Splunk AppDynamics Reviews

We work in the banking industry and we deal with business transactions, including responses for the users. We capture all of the traffic in our AppDynamics platform. It is a really good application tool.

Application monitoring is the most valuable feature.

More native support for other hardware is needed because having to install various extensions and perform extra setup for different devices is really challenging, and not as easy or straightforward as it is in other products.

We have been working with AppDynamics for almost two and a half years.

This is a stable product and we definitely plan to continue using it in the future.

AppDynamics is really scalable. We have a private server on-premises and we haven't had any trouble with scaling. We have more than 1,000 people who are using it.

We use the support portal whenever we face an issue or any kind of problem, then we create a ticket and they assist us.

I am an IT monitoring specialist and I work with similar tools like Geneos and Splunk.

Geneos is straightforward and has different options for infrastructure monitoring. For example, if you have other hardware or memory, then these things are basic. With AppDynamics, these things require that we use extensions, follow the steps, and do the extra setup. These things are really challenging and it's not that easy to handle, the way it is with Geneos.

The people we know who are using Geneos are really happy with it and they think once or twice before moving to AppDynamics. In our case, we have moved to AppDynamics.

The initial setup is straightforward. We downloaded it from the AppDynamics resources, and they had already mentioned the installation steps. We followed the directions and it was easy to handle. It probably took about 30 minutes.

Although we deployed on-premises, we are planning on migrating to the cloud.

Initially, we had a consultant for the installation. Now, we do all of the upgrades by ourselves. We manage it with a team of four people.

The people who work on it are from my team, as well as from production and from pre-sales.

This is absolutely a product that I would recommend to other users. I can see a lot of people are interested in using AppDynamics.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It reduces the time to resolve issues and requires less manpower. When issues happen, we have the whole triage going on and we used to have like 30 people on the call trying to figure out what's going on. AppDynamics cuts that down; you don't need that many people. You need two or three key people going into the console to see what's going on and pinpoint the root cause, as opposed to people trying to figure it out from all different sources. That takes forever, and that's very inefficient.

Being able to monitor transactions end-to-end, throughout all the layers, basically, is very valuable; the ability to pin-point issues irrespective of the layer in which they happened. That's really helpful and very valuable.

The network diagnostics that they are adding will be really useful. They could add more detail into what is going on in the network. Right now, that is one area where we have to use other tools. That would be very, very useful. I think that should give us a better view of the entire system.

It's pretty stable. We haven’t had any major issues, anywhere we implemented it. It's pretty stable and it's very light as well.

Scalability is good for our systems; we have 7+ million lines of code. It works with that big of a system, so it does scale.

We have used technical support sometimes, when we had some questions and issues or whatever. They're pretty knowledgeable. They know their stuff and they provide solutions pretty quickly, as well. They have very quick turnover time.

We had IDCAMS from IBM. That was not really useful. They're pretty heavy on the actual JVMs. They don’t help that much with resolving issues or finding issues. We had this challenge where we actually had to use a new system that was built to replace the legacy mainframe system, and it was not scaling at all. With 100,000 users, it was barely working. We had to scale it from 100,000 to 10 million members. That's when I looked around for different solutions, what is out there, and found AppDynamics, and that's what we brought in. It really helped us a lot with scale it.

Initial setup for most of the regular pieces are straightforward but we have a complex system, so we needed to do some tweaks. AppDynamics helped to detect some endpoints and so on. We have custom batch jobs and so on, which usually have a different way of having endpoints. AppDynamics guided us with how to configure those. It took a little time because it's not like a regular web application. It's a very complex healthcare system.

Price can get really expensive sometimes, depending on the type of setup you have. Sometimes you have smaller JVMs instead of larger ones, for some reasons, such as architectural reasons. Because it is priced per JVM, the price can increase pretty fast, into the millions. We have had challenges because we had to justify the price to our clients, as well, when we are putting in certain tools.

It gets a little pricey.

