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Amazon CloudWatch vs ITRS Geneos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (12th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
ITRS Geneos
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (26th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st)
 

Featured Reviews

Rasanpreet Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 25, 2023
Reliable AWS monitoring and logging
The choice of logging solution should always be determined by the specific business requirements. It is crucial to align the logging strategy with what type of logs are needed and how they should be used. There are instances where we require custom solutions to retrieve logs, especially application logs that may not be easily accessible through CloudWatch or similar services. When we heavily rely on AWS native services, CloudWatch is indeed a robust choice. However, in certain scenarios, we might need integration capabilities with other tools, and if they can incorporate such features, it would enhance overall logging capabilities. I would rate it eight out of ten.
Durai CT - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 14, 2022
A stable, scalable, and flexible monitoring tool
Real-time data is one of the unique features that ITRS Geneos offers. For example, if there is an impact on a particular server and a particular application, I want to see what the impact is or what the CPU or hardware usage information is, as well as the service in the same application. I can see the real-time data and the impact by accessing ITRS Geneos and looking at the tree. I don't want a tool that tells me when something is broken. I want the tool to tell me when something is going to break. That is the difference between ITRS Geneos and other tools. I want proactive monitoring, not reactive. I don't need to be notified after the fact that something has broken. If something is broken, I get a notification by email, and some of my customers are going to call me. ITRS Geneos provides proactive monitoring. The great advantage of this tool is real-time monitoring. ITRS Geneos not only alerts us but also gives us a real-time view of the data. This is the tool's first great advantage. It is also lightweight and flexible and can adapt to monitor even low-latency systems, which is the tool's second advantage. Another great feature of this tool is its good presentation layer, which allows us to build custom dashboards to present to business stakeholders. This gives them a high-level status of what is being monitored. If we compare ITRS Geneos to other tools, we will find that each one specializes in a specific area, but the ITRS Geneos tool is more comprehensive. This is its great advantage.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We can set CPU thresholds using the solution."
"I have found the memory metrics and the CPU metrics valuable."
"Amazon CloudWatch's best feature stems from its ability to monitor app performance."
"I can put it in a simple term, its simplicity is always there."
"You can automate actions or use AWS functionalities like auto-scaling, where you can configure the metrics to add more nodes if the threshold is exceeded."
"It's a very simple logging system."
"What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch."
"CloudWatch provides essential monitoring capabilities that integrate seamlessly with other AWS services."
"Geneos automatically sends email notifications when any batch job fails, the database is down or the website is down. It is automatically monitoring everything and reduces manual effort."
"The remarkable feature of Geneos is the dashboard. Geneos' flexible dashboard sets it apart from other monitoring tools. Other solutions have limitations in their dashboard design and can't be customized as much. The Geneos dashboard allows unlimited creativity."
"One of the best aspects of Geneos is that it has a broad scope and can cover a lot of use cases. You can write your own scripts to monitor really specific things. And the rules that you can put in place can be quite complex for the alerts."
"It's also easy to implement. The implementation of Geneos is very easy and interesting. It's not complicated. It's very quick to implement. The installation is very easy. There are many topics about ITRS Geneos that explain more about the features of the function of Geneos."
"Real-time log monitoring with desktop alerts is valuable as it tells us immediately when there is an issue."
"The great advantage of this tool is real-time monitoring."
"Custom script toolkits"
"The Netprobe is so lightweight compared to the agents that most monitoring tools use. It's really superior to the competition. The agent that is used by almost every competitive tool takes a lot more system resources. It's slower and it requires a greater effort and more compromises in terms of security to install on the monitored servers. With Geneos, because it lives outside the code, it is far easier and far less taxing on the monitored systems."
 

Cons

"The monitoring part and GUI are areas in Amazon CloudWatch that have shortcomings currently and can be considered for improvements in the future."
"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."
"Amazon CloudWatch's pricing needs improvement."
"There is some delay in logging that they need to improve on."
"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."
"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
"This product lacks some features: real-time data stream monitoring, application performance monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and live dashboards. Its workflows also need improvement."
"Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs."
"A lightweight version which could host more than 100 gateways, as we can see slowness while loading all our gateways."
"Mobile phone integration is probably not as rich as it could be."
"There is one drawback to using lightweight data collection: we lack the feature of observability based on time series, such as historical model data. This makes it difficult to view data in ITRS. ITRS needs to improve this feature."
"The main feature that needs work is the Dashboard designer."
"I would really like to see something from the Geneos side to set up automated reporting from ITRS. We have to send reporting to management every day. To do that we have to check the dashboard and then we have to report whether everything is fine or not. In the future, I want something, some reporting kind of feature in ITRS, where it can collect all the data and mention what is green, what is amber, what is red in a report."
"​It needs to be easier to configure, especially with the JMX plugins.​"
"I would also like to see suggested guidelines to accomplish a monitoring task. The issue is that ITRS is so flexible that there is more than one way to complete a task, each with benefits and disadvantages."
"For the solution to stay relevant in the cloud-based monitoring environment Geneos needs more plug-ins with more features. Instead of offering clients workarounds, the solution should have a cloud-based out-of-the-box version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
"It is a free-of-charge service."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."
"The tool is not expensive."
"The price is okay for me."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"Amazon CloudWatch has very cheap pricing, and it hardly costs my company $25-$30 a month for fifty systems, so it's pretty affordable."
"Given our spend and the amount of service we have in it, the pricing is quite reasonable."
"The organization is not just purchasing a license for the product, but also managing services and professional services from ITRS. Another factor is if the implementation is going to be in production, non-production, or both."
"It is expensive. They have to look at the model around when we move to cloud and how that's going to work. The licensing cost does pay off because of the improvements in support to our business."
"Its price is reasonable. It isn't too expensive, and it isn't too cheap, but it also depends on a company's volume and negotiation."
"ITRS Geneos is not a cheap tool. It's a moderate price for the banking industry. The reason we are not able to add the ITRS monitoring tool for the non-banking industries, and non-finance industries, is that the pricing is too high."
"The pricing seems reasonable. We're happy enough with it."
"When I first came in, their pricing was very high. ITRS had a high expectation of what their price should be based on perceived value. I think they have been realizing, more recently, that there are other competitors, so their pricing is a lot better. Licensing for on-premise is okay, however I feel there is quite some work to be done for cloud and containers. We're still working with them to try and work out what that pricing should look like."
"The product is priced quite high. There are pricing options for customers based on the size of the environment and plug-ins used by the monitoring system."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
77%
Computer Software Company
6%
University
4%
Real Estate/Law Firm
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
In general, Amazon CloudWatch is cheaper compared to Dynatrace. However, there are potential costs to be mindful of, like running a log query that returns trillions of bytes of data.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
There is room for improvement in setting up custom metrics in CloudWatch. Adding conditional expressions would enhance its functionality.
What do you like most about ITRS Geneos?
I would say that it is an easy-to-use monitoring tool. Amongst the available monitoring tools, it is a really good option.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?
The pricing is high. Licensing fees might be around 500$ per server monthly.
What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?
ITRS Geneos is a legacy system. It predicts or provides proactive measures once an issue is resolved. It doesn't offer any predictive capabilities or root cause analysis. They throw a lot of data i...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Geneos
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
ITRS Geneos is used by over 170 financial institutions, including JPMorgan, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Clients range from investment banks to exchanges and brokers.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. ITRS Geneos and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,528 professionals have used our research since 2012.