Broadcom DX Application Performance Management Reviews

Our project is a logistic domain. DX passes all the infrastructure components which are managed by the Broadcom team. We are just deploying the different kinds of application versions, e.g. related to .NET, WebLogic, and other application agents.

We are also monitoring the infrastructure agents in Windows, Linux, and Unix which are combined into one infrastructure agent. We also do monitoring whenever the agent doesn't have the package that is supported through the infrastructure agent, e.g. Kubernetes from the Broadcom DX Application Performance Management perspective.

What's most valuable about this solution is that it completely monitors code-level visibility. We benefit from this as we're able to capture any performance issues from an application, then raise and forward those issues to the applicable team more quickly.

The occurrence of CPU spikes and memory issues is an area for improvement in Broadcom DX Application Performance Management. To avoid these, we turn on the conservation settings, but it would be best if Broadcom can rectify those issues.

The period of time that passes before they fix issues should be shortened. They should not wait for the next release to fix issues raised by their users.

I'm been working with APM tools for four and a half years. I'm working with AppDynamics and Broadcom DX Application Performance Management.

I've worked with Broadcom DX Application Performance Management within the last 12 months.

It is a stable solution.

This solution is scalable.

The technical support for this solution is good. I'm rating it a four out of five, with one being the worst and five being the best.

The initial setup for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management was straightforward. We used a straightforward technical documentation for building and adding the agent.

This solution was implemented in-house. I did it myself just by following the documentation.

I evaluated AppDynamics, Dynatrace, and the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Tool.

Currently, I'm using AppDynamics and CA APM. It's Broadcom DX Application Performance Management which is similar to AppDynamics and Dynatrace, but I'm currently using AppDynamics. It's for application performance management.

I was involved in the integration of this solution and moving from the lower version: CA APM which was version 10.7, to the new version 20.2 which is now Broadcom DX Application Performance Management.

Out of all the APM tools I've worked with, I prefer Broadcom DX Application Performance Management the most, followed by AppDynamics.

We're using the Enterprise license for this solution.

What I'd like to tell people who are looking into using this solution is that sometimes when we raise issues and open tickets with them, they'll say that the issue will be resolved in the next release. We have to wait for the next release before they are able to solve the issues, instead of solving them more quickly. It is their tool so they should be able to give the right solutions faster. They should not keep saying that the issue will be resolved in the next release. We've experienced this a few times.

I can't think of additional features I'd like to see in the next release of this solution as it is similar to other APM tools. AppDynamics and Dynatrace are the best solutions in the market, because they have better tools than what Broadcom DX Application Performance Management offers. Their market growth is also very good.

I'm scoring Broadcom DX Application Performance Management a seven out of ten.

If the application team requires me to deploy something which I have not deployed myself in the past, e.g. one I have no experience deploying, I can look at tool documentations and learn how to build it. I'll then build it and improve myself at the same time, the way I worked on multiple application agents. I'll build and give them to application teams. This is why I'm rating myself a seven out of ten.

Monitoring of customer applications. 

It has performed well. I won't necessarily say better than other solutions, but there's more focus because of the customer applications. 

A good example for us is Hurricane Irma. We have service territory that was impacted and our executive dashboard for APM was up and everybody under the sun was watching that, and keying off of that, for issues that were popping up, because we were performing storm restoration.

The executive dashboard we created gives a lot of visibility out there, so from that standpoint if somebody sees something go red and they say, "Hey, what's going on?" we have to be on our toes. There's no working on something for a little bit before someone knows.

But having said that, there's a lot of flexibility in being able to see stuff in those customer systems, which is vital for us.

The ability to have anything we want scripted feeding in there, and to add to it fairly quickly. So if we do see something that we need to change or monitor, we need to add something, we're able to get those in pretty quickly. 

For example, finding something that's not performing well on one of our applications. We had one not too long ago where we simply didn't have a threshold on something, something we hadn't seen before. We found it, and then were able to get in and put something in pretty quickly. So now we're prepared for that situation in the future. 

