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Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

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
29th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
162
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (16th), Cloud Monitoring Software (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.4%
Broadcom DX Application Performance Management1.3%
Other97.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

EG
Director of Technical Part at NOS SGPS
Dashboards facilitate prompt alerts but discovery feature needs enhancement
I would recommend Broadcom DX Application Performance Management if a customer doesn't have any existing performance solution. However, ten years ago, the solution was better, and now there are many competitive options. My overall rating would be between six and seven. The product rating I would give is 6.5 out of 10.
AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Attribute decoration is a unique and very powerful feature. We can add meaningful meta information based on our internal demand."
"The most valuable feature of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is its very light model with monitoring of servers and network items."
"Our organization has over 21,000 agents running, and being able to monitor all those agents at the same time, with the ability to be alerted when thresholds are exceeded, means we can know when we are having problems without having dedicated people to watch monitoring screens all the time."
"Scalability is, I think, one of the strongest points of CA APM."
"It largely reduces turnaround time from application failure, and has reduced man hours in managing availability, performance, and scaling applications."
"The traditional Introscope portion of the product is the most valuable, as it provides good visibility to the JVM and Java application."
"Overall, APM improves our total customer experience and reduces our operational costs."
"If we see something that we need to change or monitor, we can get it scripted pretty quickly."
"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution, we can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"We haven't had any issues with stability."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
 

Cons

"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."
"The cost of licensing of the product could be better."
"As such, no improvement after using CA APM."
"The technical support is very poor."
"We have pretty much every tool we need. What I need for this tool to be able to demonstrate is that it totally surpasses the competition."
"I'd like to see more source code at the exceptions level. I'd like to be able to get down to the actual code-class file and know what the issues are there."
"System incident analysis and performance monitoring need improvement."
"It doesn't have a proper database, and the configuration is very difficult."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"However, it is still not a very mature product."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people."
"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."
"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On pricing, CA is very competitive. I think that's going to help in the long run."
"The pricing structure should be based on memory or CPU usage rather than the number of agents, as it makes the solution more expensive for us."
"Pricing and licensing are not issues."
"There is some research needed to determine licensing costs, based on the number of DataPower instances for the Nastel agent, for example."
"All discounts are case by case to accommodate the client's budgets."
"It is definitely expensive for what we get, but there isn't an alternate option at the moment."
"Negotiate a lot, but do not forget to buy the product because it is worth it."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise124
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The initial pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions. The challenge arises during annual renewals, as the price increase can be significant, around twenty percent or more, ...
What needs improvement with Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The first area for improvement is the discovery feature, which should be enhanced to collect comprehensive information from applications and services. This includes using agents or scripts to gathe...
What is your primary use case for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
Our primary use case involves having a large dashboard with significant information for alerts, alarms, and metrics to summarize the state of critical businesses and applications. When an issue ari...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

DX APM, CA APM, CA NetQoS Performance Center, Wily Introscope, CA Wily APM, CA App Experience Analytics, CA AXA
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark, Intermountain Healthcare, National Australia Bank, BBVA Compass Bank, Innovapost, Dansk Supermarked Group, U.S. Cellular, Orange, Cetip
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
896,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.