I looked at New Relic as well. We just evaluated it quickly. Because of our system’s complexity, it can't actually track everything in our system. We did not try other things such as Wiley. We knew what that is capable of. We knew the shortcomings, too. We didn't try that, but these two we tried, New Relic and AppDynamics.

When selecting a vendor like AppDynamics, the most important criteria is that the product has to be great. It has to be useful. That's the first criteria. Then, when we need support, we need knowledgeable resources who can help us get through. AppDynamics do a really good job with it.

I definitely recommend it. It's a pretty robust tool. For monitoring APM, all the DevOps and whatever they want to use it for, it's a pretty robust tool. It has all of the features; whatever is needed. I recommend it without thinking twice.

We do have licenses for AppDynamics EUM, but we cannot implement it yet because our system is a little more complex and it's a little older technology, the UI part of it. We'll roll it out at some point, when we get the chance.

We use AppDynamics mainly to monitor the application performance.

The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is its ability to track the transactions between different applications.

AppDynamics should improve its ability to track all the transactions.

We have been using AppDynamics for approximately three years.

AppDynamics is a stable product. We rarely had any issues with the solution.

I rate AppDynamics ten out of ten for scalability.

Getting a response from the solution's technical support team is harder and takes longer. Since the solution has a structural support model, it requires some layers of escalation to get the correct response.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is easy. However, it is harder than Checkmk because it needs to install the agent.

The solution's initial deployment takes about three to four months. However, it's a work in progress because new applications are added every time.

AppDynamics is an expensive solution.

AppDynamics is deployed on-cloud in our organization.

Overall, I rate AppDynamics a nine out of ten.

My company uses AppDynamics Server Monitoring for server monitoring and end-to-end monitoring. The tool has an event alerting mechanism that lets people within the company know when any server is down so that you can raise a ticket, and the support team can work on that ticket.

The event alerting feature or the trigger system is what I like most about AppDynamics Server Monitoring. Whenever an issue occurs, the tool automatically generates an even trigger that tells engineers in the company to take action, so it's an essential feature of AppDynamics Server Monitoring.

Another valuable feature of the tool is end-to-end monitoring, which means if you need to debug, you can go transaction by transaction, where the issue lies, and how it's linked. For example, if it's a low-performance issue, you can look into it more through AppDynamics Server Monitoring in terms of which area takes too much time to execute. You can also see the SQL queries and the kind of query going on through the tool.

An area for improvement in AppDynamics Server Monitoring is integration; in particular, it needs a better way to integrate with custom applications such as Siebel CRM. Right now, it's challenging to integrate AppDynamics Server Monitoring with Siebel CRM because it sometimes gives an error and cannot integrate properly.

I'd like to see more details about each issue in the next release of AppDynamics Server Monitoring. For example, there's a server issue, and my team wants to identify the response time over SQL, but that detail is lacking. If AppDynamics could add slow query logs to AppDynamics Server Monitoring, that would be good.

Another feature I'd like the tool to have is the segregation of requests based on user sessions, for example, having a session ID, so it's easier to identify which session has an issue and needs solving and information on any transaction performed for that particular session. This feature would make integration in AppDynamics Server Monitoring easier.

I've been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for almost eight years now.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a stable product.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a scalable product.

The technical support team for AppDynamics Server Monitoring is responsive and knowledgeable, so I like the support provided. Sometimes, it just takes time for the support team to solve custom application issues because that requires looking into the custom application details, the error behind the application, where's the plug to integrate, how to use the interface, etc.

My team contacts support every day. My team is happy with the support, but the only room for improvement is the time it takes for the AppDynamics Server Monitoring technical support team to resolve the issue. It could be faster because my team has set deadlines for integrating and making custom applications work.

I'd give AppDynamics Server Monitoring technical support a four out of five. The response time is good, but the resolution time needs improvement.

