AppDynamics Reviews

We use the platform for infrastructure monitoring purposes.

There could log management features included in the product.

We have been using AppDynamics for one month.

AppDynamics is a stable product. It doesn't have a lot of bugs. We can fix the bugs at a code level whenever we encounter them with our expertise. It provides an ease of installation as well.

I rate the platform's scalability an eight out of ten.

Dynatrace works better compared to AppDynamics. While using AppDynamics, we have to install different external agents for managing, customizing, and monitoring logs. In comparison, we must install only one agent to carry out the processes while using Dynatrace.

The initial setup process is easy once learned. At the moment, I am a new AppDynamics user and am exploring more ways to make the process easier.

The product is more expensive than Datadog but lower than Dynatrace.

It is a wonderful monitoring tool that manages various aspects such as system resources (CPU, RAM), mobile performance, and infrastructure monitoring. It provides ease of use, alerting capabilities, integration support, and scalability. Thus, it is already maintained. It doesn't provide log management services; we have to install different types of agents for business processes. It is not a cloud-native platform like AWS, GCP, etc. I rate AppDynamics an eight out of ten.

I use it to solve issues that my clients encounter, such as application slowness. It helps me identify whether the issue is related to the database, server, or CPU memory management.

Moreover, I use it to find solutions and provide recommendations to my colleagues.

This solution not only provides answers but also provides sensor data. This allows us to quickly resolve issues that developers may take a long time to solve. In essence, it helps us address problems at an early stage. Moreover, it is especially useful in production servers where real users encounter numerous issues.

There are numerous issues that arise during peak times, and AppDynamics makes it easy for us to identify the problem areas and determine the appropriate resolutions. This is how it helps us find solutions effectively.

Regarding improvements, I believe the dashboard could be more optimized. Although it claims to be optimized, I think it should be even more convenient, especially for advanced users. 

Additionally, the documentation can be a bit challenging. It would be beneficial if the documentation provided clear solutions for every problem. In my opinion, the documentation could be improved.

I worked with AppDynamics for around three to four months. I have been working directly with it for the past year.

I use the latest version. 

It is stable, but the only downside is the licensing part. Other than that, it's a reliable product with no major issues.

It is highly scalable. There are no additional limitations in terms of scalability.

In my company, we have around 50 to 100 clients using this tool. Although it can be a bit expensive, it is still being used extensively to solve various problems.

It's straightforward, not too complex. However, it requires proper learning to effectively use it.

The deployment process typically takes around one to two hours, depending on the system. Once the setup is complete, we can proceed with the implementation process.

First, there's a need for basic knowledge of OS, especially for Windows and .NET. Additionally, understanding concepts like Dynatrace and AppDynamics, their functioning, and architecture is crucial. These are the key methods involved in the deployment process. If it's a cloud solution, then AWS or Azure are the recommended options. If it's on-premises, then using either Linux or Windows is ideal.

For deployment, we need to focus on event configuration, which involves learning about network events and configuration. Once we understand this, we can proceed with the deployment setup. There is no frequent deployment. In case the deployment is not satisfactory, we may need to learn about Linux and Windows concepts.

I have seen some ROI. 

It is an expensive solution. It's on a yearly basis. We need to pay for it annually.

I have used Dynatrace. The main difference between the two is that AppDynamics utilizes different data mechanisms, while Dynatrace uses a unified agent approach. This simplifies the complexity of Dynatrace, providing more visibility and root cause analysis. In terms of benefits, AppDynamics is more scalable than analytics.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

We use the solution for performance monitoring such as latency testing to see how long it takes a customer to log in and complete their transaction. If we see any latency we look into the code to see what the issue is and correct it.

The solution has reduced the manual work involved in monitoring.

The solution helps us provide a better user experience to our customers.

The documentation and training material have room for improvement. Some of our people struggle with the onboarding process because there is a lack of documentation or videos.

I would like AppDynamics to become one unified monitoring solution that does not focus primarily on performance monitoring.

I am currently using the solution.

The solution is stable and we have not had any problems.

The solution is scalable. Once we have deployed the core installation it is easy to enhance the agent.

We have around 30 people using the solution.

We have a dedicated team in the bank that helps with the core installation. The deployment team has a lot of documentation to help with the implementation.

We have seen a return on investment with the solution.

The solution is costly. There is no standard license instead, the license is adapted to the organization's requirements.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The maintenance is not difficult. We follow an auto-release process and most of the maintenance is completed by our central team.

I recommend the solution as long as it meets the organization's requirements.

On-premises

Extensive use cases, dozens of primary and secondary use cases ranging from core application monitoring at the global level to micro level performance analysis at the transaction level. AppD provides the ability to also manage total interactions at the web/mobile browser level, the database and core infrastructure including server level and L4 network.

