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Splunk Observability Cloud vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (6th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
19th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
16th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud2.4%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications2.0%
Other95.6%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Dhananjay Dileep - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Unified monitoring has improved end-to-end visibility and reduced detection time across apps
When we have too many detectors in place for one particular app, such as when I have created 50+ detectors through my account, the entire page becomes a bit loaded when creating the 51st detector, feeling heavy and taking time to load. Additionally, it throws random errors; for example, when we try to save one detector, it might throw some random error which is not even related, with something else being wrong, not that particular error, but the underlying root cause might be different. Sometimes the error is just "some problem occurred," and we are not able to point out what the real cause is. This mainly happens when we have too many detectors or too many alerts in place rather than a standard number. One more thing is in the alert rules; if we have a main general alert, and instead of creating a new detector, we are adding a new rule under one detector, when the number of rules also increases, such as when we have 10 or 15 rules under one generic detector, that again creates the same kind of problem, taking some time to save that particular newly added rule, and it might not save at times, just keeps on spinning. Those are the two drawbacks which I spotted recently; other than that, everything looks perfect.
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

"Splunk Observability Cloud has proven to be beneficial for our organization, helping improve operational performance and company resilience while reducing the costs of unplanned digital downtime."
"Splunk Observability Cloud scales with the growing needs of my organization effectively."
"Splunk's GUI and dashboard capacity are the most valuable features of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring reduces our mean time to resolve. We are more proactive than reactive."
"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."
"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."
"The features I have found most valuable are log searching and log analytics, both of which are quick features."
"What I appreciate most about Splunk Observability Cloud is the correlation feature, specifically the ease of correlating logs and issues to those traces to see where within the path of the business function is failing."
"No issues with stability."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"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. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"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 find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"The licensing model is expensive. We need to monitor the amount of data ingested because the cost is based on the data collected."
"In terms of additional features I would want to see in future releases, since Cisco acquired Splunk, more Cisco integration could be beneficial."
"Particularly what we're having is disconnection from the cloud console, where we will be working in it and receive a message saying that we've been disconnected and have to wait for it to come up."
"They can improve the flow system and the keyword language. It has predefined keywords, but they can be improved."
"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."
"I would rate Splunk technical support at six out of ten. When we have a problem and need to create a case, the response isn't quick."
"The solution should have more sensors regarding fiber intelligence for security measures."
"Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved with better integration with AppDynamics, as we know that's coming, however, it is an issue we've had between the OpenTelemetry and the AppDynamics collector."
"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."
"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."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"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."
"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."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."
"The solution's pricing is costly."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The solution's pricing is competitive. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten. The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
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

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
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 Splunk Observability Cloud vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,315 professionals have used our research since 2012.