My team did a POC with Datadog. AppDynamics Server Monitoring is one of the best tools because it instantly gives you integration details, and you can integrate it more quickly than other solutions. For example, integrating Datadog took a lot longer because it required more steps and more levels to reach to complete the integration.

Initially, the setup process for AppDynamics Server Monitoring was straightforward. It was pretty easy, but when you go deeper into end-to-end monitoring, for example, it gets a little complicated because you need to integrate with your JDK and Java applications and pass on the logs. Setting up the RAM and the initial setup of AppDynamics Server Monitoring, it's easy, but as you go deeper, then it becomes complex.

I'm rating the initial setup for AppDynamics Server Monitoring as five on a scale of one to five because it was pretty easy.

We set up AppDynamics Server Monitoring in-house.

I cannot give information on the pricing for AppDynamics Server Monitoring because I'm not involved. I'm on the integration and technical side.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring has a lot of competitors in the market, but I evaluated Datadog.

I'm using a cloud product from AppDynamics for end-to-end monitoring called AppDynamics Server Monitoring.

Maintenance for AppDynamics Server Monitoring happens monthly. A team of five people does the patching for it.

A team of eight people works on AppDynamics Server Monitoring in terms of the initial integration, then another team will take charge, so I'm unable to give the exact number of users of the tool within the company.

My rating for AppDynamics Server Monitoring is nine out of ten because it's a good tool and only has minor areas for improvement.

Our use case depends on whether the client has revenue on their primary revenue-generating websites. For example, we previously implemented for Aviva Financial, and their primary revenue-generating website was their Aviva website. They primarily do home, medical, motor, and car insurance and use this solution to download insurance quotes. This solution is also used to monitor the end-user activity, website speed, product details and quotes.

We use the solution for end-user performance monitoring to monitor customers' browsers, like Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. So we're able to get details, and each transaction gets monitored, and the information gets captured and presented to management.

The management observes the end-user activity, which helps get quotes signed and monitor the payment system gateways.

It has a lot of features, and it provides a lot of data, so it helps businesses identify their user base, business parameters and key business metrics.

The solution is very scalable, and you can get the performance data from the end users. So it provides a proper way to analyze data from different regions. Most of the users download the data, which helps them understand the business strengths and monitor traffic from each region and maximum users.

A problem with App Dynamics is that they do not have robust documentation, making it difficult for start-up organizations who may need guidance. In addition, their documentation is complex and not easy to understand.

Another problem with AppDynamics is the agents of division. There is no central distribution system to update all the endpoints, so we need patch mechanism updates to do those activities. It is cumbersome, and it's not easy, so they lag in that area.

We have been using this solution for the past six months. It's a SaaS product only, and AppDynamics is according to the agent version. It is on cloud.

The initial setup was very easy. Deployment depends on how many applications you need to monitor. Initial data collection can take up to two to three weeks. Then, like any end-user application, it will be implemented in a test environment. Once the test environment is a success, it moves to production, which takes one to two months.

The support and management team primarily have access to the data, and we collect the story at the back end. For example, we do this for Aviva, which has an approximately 300,000 user base. So the information on whoever visits Aviva's website is passed on to AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring.

They have licenses. Technically, AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is a Cisco product. When using this application, we need to install the agents on each server, and there is a transaction cost. End-user monitoring requires purchasing millions of transaction licenses, but infrastructure monitoring costs are based on the agent. So everything is licensed, and it's a costly solution.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. We decided to use this solution because they are market leaders. Appdynamics and Dynatrace are the main application performance monitoring solutions and have been for the last five to six years.

I would recommend this solution. First, you need to analyze multiple tools in the market based on your requirements. For example, if you need an enterprise monitoring system, go for AppDynamics or Dynatrace, but if you have fewer applications, you can choose other end-user monitoring solutions like Site24x7.

We're a partner and reseller for AppDynamics. We had a bank that we had to monitor from start to finish. We did the bank, and I then moved on to another product, but one of my mates is still busy working with AppDynamics.