We are a services organization, so we use AppDynamics with our customers. It has allowed us to expand our footprint in the application management business with virtually all of our major accounts. We were able to expand and go into other applications that we weren't in or offering previously. We have a new value proposition for our customers- enhanced visibility, enhanced stability, and we can reduce our costs to them because our cost structure is reduced by using AppDynamics. We have other examples like this as well where AppDynamics has improved the way we function and operate. As of date of this article, our company has in excess of 30,000 AppDynamics agents deployed globally and we are monitoring billions of annual page views for major customers.

Furthermore, AppDynamics is a key toolset and drives tremendous value and efficiency in our remote performance management center which supports over 10,000 retail locations on behalf of our retail customers.

1. Ease of deployment- it's easy to install and use. This is key for us. Even as the product portfolio has expanded to include additional- AD has done a great job of ensuring that the deployment process is straightforward and usually up and running in minutes. Even the upgrade process has been made a very low touch and the simple process makes it easy to keep your deployment up to date with the latest releases.
2. Low infrastructure overhead and footprint, which go hand in hand. Low invasive processes for care and feeding of the solution in extremely large scale environments.. Despite dozens of deployments across hundreds of applications- we have yet to see a case where AD is negatively impacting application execution or functionality.
3. Features- in terms of diagnostics it's very good and very extensible. AD has clearly contemplated the multitude of monitoring workflows and features needed to sustain enterprise application performance across all major tech platforms and architectures.
4. Extremely reliable and resilient agent based technology.
5. Extensibility - the solution has been designed to account for rapidly changing application architectures. A strong example is the mobile and browser related capabilities AppDynamics has brought to market. With near out of the box functionality for iOS and Android- AppD also provides support for single page applications and additional advanced JS type deployments models
6. Integrated view of database system performance and execution- AppD has crafted a powerful single pane of glass view
7. Breadth and depth of portfolio with ever expanding capabilities including synthetics, log management and analytics capabilities
8. The analytics engine, now called BusinessIQ is very, very powerful. The ability to capture business parameter information and operational information and merge it together for integrated dashboarding is one of the pillars of the IT-Business paradigm. I was able to create powerful analytics queries using GUI, or if you want to go deeper- the solution allows for complex SQL statement execution to really perform deep IT level business intelligence

AppDynamics should try to find some measure of support or functionality in an SAP and Peoplesoft environments- however with the introduction of C++ agents- the PeopleSoft realm will be covered shortly. Additional support for NextGen mobile platforms also needs to be high in the roadmap prioritizations

More than five years.

We didn't have any issues with stability. Highly stable with extremely light impact- negligible.

We didn't have any issues with scalability. Unbelievably scalable - we selected this solution for its ability to aggregate thousands and thousand of end point monitoring.

Customer Service:

AppDynamics redefines customer services, especially in post sales support- maybe one of the most responsive service desk teams in the industry.

Technical Support:

They have done a superb job of getting some obscenely bright software people with a passion for customer services and unleashed them in the market. Some of the finest technical support in the industry.

We previously used AppSight by BMC software. The problems we had were problems with deployments, stability, visibility and wide support of jvms. Stability was the largest problem. Our technical architects and engineers who are part of my delivery team have used every major application and server monitoring technologies.

Extremely straightforward- we can have an enterprise deployment with several dozen end points being monitored in less than 3 hours.

Our first few implementations we did ourselves and then for our first major customer implementation we got AppDynamics to assist. We currently support all of our internal and external deployments.

We're regularly looking at various options. Even before we made the decision to standardize on AppDynamics, we already had experience with BMC Appsight. We also had experience using Dynatrace, CA and Gomez at some of our customer's environments. We also heard our customers talking about their experiences with these other products.

Basically, you can't over-speak importance of deployment, configuration and infrastructure footprint because what happens is that people get excited when they see the output of various products (such as Dynatrace or CA Wiley). They say, "wow, it's very powerful, we've never had visibility, we're going to implement at all costs." Then they buy the solution and they realize they need 5X the amount of servers, a lot of storage, experts to manage it, etc.

The business transaction tier of management is the most valuable feature; the fact that we can go into multiple tiers and monitor the transactions from the end-user point of view. That's very important to what we're doing.

It brings everything to the forefront. It helps the application staff plus the executive staff understand what's going on with the end-user performance because, obviously, that's one of the most important issues today.

I’d like to see something more towards a merger between the dev and the production. This is where big data comes in; the portion that's in there, moving things from installation and dev, moving them, managing them and transitioning between dev to production for new applications.

I haven't seen any problems with stability with any of the AppDynamics products that we're utilizing.

Right now, it's scaled for what we have to do in terms of what we have to add. I think we've already allowed it, in the planning, for adequate scaling. Obviously, you have to put these guys on, various agents, but we've allowed for that.

The professional services that we actually use, we did need their assistance in standing up this product. They were very helpful. They're still behind us even after they left the facility. They check in and log in to make sure that we're on track with what we need to do. Any problems that we did face, they addressed.