The APM SQL feature doesn't perform like we would like it to, and we actually have some open cases that are working through that. I know that's a new feature with 10.5, so it may be one of those things that gets a little better. But I would like to see that improved because, although it's not a major problem, we feel like it should run faster.

The stability is very good. We recently upgraded to 10.5, and the performance has been fantastic, especially since the upgrade. We had a few minor things before the upgrade, but once we've upgraded it's run like a champ.

No issues with scalability. We're able to add stuff to it without any issue. We've got a decent license count so there are no issues there, it's been easy.

We have used tech support. I would evaluate it as so-so. Part of the issue is, I've got some seasoned guys. Tech support is always saying, "Hey, what's with these log files," and the like, and we feel that we waste some time upfront because we've already checked A, B, and C. It's like if you called tech support, and they say ,"Well have you turned your computer on and off?" "Yes, I've done all that!" It's like that. We go through some stuff that we feel if we skip that we might get to some resolution faster.

With version 10.5, we went to it fairly early and we discovered some things that broke some things in the past. We did get through those. But I would say the bigger issue is, if we're at point A and we want to get to D, we want to skip B and C.

We do get the right person when we call, there's not really any run around.

And we have, I don't know what her title is, a service manager, and we meet every couple of weeks to review all the cases, and I feel that if something's not getting addressed she'll help us escalate that or push it forward. It's just some of the upfront stuff that gets a little frustrating at times.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor have to do with the issue that vendors say, "Yeah we can do this, yeah we can do that." I want to see examples of where you did that. And I want to understand how hard it is to get to that point. Because a lot of times, sure, they can do that, but it entails all of this work, or all of this customization and maintenance and, at the end of the day, it may be a huge issue to get to that point. I want more transparency. 

And if it is that that additional work, that may be okay, but we want to know about it ahead of time so we can plan for it.

Brand may be important, but sometimes companies get lazy, saying, "We're so and so," and they don't feel they have to work as hard. I know there's a vendor that we had - not CA - but it was just, whatever you're doing, you know that you're going to have problems. They are a big brand name and they just do a poor job. So that's why I say the brand doesn't always make that big of a difference because it's more about your ability to come through and deliver on your commitments. And deliver on your commitments, meet deadlines, without us having to do a fire drill every day.

I give CA APM a nine out of 10. It does a really good job for us, the infrastructure seems pretty easy to maintain. We had to do an upgrade so that obviously threw a bunch of work in there but, outside of that, it seems to run pretty smoothly so we're not spending a bunch of time dealing with that. We're able to work with the monitoring functions of it and set some things up. 

The Team Center piece seems to be working really well now, we're starting to implement some of that so it's taking advantage of some functionality that was already there but didn't really work that well. We're starting to use that and add some more value to our customers.

Based on those things I'd give it a little bump up. It works well for us, gives a lot of visibility.

I would recommend it to a friend. I would just say make sure you understand your environment, and compare your environment to somebody that's already implemented, to understand some of that work. Get the right reference call.

Monitoring the application layer for the various application teams. In our organization, we have the centralized monitoring team, and we work with a whole bunch of other teams. The application is trying to help their products get to know their applications monitored to where they need to be.

We have some people that know how to use the product fairly well, but only the older functionalities. Then, we have a lot of newer people that are using different monitoring tools. Some are okay and some do not really know a lot of the functionality, so we have been trying to help get better traction with that.

In our organization, there is a bit of a learning curve of how to leverage the tool appropriately.

Some of the dynamic representation of the application layer. Some of the things that are starting to be interesting is being able to pull in and merge the infrastructure and application data. I am hopeful that it will work as intended.

In order for the tool to be successful, at least in our organization, it will need to have more self-serve features for implementation, instrumentation, and then modification of metric data from the APM. At least for us, that is what I am seeing in our neck of the woods, empowering developers to do what they want. If I can give the tools to the developer to self-serve, get them good documentation, and make it really easy for them to use, they will use it.

