What is our primary use case?
It's for monitoring application performance and end user experience.
How has it helped my organization?
It secures traffic through the HTTPS. There are a huge number of cipher suites which are enabled. Unfortunately, some of the cipher suites are not being recognized by the APM tools. However, we are able to manage with the other cipher suites in the market, apart from ones offered by CA APM.
We have had a tough time getting these topics monitored.
What is most valuable?
In terms of end user experience, it is very useful. We use it to organize our client requirements, for example:
- How many users utilize the vertical URL and what are their experiences?
- How good is the response rate?
- How many errors are the users receiving?
- What errors do they get?
- What screens are being displayed? Are they receiving, "Page Not Found" or "Error 404"?
We receive good transactions from it with good graphs, as well, documenting the activities of total visitors on the site. We can pull the reports and provide them to the client, as required.
In terms of application performance, we are able to identify the memory leaks within applications. We have been able to identify how an application is behaving in terms of a custom method of classes and how well the response is being solved. We can find the KPIs of the application along with its performance indicators.
The custom classes, suchs as hybrid net performance, we are able to identify and fix, accordingly. The solution is proactive. We can monitor how the application is connecting to the database and what queries are being requested, then how well those are being respond to by the solution.
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.
What needs improvement?
Our users lag how to identify the root cause with this solution. If they could come up with a more user-friendly version, that would be a good thing, since other vendors currently have better features and more user-friendly products than CA APM.
As applications move to the cloud, we need more cloud-based solutions from CA APM. This is currently unavailable. I know that this is something that they are looking to do in the future, but I am not sure how with the current solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. CA APM is far more stable than any of the other tools available, though we have seen memory leaks with the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is good. We haven't faced any issues.
We have about 50 users in our organization, from directors to analysts. Around 60 to 70 percent of our organization is using the solution.
We monitor more than 400 applications, which is done with two people who are system engineers (myself included).
How is customer service and technical support?
The technical support has performed very well. We receive good information in a very quick and polite manner. They have very good technical personnel and have been very happy with them. Sometimes. I contact them when CA APM introduces new things.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward; it is not complex. It is well-documented. I can follow the documentation to get the tool working.
For a simple install, the deployment can take about a day, then I can monitor any application.
A complex install will need requirements to be gathered for how things are done and how deep the data is to be implemented and instrumented. If they are a huge number of classes to be monitored, then we need to collect all that information from the application team or client. Afterwards, we have to instrument the system. This may take a week or ten days based on the requirements.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm not involved in the pricing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
Consider the compatibility first, then consider the resources required, finally consider the applications that you will be monitoring. Then, you can go deploy them.
We used the Five-Pack when onboarding services. We also used SiteMinder and introduced synthetic monitoring, integrating with CA Spectrum and CA Service Desk. We use several CA applications. Everything is interconnected to get triggered and tickets routed to a particular thing automatically.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Agree Thanx for sharing