Splunk AppDynamics Reviews

AppDynamics has been decommissioned over time for the newer cloud-native apps, and we have been using more apps. We primarily use a Google native holistic monitoring tool for tracing, capturing, log aggregation, annual infrastructure, and server monitoring. As our applications get modernized over time, we reassess our need to have various monitoring tools. To some extent, cloud-native tools solve a lot of these problems. When we are on-premises, we solve these problems with AppDynamics but things are being done differently in the industry now, and many of these problems are being solved with cloud databases.

We have been using this solution for five to six years. We have a hybrid model, and in the past, we tried to take these tools to cloud, but it was not well suited for our use cases. We were slowly and gradually trying to eliminate legacy items used on-premises.

It is a stable solution, but nothing is a hundred percent perfect, and there is always room for improvement.

We have a hosted application set up concerning the AppDynamics controller, and we don't have any scalability issues. We never even moved to the SAS-based model for AppDynamics, and we have our own hosted environment.

Setting up the monitoring agents was straightforward, and there was no hassle. I don't believe it requires a lot of maintenance.

I am not privy to details around the software product pricing, but if I compare AppDynamics Server Monitoring with JVM-based applications, it is a pretty good tool. Even compared to legacy apps such as .NET and ASP.net, AppDynamics is the right choice.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. However, we currently lack distributed tracing, and we want to implement it going forward.

We use it for performance and transaction trace monitoring. We use it for .Net and the JVM-related work. We look at all the heat maps and the Garbage Collection to see if there are any failures. 

It gives me the ability to trace logs between transactions, for example, a DB transaction or JVM transaction from one hub to the other. I can easily find out where the problem is or where the bottleneck of the issues lies. 

The overall performance of this solution could be improved. The hot-hot infrastructure features could also be improved. If one goes down, the other should pick up automatically. When we patch one data center, the other primary or secondary center needs to be manually started. We need to do a manual sync between the database and the AppDynamics applications.

I have been using this solution for four years. 

This is a stable solution. The only drawback is that it is not a cluster environment and it doesn't have hot-hot features.

This is a scalable solution but we would like more options to hold more licenses. Right now we have 30,000 agents using this solution.

The technical support for this solution is good.

Positive

Before AppDynamics we used a product called BlueStripe that was acquired by Microsoft. 

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward. The deployment is also straightforward because we used some of the provisioning tools to package the software and distribute it. Creating dashboards and fine-tuning JVMs took some time. 

This solution has really helped us to improve some of the performance of the JVMs at an early point in coding.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

Our customers typically leverage Browser Real-User Monitoring for a variety of purposes. Primarily, they seek to gain insight into end-to-end user experiences. This entails tracking user interactions comprehensively, from frontend actions to backend system responses. They desire seamless correlation between user-triggered actions and the subsequent journey through various backend components such as servers, databases, and APIs. Additionally, they aim to contextualize this data within the broader environment, encompassing infrastructure status, network health, and application performance. Ultimately, they prioritize the ability to view these interactions as cohesive transactions, facilitating efficient troubleshooting and optimization efforts.

Our customers often rely on browser real-user monitoring primarily for troubleshooting slow web application performance. This process is streamlined, often dubbed as 'three clicks to your root cause'. Initially, they identify slow transactions or those exhibiting dependency issues. Subsequently, they employ a drill-down approach to pinpoint problematic areas. This can be executed from either the user's perspective, known as the Browser perspective, or from a session viewpoint. Moreover, they have the flexibility to delve into backend processes, identifying slow or stalled processes. This comprehensive approach enables them to correlate performance issues across all layers, spanning from business processes to infrastructure, network, database, and even security considerations.

Monitoring AJAX requests and understanding user interactions are crucial components of web application performance management. While AJAX requests may seem like standard requests, their monitoring is essential for gaining insights into how users interact with the application in real time. This functionality is a fundamental aspect of modern web development and is vital for ensuring optimal user experience and application performance.

The most valuable feature is the capability to automatically detect and identify encounter rates and problematic sections within transactions. This encompasses all systems, code, APIs, analyses, metrics, and baselines. While this feature remains unchanged, envisioning the ability to effortlessly identify slow transactions and potential causes stands out as an invaluable option. Essentially, it streamlines the management of end-to-end transactions, facilitating seamless troubleshooting and optimization.