Most of it was on-prem. We did some product testing on the cloud, but the client at that stage didn't have much on the cloud. Connecting to a cloud was quite simple as well.

Knowing which tables on the database were working the most was valuable. It helped the client understand where they need to focus. They streamlined a lot of their queries and brought the resource usage down. It helped them to find long-running queries. They rewrote them completely so that they don't take as long and the application performs better.

The synthetic scripting for end-user monitoring could be a little bit broader. Instead of using just Python, they can include a few other languages so that not everyone has to jump on the bandwagon for Python and do Selenium scripting. They can open up that a bit to make it simpler for people to do the scripting.

On the dashboarding side, it's very difficult to do dashboards on the database portion because they don't let you include a lot of the elements in dashboards. They should give a bit more functionality and add more views from the database side. Other than that, all the clients I've worked with are very happy with it. It had everything they needed. No one had any complaints. Only on the application portion, do people get very confused if they're not tech-savvy, but on the database side, you usually work with tech-savvy people. So, the database and the elements are great.

I have been using this solution since 2018 or so. It has been four years.

It is very stable.

If you got the on-prem resource, it's very easy to scale out. If you have the full server resources that you need, scalability is very easy.

In terms of its usage, within the bank, its adoption was very difficult. People didn't adopt it very well, but in one of the telecoms, the adoption rate was very good. They had a team of two to three people managing close to 150 users. It was very straightforward to manage.

I have worked with an IBM solution previously. The main pro of AppDynamics Database Monitoring is user-friendliness. It was very easy to click around and say to the clients that this is what they need. It was all clearly visible and easy to navigate.

On the database side, it was very straightforward. I don't have a lot of database experience, but installing it on them was straightforward. It just takes the information from the sites, manipulates it, runs it as a query, creates the user, and gives it permissions. It is very easy. The only one I struggled with was the IBM Db2 because the bank had very strict permissions to get around, and that wasn't as easy.

It could be a bit lower, but looking at the scalability, functionality, and other things, you can understand why AppDynamics is so expensive as compared to some of the cheaper products that don't have that full single pane of glass they've got. Dynatrace has got three different elements that you need to log into just to get a full view, which is not so good, and because of that, it is a bit cheaper.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We have an application that we have made which is the core of our business. In many cases, new code comes out or there is older code that gets mixed with newer code and you will see slowdowns or problems that can happen. This solution gatherings all this different pertinent information about how long a particular piece of code sits in what stack of the application. When you have a slowdown or an issue is happening, you can look through the application processes step by step. You can find out where the application was lagging behind.

Most recently, we had a problem with some SQL queries that were not optimized in our application. It was taking approximately 30 seconds for the code to get a return. We were able to narrow down where the problem was by using this solution to find out what was taking a long time on that particular query, it turned out to be the DVAs. The DVAs were able to be fine-tuned to make the query a little bit more efficient because we were returning much more data than what was actually needed for that part. We were able to simplify it and it went from 30 seconds down half a second.

I have found the main feature of the solution to be its ability to analyze an application's code to see where there are issues. Additionally, it is easy to use and configure.

There are too many installers available for this solution. There is a separate installer for many things, for example, .net. There should be one installer for each operating system, such as Windows and Linux. They then can let you choose what options that you want for that particular operating system because trying to find all the different pieces separately is more complicated than it needs to be.

In an upcoming release, there could be better integration with the infrastructure. Currently, the solution is able to tell you where the problem is but it is not narrow enough. For example, it can show that the issue is in the data server and it took a certain time to process, but that does not necessarily narrow it down to the query where it actually was. You just know that the problem is within the database server. Sometimes it is very obvious it was the query, but other times it could be just that the server is light on resources. It would be beneficial if it could integrate more with some of the infrastructures to have the ability to correlate between the two to see whether the problem is actually with the code or it is a problem with the underlying infrastructure.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

The solution is stable.

