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Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Broadcom DX Application Per...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (8th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

aush.111 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides efficiency in migration and DAW but requires a high level of administrator knowledge for configuration
This solution still relies on inbuilt configuration. For example, I'm pretty much impressed with Dynatrace POC, where we deploy the agent with a simple click, click, click, and then that's it. And we did not build any alerts or anything. We just started getting the alerts, warnings, and everything on its own system, understood what the benchmark is and what is the threshold, and it started giving you the warnings and the caution alerts, the danger alerts. So we expect something like that should be there in Broadcom at the level. But, instead, it expects us to configure. So that is what is missing there. Even if the server CPU usage is 95%t, it doesn't harm you. It doesn't send you any alerts. We think the system is normal. So it's not normal. So this is what they should think and send you AI/ML-related alarms on their own. In future releases, I would like to see more AI and ML capabilities, which are kind of missing. Another area of improvement is its infrastructure monitoring perspective. For example, they are still using UIM, which is a good tool. But for APM, they have come to DXP. However, in terms of UIM, the unified infrastructure management, there is no DXP version or AIML version of it. So they should try to find an updated version of it so that it is not competing with the rest of the solution.
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If we see something that we need to change or monitor, we can get it scripted pretty quickly."
"The deployment was easy."
"The CA tools allow to me to get into detailed transactions for custom ranking, and be able to make predictions. It also gathers data. Some other tools may be good at one area, but not good overall, including the mainframe."
"The most valuable feature of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is its very light model with monitoring of servers and network items."
"Users no longer need to depend upon the console for a compatible Java version. Now, users can directly learn the version, perform all their actions, and see all of those performance-related issues."
"Being able to pull in and merge the infrastructure and application data."
"The deep-process instrumentation gave us an opportunity to understand application process performance in detail."
"Proactive snapshots of transactions and all details of a transaction are saved in case of an error."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."
"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"The solution can be deployed quickly."
 

Cons

"I would like them provide more guidance on specific tuning of monitoring options to avoid unacceptable overhead."
"System incident analysis and performance monitoring need improvement."
"It doesn't have a proper database, and the configuration is very difficult."
"They need to add support for new frameworks, or at least provide a broader guide/perspectives to add them to monitoring specific agents to retrieve metrics with thresholds as a reference to guide the customer as to where they must go to achieve this."
"The technical support is very poor."
"Dashboards need to be improved in order to make them self-explanatory."
"Lacks some integration between all the tools."
"We need more capabilities to analyze the information that tools collects; for example, using artificial intelligence, or something like that."
"The technical support team's response time could be improved."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Althougth it is a bit expensive, it is really worth it"
"All discounts are case by case to accommodate the client's budgets."
"There is some research needed to determine licensing costs, based on the number of DataPower instances for the Nastel agent, for example."
"The license for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is annual. The licensing model could improve because there is not any limit to deploying the agent, there should be some limits on it."
"Depends on the size of the product you need."
"I'm unable to give information on Broadcom DX Application Performance Management licensing costs, but all Application Performance Management products have expensive pricing. This means that it's not only Broadcom that's expensive, and it would be an advantage if the cost would be a little bit cheaper."
"Negotiate a lot, but do not forget to buy the product because it is worth it."
"On pricing, CA is very competitive. I think that's going to help in the long run."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The price is too high."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...there is a very easy way to deal with it by adding more servers to the application.
What needs improvement with Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The main areas for improvement include making dashboards and interfaces easier to understand. Our version might be a bit old, and we may need to upgrade it. It is also difficult to access the right...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

DX APM, CA APM, CA NetQoS Performance Center, Wily Introscope, CA Wily APM, CA App Experience Analytics, CA AXA
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark, Intermountain Healthcare, National Australia Bank, BBVA Compass Bank, Innovapost, Dansk Supermarked Group, U.S. Cellular, Orange, Cetip
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.