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Azure Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (5th)
IBM Instana Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
44th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 7.5%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Monthly and weekly resource monitoring has improved efficiency
Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs. I can get the runtime logs alone, yet if Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at least to log storage, I can fix the logs without syncing with Log Analytics Workspace and Sentinel. If they do that, and if they can integrate a little pricing adjustment, it will be profitable for the Microsoft tool.
Tomas Kim - PeerSpot reviewer
Not expensive and offers good performance
The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is helpful."
"Among the valuable features of this solution, Application Insights stands out as one of the most significant. It provides insights into application performance and helps identify issues and bottlenecks."
"The security and support are good."
"In the last company where I worked about a year ago, it looked very simple."
"One of the most useful aspects of this solution is the out-of-the-box functionality on all areas, especially on Application Insights, zero instrumentation, and artificial intelligence for event correlation."
"It allows you to set thresholds on the metrics and receive alerts."
"Azure Monitor is useful because of the useful application insights and telemetry, such as metrics and logs."
"It is a move-in powerful feature compared to other market-leading tools."
"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."
"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."
 

Cons

"I'd like the solution to do more around vulnerability assessment. It's lacking in the product right now."
"There are a lot of things that take more time to do, such as charting, alerting, and correlation of data, and things like that. Azure Monitor doesn't tell you why something happened. It just tells you that it happened. It should also have some type of AI. Environments and applications are becoming more and more complex every day with hundreds or thousands of microservices. Therefore, having to do a lot of the stuff manually takes a lot of time, and on top of that, troubleshooting issues takes a lot of time. The traditional method of troubleshooting doesn't really work for or apply to this environment we're in. So, having an AI-based system and the ability to automate deployments of your monitoring and configurations makes it much easier."
"Azure Monitor could improve the visualization aspect and integrate better with other third-party services."
"The product should integrate well with other tools or clouds in the future, as it is one of the areas where the product currently has certain shortcomings."
"The troubleshooting logs need improvement. There should be some improvement there. I have a hard time finding the right logs at the right times whenever there is an issue occurring."
"The onboarding process of certain assets and the overall UI can be improved in Azure Monitor"
"The process of implementation needs to be easier."
"Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated."
"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."
"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."
"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website."
"My company is okay with the current pricing of the solution."
"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."
"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."
"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."
"Besides standard licensing fees the customer needs to additionally pay based on the ingested data size"
"The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects."
"The tool is expensive."
"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs. I can get the runtime logs alone, yet if Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at lea...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?
The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.
What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?
The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...
What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?
Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.