The scalability of this solution is fantastic. We have approximately 50 developers and six infrastructure engineers using this solution and our parent company has over 400 employees. I have found it to be a very good enterprise solution. 

If we hire more staff I think there could be in increase usage of this solution.

The customer support is good. We have not had many big problems, the application just works. The solution has never taken down any of our servers. Other than calling support to figure out where a particular installer is and how to configure it properly, I have not needed to call them.

The installation was straightforward. There were initial issues with licenses and we had to move some licenses around to give more to their lower environment systems to allow us to put all our information into one place. This took a while, they did not make this part very easy.

Our parent company set up all the backend for this solution and I did all the client configurations on the actual servers. 

You save time by using this solution allowing you to utilize that saved time towards developing new features for your customers versus trying to troubleshoot the ones that are not working properly. The return on investment is instant.

There is a license required for each system that we use the solution on.

This solution is not the cheapest but it works well. You will end up doing more work with a cheaper solution than if you just spent the extra money on a better solution like this one. 

I would advise others wanting to purchase this solution it is well worth the money. If you look at the quantity of time it takes you to track down a problem versus doing it the old-fashioned way, the amount of time saved by using a solution like this helps you move forward more quickly. 

I rate AppDynamics a ten out of ten.

The primary use we have for this product is application performance monitoring for mission-critical applications. We are a reseller.  

The old way that people would remediate when there was a problem with performance is that they would have to dig into the logs and manually find where the bottlenecks were. A solution like AppDynamics is a definite advantage because it can pinpoint the areas that the person(s) reviewing the issue need to focus on. This makes the technicians a lot faster in remediating issues that an application is presenting.  

Our customers are most interested in monitoring transactions, page loads, the infrastructure, the CPU, and memory monitoring.  

AppDynamics needs to consolidate their technology agent types into one agent that could be deployed on any host no matter what the technology is that it is running. It is really the implementation of AppDynamics that is very difficult because it is very manual. They really need to improve upon that and do more to simplify user processes. So, I would like them to have a single agent type instead of an agent-based on the technology. I think that having a single binary agent that you can put onto any host would make it a lot easier to work with.  

We have been partners with AppDynamics for about six years now.  

The stability of the product is there. It is fine.  

My impression of the scalability of the solution is that it is not very scalable. They are not the market leader anymore. Because they do not have the ability to monitor microservices and containers, I do not see the product having a huge future. For example and for comparison, there is Dynatrace which is a better solution and an easier solution to work with. AppDynamics has failed to lead the way.  

We usually have two engineers on staff for the deployment and maintenance for our clients.  

I think their technical support is good. There is no problem there that I know of.  

I think the initial setup is too complex. You have to figure out exactly what is running on the servers you are going to monitor. Many times — especially if there are older applications still operating — the clients do not even know what all the technologies are that are running on the server. It just takes a lot of time just to find that out. It is just very time consuming to have to go through the process and it should be quicker and easier.  

We do the deployments. Deployment usually takes several weeks and the strategy is just to get in there and get it done as quickly as possible. People regularly use an integrator, a reseller or consultant for the deployment. We are a reseller.  

The setup cost, pricing and licensing is different for every customer depending on how big they are and how many servers they are putting the product on. So I can not give a direct answer to that question. Really cost is based on the implementation.  

We have evaluated Dynatrace and eventually it could replace AppDynamics. It is a simple comparison of the pros and cons between the two products. Dynatrace is easier to instrument and implement and Dynatrace gives the clients quicker results. Also, Dynatrace points to the root cause of an issue instead of just correlations which are a lot more vague.  

As advice to people considering the solution, I would tell them to scope it out really well and to do a lot of research on their intended application and their business use cases. There may be another, better solution available for their needs.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a seven. I would rate them at a seven because they definitely have a better product than several other products on the market, they have good functionality, and I think they are fairly affordable. The reason I would not rate them higher is because there are other products on the market that are obviously better solutions that exist right now.