The tool is not where it needs to be. I do not think a lot of the newer-aged, new-school developers that are coming out of school really know about how to leverage these products. Think about it. You are a computer science major, you just graduated, and a lot of these folks have been playing with some of the new tools in school. So, I think there is a miss for some of these people. Not that the products themselves could stand side-by-side with some of the new ones. There are just more opportunities and I think it is more about trying to get some of the developers empowered and I think this is probably the biggest opportunity for CA and the APM space.

I am hopeful that our people in our organization will like the triage and dynamic mapping. 

APM has been good in the Java space, and less good in the everything else. So, Java has been like their bread and butter. .NET instrumentation of the browser timer, used to call it BRTM, I don't know what they call it now, but it is basically getting closer to what the experience is for using the website. It hasn't been that great for the .NET. It is good in Java. Now, I would like to see better stuff in the .NET layer, because that has been more important for our organization. Right now, I am playing with some of the node components, so I am hopeful that some of the newer, hotter, fancier languages that people are using will work right with the node stuff. 

The documentation is kind of so-so. We started playing with another product, which is New Relic, and their documentation is actually really good. It is very thoughtful, logically laid out. When you compare it to CA, I think there is an opportunity there.

We have had some issues with rendering the teamcenter views. It is dependent on a Postgres database. Or, the Postgres Oracle if you want to pay the billion dollars for an Oracle license, but performance is so-so. For the APM stuff, you have to be mindful of what you are instrumenting. How many metrics you are pulling per agents, etc. The team center views are dependent on that Postgres database, which can kind of suck sometimes, or it can be good. It just depends. Our environment gets sort of big, so it is harder.

Scalability is getting better. A lot better than it used to be. Back in the day, it used to be you could have only 10 collectors. Your limit, if you do the math, it is about a million or a million and a half metrics, which sounds like a lot, but it goes fast. They have gotten better about marrying some of those together.

Our instrumentation has changed a lot, so we still can't put together all of the silos that I would like to put together. However, it is better than it used to be.

Technical support is okay.

The thing with most of the CA solutions, there is just a lot of infrastructure required. I have done a lot of work for a number of different products and software, and there is always a bunch of servers that I need to set up. At one point, we had 80 servers just to monitor the application layer for the whole organization. That is a lot. Just because the footprints are big. It would be nice to have a smaller footprint, with less of a initial cost for infrastructure, but that is probably why they are investing in SaaS.

I have worked with a number of different business software suites for application monitoring, and APM kind of got left behind a long time ago. They have been catching up as far as some of the functionalities as their competitors. You have got AppDynamics, New Relic, and Dynatrace. Some of the things that would differentiate them is just history. They have lost their foothold in the market, at least from my perspective. It is more about empowering the developers to do what they want to do.

Depends on what they are implementing. If it is Java, I think it is a pretty good opportunity to use the product. If it is a .NET, it is not where it needs to be. At least, as far as my knowledge is. 

Make friends with your pre-sales guys. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Transparency, honesty, being open, and being helpful. I have had a pretty good relationship with our CA support folks and our account managers, personally. I would say that is a big help. And then being able to be flexible on negotiations for contract stuff because that will kill a deal faster than anything.

Also, just being open about the limitations of the product, as well as the features. 

CA APM makes our customers very happy with one of its most important features. It has a random transaction trace which gives our customers the ability to look at how their transaction performs: The average response time of their transactions with the application which runs those transactions. It helps them understand whether the application is taking long to run, whether any transaction takes longer than expected to run, or if it is running within an optimal time for that particular application. It is very helpful, because they are able to figure this out with the help of the tool. That is one of the major things. 

Another thing that I can think of right off the top of my head is the customer experience part which comes with it. We do a lot of transactions. It is a retail company, so customer experience is very important. As far as our data moves from point to point, it is very important for us. This is why is the application is very helpful.

My production environment is still way back in the versions. I am only trying a sandbox of the newer technology. I have not yet exploited what it can or cannot do to the fullest. 