The standout feature for real-time performance monitoring in this tool is its ability to seamlessly correlate frontend and backend functions. It provides a comprehensive view across all layers and systems, enabling users to swiftly identify the root cause of any issues. This primary function is particularly valuable, offering precise insights into problem areas and bottlenecks. Additionally, the tool facilitates the identification of peak times and other performance patterns.

The page load time traffic analysis feature has been instrumental in assisting our customers with optimizing the web experience for their users. It enables the identification of slow sessions and offers insights into the factors influencing page load times.

One noteworthy feature is user journey analysis, which enables tracking user interactions and conversion paths on a website. This capability provides insights into where users encounter obstacles or drop off, allowing for targeted optimization efforts. For instance, in an e-commerce setting, it's possible to pinpoint precisely where users abandon their purchases or encounter difficulties, facilitating improvements in those specific areas of the user journey.

I have been working with it for four years.

The stability of the system is exceptionally robust, with no reported downtime. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Scalability is a straightforward process that involves simply adding more licenses to the existing setup. There are no additional tasks or complex actions required; it's a simple and seamless adjustment. Our customer base consists of enterprises. I would rate it nine out of ten.

The technical support provided is highly professional, swift, and knowledgeable. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. I would rate it nine out of ten.

The deployment approach varies depending on client preferences. Some clients prefer a conservative approach and opt for on-premises deployment, while others are more open to cloud-based solutions. Regardless of the chosen deployment method, the process is relatively simple and straightforward. Typically, it can be completed within a short timeframe, such as half a day to a full day.

The pricing falls within the mid-range category. I would rate it between three to five because considering the features provided, it offers value for money. If utilized effectively, the investment is justified. However, for certain businesses, the price may be perceived as slightly high.

I would recommend it, especially if you have critical web applications or internal systems, particularly in finance or the public sector. In today's environment, troubleshooting without such a solution can be extremely challenging. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

We use the product to monitor some of our critical systems. We started using the solution for application performance monitoring.

The product has the ability to drill down to the errors whenever we have issues.

The solution has performance issues after we deploy the agent.

I have been using the solution for about three years.

The product is stable.

The initial setup was easy.

The tool is expensive.

I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

I use AppDynamics since all of our company's servers, applications, and services are configured with AppDynamics. In case of unavailability or when the servers go down, we log into AppDynamics in our company to check our CPU memory and file system utilization. AppDynamics helps our company understand the availability status of the servers and figure out when the server went down or came up while trying to find any HTTP errors.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the fact that it is very easy to use, making it easy to implement while configuring it with any server. The product also offers a role-based login, providing role-based access, including operator- or admin-level access. It is very easy to assign roles in AppDynamics.

The integration part in AppDynamics with other systems is an area with a little difficulty, especially when it comes to the configuration area. The integration of AppDynamics with other products takes a lot of time. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

AppDynamics needs to focus on its integration capabilities with cloud-based solutions. Some new features are being introduced in AppDynamics, including some DevOps tools, allowing a person to integrate AppDynamics with DevOps tools, like Docker Kubernetes and other cloud-based tools.

I have been using AppDynamics for three years. My company is a customer of the solution.

It is a very stable solution.

Currently, we are using AppDynamics on VMs and not on the cloud, so scalability is a bit tough because there will be a need for licenses, and we will have to get into the installation phase again in our company. The agents must be installed in all the servers for the product's installation, making it a bit complex.

AppDynamics has around 1,000 users in my company.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

In my company, I have worked with Datadog. AppDynamics is better than the other solutions I have worked with in the past since AppDynamics can be easily installed, configurations are easy, scalability is easy, and most users use it very smoothly owing to its stability. The only area where AppDynamics lacks is its ability to integrate with other tools.

The installation phase of AppDynamics is very easy.

The installation of AppDynamics took a week.

A team of 20 people is required to manage the deployment phase of AppDynamics.

Price-wise, AppDynamics is a cheap product compared to other tools in the market, like Splunk and Datadog.

Yearly payments have to be made toward the licensing costs of the solution. The solution has no additional costs apart from the licensing costs.

The maintenance of AppDynamics is very easy since you can easily implement the patches and upgrade the solution. Around 20 people in my company are involved in the maintenance of AppDynamics.

AppDynamics is an excellent tool for any data center operations or services to monitor while providing good features like alerting capabilities. I recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

The tool provides more insights, but maybe if in the recommendation section, we can use some AI tool for the optimization of the database, then it would be helpful.

With AI, it would be good if the tool could help us with the database optimization part. If my company can get product support, it would be great since the tool has the ability to make predictions based on the database performance that something may be going wrong and notify us of the precautions to be taken.