We were previously using something else and that company didn't stay current with the times.

Before choosing this product, we did evaluate other options.

Take a test drive of the demo.

I’ve given it a high rating because of the initial dashboards that are being built and the way that they can be built. I haven't seen anything like that. Especially with the flow management that's literally there in real time.

For right now, we are not using any other AppDynamics products. We are only using AppDynamics APM, but the new one they introduced at a recent conference, Business iQ, that seems very appealing too.

We like the ability to drill down into the method level to identify where the real issue is, as other tools just show the slowness at the transaction level only. We also like its database monitoring which gives almost everything to us for identifying any performance issues with the database. It is certainly not a legacy monitoring tool to monitor the database, it should be looked at as a database performance monitoring tool.

We are still in the POC phase and are trying to implement it by adopting some of the best practices. I am sure if and when it is fully implemented, developers will love this tool as their life will be easier.

AppDynamics should add more features to identify in case if there is some thread waiting for something. We are keenly looking for this feature. We would like to see the traffic on F5 load balancers in the flow map which make the entry points in an application, Currently only custom exit points can be created for non-instrumented nodes. Also if AppDynamics are trying to be only a monitoring tool, then they really need to add lot of stuff to the infrastructure monitoring and heavy correlation features are required to identify the real issues within and outside of business app. We can't blame the code for slowness of the overall application every time, as the network and servers are all equally important. Other tools like HP BSM provide great features to map everything in a service map.

This tool is very easy to implement and setup when compared to other tools. Agent installations and instrumentation are also extremely easy.

It's very easy to scale when compared to other tools.

We have compared this product to Bluestripe APM. We like its mapping of the business application mapping which shows how each tier of the application talk to another ones and also to the backend-like database, MQ, external interfaces, etc. It’s a very easy to understand tool which could be easily understood by a newbie also.

One piece of advice I would like to give others is that you need to first identify how you want to map your business application in the AppDynamics flow map. If there are multiple pieces in an application talking to each other, then best practice is to put everything together in one business application to see how those pieces talk to each other. Secondly, you need to identify the most important business transactions that you would like to monitor. Just include those and exclude everything else, as this way you can reduce the traffic and the amount of noise. Troubleshooting is easy when only key transactions are being monitored and not everything.

I use the solution in my company for application performance monitoring.

The most valuable features of the solution are diagnostic sessions and alerts. The diagnostic features and ability to create custom dashboards are the key features of the tool.

The integration ability of AppDynamics with other performance testing tools is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required.

I have been using AppDynamics for two to three years.

It is a stable solution.

My company has purchased a scalable version of the product.

I have experience with the solution's technical support. The solution's technical support is fine and responsive. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup phase was difficult. There is a need for those involved in the setup process to go through the proper documentation and training available from AppDynamics.

I rate the product's initial setup phase a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is the difficult setup process, and ten is the easy setup phase.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The product's deployment phase is taken care of by our company's DevOps team.

The tool is expensive.

My company chose AppDynamics over other products in the market since we found it to be the most compatible tool with the products we used in our organization.

The product's installation process is a bit difficult. Users need to thoroughly understand the documentation and take care of the setup phase to be able to use certain features offered by the tool, which, technically, is something that users should be able to use. Generating heap dump for Java usage and Java application monitoring are areas that can be pretty difficult with the product.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

On-premises

We use AppDynamics for monitoring purposes to check up on CPU health and application health status.

AppDynamics is used to monitor the health of our applications. If any application is down and linked up with AppDynamics, we can see it on the AppDynamics console. We can identify when a specific process went slow and the exact issue. Additionally, if there is any high CPU utilization or other issues, we can figure it out using AppDynamics.

It is very helpful as we can also make custom alerts in our system for specific issues like high CPU utilization or application downtime. We can even customize the alerts to be sent to a particular email domain for automatic notification, so there's no need to monitor it 24/7.

The monitoring feature is very useful. If you have multiple applications and systems with high CPU utilization or other issues, you don't need to monitor them individually. With AppDynamics, you can get all the information from the dashboard. It's very convenient.

There is room for improvement in the customer support team because finding a solution consumes a lot of time. When there's any issue, we need to reach out to the AppDynamic support team to get some idea of what the issue is. If anything is out of scope, we need to escalate the availability. It can be more dynamic because we need to go to the support portal to raise an incident, and it's time-consuming. Also, the resolution time takes longer than expected. If there were live support from AppDynamic's point of view, it would be really helpful.

I have been using this solution for the last three months. I am using the latest version.

AppDynamics is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. We have some support guys, admin guys, and other people using AppDynamics. In our organization, we have around 15 members using it.

The initial setup is not that complex. It is easy. I would give it a four out of ten. The deployment took two to three days.

An in-house team did the deployment.

I used some other tools, like Sterling Integrator, for EDI solutions.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Private Cloud