However, I am going to upgrade everything to the latest version level by the end of the year. Hopefully, next year when I have to come back to CA World, I will be able to tell you more about what I would like to see, if anything.

I would rate it as a nine out of 10. The reason why I am not going to 10 is documentation needs to be centralized. I keep saying this. It is all over the map. It is not easy to navigate to get documentation on CA APM. If it is all centralized, it would be a lot easier. 

It is fairly stable. I have used the solution and have seen it improve throughout the years. I started using it when it was Wily. My first encounter with it was in 2008. 

I have seen a significant improvement with the upgrades which have come with it. It has come a long way. It is like night and day. The application is very stable and extremely useful. 

It scales pretty well. For instance, I can give you an example of what I am doing right now. It is one of the few applications that pulls data every 15 seconds. The majority of the applications that I am aware of pull data in five minutes time. This application pulls data in 15 seconds. You can imagine the enormous amount of data which streams through. 

What I am happy with is their latest version has something called SmartStor, which has been improved for the database. The scalability, it has gotten much better. 

You are able to archive your historical data on two different collectors, then use your live data to be able to run the application effectively. That is what I do. It is very scalable. The number of collectors one can use per MOM. I have gone over that and the application is still stable, and it is very scalable.

Technical support has come a long way. Back in 2008, it was a different thing altogether. It would be maybe overnight before you would get a callback. Now, it is maybe within minutes, depending on how you put in your request. If it is something that you need or if it is a tool, someone is calling you within minutes of opening your problem. They will stick with you and make sure that it is resolved. It has gotten better. I can't complain.

In my current role, I came and the tool was already there. I was hired as a subject-matter expert on it, because I have had previous experience with it. I did not have to make that choice about changing solutions. 

I have gone between companies, where different companies use a different application performance monitor, and used the likes of Dynatrace. The difference between the two is the ease of navigating your way through the application. They both do the same thing, except how easy it is to use Wily. It is very intuitive in a lot of ways, which other applications are not.

The tool itself is a great tool. I will recommend it to anyone that wants to use it.

The feature that I have found the most valuable is its user interface.

They can make it easier to configure. 

I have been using this solution for about four months. We're doing a proof of concept. We've currently deployed it on-premises, but we've also been looking at a SaaS model.

I didn't contact their technical support.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It took a couple of days to deploy.

We have our own team for maintaining this solution.

Broadcom is a better and cheaper option from a financial perspective. It also depends on the DLP plug.

You should look at the Broadcom DX version 11, which will be available from early 2021. It is a lot better than version 10.7. There are a lot of big upgrades in version 11.

There are not a lot of differences between AppDynamics and Broadcom DX Application Performance Management version 11. The user interface of AppDynamics is better, and the configuration for AppDynamics is a little bit more straightforward.

Broadcom offers a wider range and a bigger suite of applications. The APM module is just a part of it, whereas AppDynamics is a specialist at APM. AppDynamics is a better solution at the moment. You need to weigh the extra functionality you might get with AppDynamics and see if it is worth it. Dynatrace is also a better solution.

I would rate Broadcom DX Application Performance Management a seven out of ten.

It’s used internally to help us get a grip of our infrastructure environment, including datacenters, network, applications, voice solutions etc. and to help serve over 10,000 customers utilizing the CA framework.

In-depth functionality, standard available reports and the dashboard.

Standard available reports provide us with an automatic insight into the top ten situations to watch. It would have been extremely difficult to program such a report ourselves, and to my knowledge no other competitor can match this functionality.

Dashboards are easy customizable and vary per persona, thus showing different kind/levels of information.

User interface - CA is moving towards HTML5, but still a lot is Java, old fashioned, non-customizable and not user friendly. It’s look and feel is still too technical.

No issues if you make sure you align the underlying infrastructure with the capacity needed.

It’s very scalable.

Customer Service:

9/10

Technical Support:

8/10

We have had numerous solutions. We are in a process of moving over towards the CA framework.

Complex, deep functionality matching with business requirements and design of platform.

We implemented it in-house with the support of CA.

Depends on the size of the product you need.