I have been using AppDynamics Database Monitoring for two years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The tool is used by four to five people.

Whenever my company interacted with the solution's technical support or engineers, we had a better experience compared to the ones we had with other tools. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup phase is easy since a separate machine is required, and it is not directly installed on a database as it is a type of proxy. We collect the logs, which is a model that is pretty easy to handle.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a day or two.

Cost saving in terms of not an HR-based perspective, but I know that some performance improvements are there. The tool helps in overall cost optimization. Maybe we are not making decisions to increase the database and its resources. Once we know that there are some performance issues, then we can fine-tune the tool and save on the costs. The costs for my company have been reduced by 15 to 20 percent using the solution.

The tool is expensive. If one is expensive and ten is low price, I rate the product price as seven out of ten.

I know about two products. AppDynamics Transaction Analytics was already a part of AppDynamics solution when my company bought it with an enterprise-level licensing, so it provides some business analytics dashboards. The other product I use is not related to analytics, so I didn't use it much.

In terms of optimizing our company's data operations, the tool provides insights on whether there are any challenges in databases or if there is something related to queries, which is helpful. One can monitor the performance and see if there are any delays that occur in the databases when we are dealing with the queries, and it helps to find out what the issues are.

I don't know what the features of the tool are for performance analysis, but when any application generates codes to extract particular information from a database, it sometimes gets stuck on some queries. At the query level, monitoring and providing more insights are beneficial.

A scenario where the real-time monitoring aspect of AppDynamics was crucial for our team was when we were adding a new application and testing it with our production environment or in the UAT; the tool was helpful because we could fine-tune the application and optimize it. If there are certain issues, we can easily identify such issues with the tool, especially when adding a new application since the product helps a lot.

Speaking about how the alerting system in AppDynamics helps in preventing potential database issues, I can say that from my observation, if there is some problem at a certain point in time, we get alerts, but I am not sure if prevention to help us identify issues is available or not in the tool. It would be good if we can identify the issues before it affects our company. There are some slow performance areas that need to be identified.

My company often takes care of the maintenance of the tool. One engineer can maintain the tool.

I recommend the tool to others.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case involves performance monitoring of applications. We use it when an application is deployed, and we need to monitor it from a performance testing standpoint and engineering standpoint.

The solution helps us with performance testing by enabling us to monitor applications. It is particularly useful in identifying and resolving bottlenecks quickly.

The drill-down feature that allows tracing the transaction down to the method level and identifying the specific method causing the problem is very useful. This feature enables faster resolution of issues. Additionally, the tool has good alerting capabilities and stability.

Improvements can be made in the area of AI integration. Dynatrace has its own AI-enabled agent, but AppDynamics does not seem to have a similar feature. This is an area that needs focus.

We have used the solution for about two years.

The stability of the solution is good, and no major glitches were observed.

The solution is easy to scale with no major limitations in terms of scalability. It has enough alerting capabilities to trigger alerts when it finds an issue.

There is good support available when needed.

Positive

The process of procurement was slightly tough, but we were not directly involved in the installation or initial setup.

Using AppDynamics provides a potential cost-avoidance benefit. It saves time in analyzing and fixing production issues, though it is not straightforward to quantify the direct savings.

Based on the features it provides, AppDynamics is comparatively cheaper than alternatives like Datadog or Dynatrace. The licensing model, from a cost standpoint, is reasonable.

We have compared AppDynamics with alternatives like Dynatrace, Datadog, and New Relic. When compared with Dynatrace, the process of procurement for AppDynamics seemed slightly tougher. Dynatrace was easier to obtain cost information for.

Focusing on the integration of AI capabilities should be a priority for AppDynamics to improve its offering. Additionally, there should be an easier procurement process. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The solution effectively detects anomalies in the system.

The solution's most valuable features are its end-user monitoring and AI functionalities.

The solution's pricing could be improved and made more competitive.

I have been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for four years.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution is more suitable for enterprise businesses. Around 2,000 users use the solution in our organization.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution provides good and helpful technical support.

Positive

The solution's initial setup depends on the environment. Our deployment was challenging and took a while because our environment is a bit complex.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution. The solution costs 5,000 per user.

Dynatrace is the solution's main competitor. We chose AppDynamics Server Monitoring because of its flexibility and ease of deployment.

The solution was deployed on the cloud for our organization. We use the solution's alerting system for server management, and it works fine. I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.