improvements to My Organization

We have already found memory leaks in some systems. And also some SQL calls to the DB that cause issues.

Room for Improvement

We miss more information for tweaks at the OS level and resource usage. Also making the integration with AppDynamics easier would be a good improvement.

Use of Solution

7 months

Deployment Issues

No, we didn't encounter any issues with deployment.

Stability Issues

Sometimes the dashboard and some screens flick and run with information.

Scalability Issues

No, at the moment we have in all systems and we are not finding any trouble or bottle-necking.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service: Their response times are really good and they're knowledge about the product.Technical Support: Excellent!

Initial Setup

No, we always look for the simplest ways. We run the implementation without any issues.

Implementation Team

We implemented in-house.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

What I can say is that we didn't have any surprises with regards to cost. Everything was clear from the beginning.

Other Advice

Sizing of the product in term of the server to run it or architecture is the secret to success.