We evaluated many other vendors. We considered AppDynamics APM.

Plan before you act. Do not fall in the pitfall that you have extensive user requirements and try to implement this at once in the tooling. Start small and simple and gradually expand.

We have an e-commerce application. It's more of a business-to-business model, and employees of most companies come to our websites to order product. The APM tool allows us to monitor performance of that application, where are the pain points, where are the slowdowns, to focus on where we can fix those.

Product performance is awesome. It's covering all aspects of the application; good database metrics and internal application metrics. Just tons and tons of data.

The improvement for us is in the customer experience. The quicker the websites are, the more satisfied, the better experience the customer's going to have, hopefully the more product they're going to buy. The sales sites are more reliable, more up time.

That it's customizable. If there's something that you really need to get at that doesn't come out of the box, you can pretty easily put together some custom metrics and get those in place.

One of the challenges is agent releases. So as we employ agents, they are done relatively manually. A little bit of automating of agent release would be helpful.

We've not had any problems with it.

It scales. We have a bunch of different applications using it.

We get really good support.

We did not have a previous solution. This was brought in because we had a new app. The app was not stable, it wouldn't stay up.

Initial setup is probably somewhere in between straightforward and complex.

It's the configuration, you have to know your application, you've got to know what parts to monitor. It's not a product that you install and it does everything for you. You have to put a little bit of effort into configuration.

There wasn't anything else on the market at that time. There have been some other players that have come in since then. CA was the first.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are 

• good support
• a company that's been around for awhile.

I give it a nine out of 10. It does pretty much everything we need it to do. It's just little things, fringe things, that need a slight upgrade, like configuration. It's getting better.

I would say get your employees some training, get some help from CA to make sure you know what best practices are.

In the newer versions of the application, they had something called a Triage Map. That basically breaks it down from a service perspective. You actually see it from a service perspective and then you see what components make up that service.

It really helps the business. They are not seeing individual servers or individual devices, they're seeing it from a service level, which is what everybody wants to see. It works the logic, the mapping, and how the application sticks to the database or the web server. It automatically creates that map for you.

• Acts as a troubleshooting-like application
• Deals with performance issues
• Helps in trending, like the data mine, the load which is running on the application servers
• Helps the development team to fine-tune and proactively manage the application.

Some of the reporting features. we are running maybe two versions behind, so we haven't explored the reporting functionality.

I believe the latest version of APM 105, there is a reporting capability, which we would like to leverage when we do the upgrade.

But I think that was something which was missing. Right now, if I need to run some reports, I need to run some manual queries, which is very time consuming.

Hopefully in the later releases, which is out there, we can explore the reporting functionality. There are some features that I would have like to see, which are not there in the current version.

I haven't had any prior stability issues. The only issues I have usually, is more like a question. In other words, if this can be done or it cannot be done. But I don't have that many issues pertaining to performance or the system going down or anything. I really love the product.

There were no real issues with scalability. If you have proper scaling, it depends on how you implement the product. You need to make sure it's a scalable solution, depending on the number of agents that reporting to the manager. In terms of providing scalability, it should be fine. I haven't seen any issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

I have been here since 2010 and they have been using APM since. I really didn't have a APM solution, so this is the first time we've used an APM.

They use a database called Postgres, which is an open source database. When setting that up, we always run into issues. The application itself is not that complicated. You'll need to get it installed and then configure it. But when installing the database, we've seen a bit a lot of it, and there are issues with it.

We didn't really evaluate other options, but right now, we are in the process of doing it. Right now, we're trying to compare with AppDynamics. That's something we are working on.

They can surely give this try, but there are some other tools out there. When we implemented this back in 2009, there weren't that many competitors or vendors for APM. There were less nine years ago. There have been quite a few, like we have AppDynamics, you have Dynatrace, and they're pretty good tools too.

I would suggest that they can do a proof of concept depending on what the requirements are. Some features are good in one product, but the other product has something else to offer. It's still a good product, but then they can always look at some other solutions too, before making the final decision.