Accedian Skylight vs Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

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Cisco Logo
1,190 views|758 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Dynatrace Logo
46,602 views|28,133 comparisons
95% willing to recommend
SolarWinds Logo
5,175 views|3,398 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Accedian Skylight, Dynatrace, and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability.
To learn more, read our detailed Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Report (Updated: April 2024).
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss.""I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else.""I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate.""It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible.""The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread.""Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark.""The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors.""The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."

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"Dynatrace's power lies in its ability to inspect and chart transactions, and draw the PurePath tree. The parameters of the requests and methods can be selected to access the necessary information for efficient analysis.""Never seen anything so complex be so simple to install.""I am able to customize my dashboard based on the test requirement and it helps me to focus on the area that really needs close monitoring.""We use it to monitor over a 1000 servers in AWS.""End-to-end visibility of the applications, since we have them instrumented. Understanding where the hotspots are in the applications.""​Overall, it has provided improved stability to our system both within prod and non-prod environments.​""Real-time information allows us to proactively tackle an issue before it affects our clients.""The most valuable feature the solution offers right now is the PurePath. When we see a web request, and something failing, we can drill down using PurePath."

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"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users.""AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint.""I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues.""Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort.""The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature.""The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best.""Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management.""The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pros →

Cons
"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation.""It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database.""If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either.""This solution is expensive compared to some others.""Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable... It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better.""There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely.""Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams.""The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."

More Accedian Skylight Cons →

"I haven't had a chance to go through all of it, but I would like to see the ability, from an administrative standpoint, for it to collect statistics. I want to be able to see the servers that the agents are installed on. I want it to be able to start doing collections for me by platform: How many Linux servers do I have? How many Windows servers do I have? Statistically give me the information of how things are performing, but I want that in a dashboard, where I can look at a dashboard and I can look at a section. So the ability for me to drill down will make it easier for me.""I would like to see internal synthetic tests in the next release, which is already on the roadmap.​""Documentation is slightly in error as far as directory set ups and guidance. We came to our own solution for distributing the disk loads.""We are still struggling a bit with finding an answer quickly.""It would be nice to get the AI piece into AppMon.""We sometimes have to run plugins on docker containers.""We would like to see more external tool integration, which is critical for us.""One thing that I would like to see is for companies like us - large AppMon customers that have a lot of presence in AppMon, a lot of manually configured things and customizations - would be something that would help us be able to make that journey more easily, the transition from to AppMon to Dynatrace."

More Dynatrace Cons →

"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups.""SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes.""One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance""SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us.""The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use.""The product needs to reduce its price.""It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that.""I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."
  • "It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."
  • "Pricing is a little bit expensive."
  • "We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
  • "The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."
  • "It provides value and the cost is not huge."
  • "The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."
  • "The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
  • More Accedian Skylight Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing is based on the number of servers monitored, so for big applications, it is a bit expensive."
  • "Licensing is a bit complicated for Dynatrace, and pricing is dependent on how much your organization invests."
  • "We found an issue within the first week of ownership that has been costing us more than the entire license cost."
  • "Product pricing can seem a little over complex, however this is minor and does not detract from the benefits of the solution."
  • "Getting the first agents installed, getting information, and coverage in a initial set of systems can be done in hours and with a low cost entry point."
  • "Price (of the product) is a major concern for all the clients I work with."
  • "The licensing model is confusing in solutioning clients for the number of hosts needed to deploy."
  • "The product is superior to others, but it comes with a price tag that is often difficult to position back to clients."
  • More Dynatrace Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
  • "When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
  • "Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
  • "I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
  • "Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
  • "SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
  • "Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
  • "The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
  • More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less… more »
    Top Answer:The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly… more »
    Top Answer:There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have… more »
    Top Answer:The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you… more »
    Top Answer:While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack… more »
    Top Answer:There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems… more »
    Top Answer:The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the… more »
    Top Answer:Among the major monitoring solutions, especially considering that free monitoring tools are available, it is relatively… more »
    Top Answer:The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts.
    Ranking
    Views
    1,190
    Comparisons
    758
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    899
    Rating
    9.2
    Views
    46,602
    Comparisons
    28,133
    Reviews
    15
    Average Words per Review
    468
    Rating
    8.5
    Views
    5,175
    Comparisons
    3,398
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    427
    Rating
    7.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
    SolarWinds SAM
    Learn More
    Overview

    Accedian provides performance analytics and end user experience solutions for on-premise, cloud and hybrid IT infrastructures. Accedian SkylightTM delivers unified network and application performance monitoring (NAPM) visibility across the entire application and network chain, with best in class resolution and velocity. This enables Accedian customers to assure their business-critical digital infrastructure and unlock the full productivity of their users.

    Dynatrace is an AI-powered software intelligence monitoring platform that accelerates digital transformation and simplifies cloud complexities. Dynatrace is an entirely automated full-stack solution that provides data and answers about the performance of your applications and deep insight into every transaction throughout every application, including the end-user experience. By modernizing and automating enterprise cloud operations, users can deliver an optimal digital experience with higher quality software to customers faster.

    Dynatrace offers an all-in-one automated artificial intelligence solution that brings together application performance, cloud and infrastructure, and digital experience monitoring. Dynatrace accelerates performance-driven results through operations, development, and business teams with a shared metrics platform. In addition, users are provided a full-stack monitoring experience with three patented technologies:

    • Smartscape - visualization mechanism that maps the totality of everything working in your environment and detects any casual dependencies between your applications, processes, websites, services, hosts, cloud infrastructure, and networks.

    • OneAgent - a technology that analyzes, gathers ,and unifies all business performance metrics throughout every layer of your technology stack.

    • PurePath Technology - code-level context and timings are captured from the mainframe to the cloud for all end-to-end transactions.

    What does Dynatrace offer?

    Dynatrace redefines how organizations monitor their digital ecosystems. The solution offers:

    • Cloud Automation: With AI engine Davis®, users can see the exact reason for problems and facilitate quick auto-remediation and intelligent cloud orchestration.

    • Application Security: With automated application vulnerability management, users can deliver applications faster and more securely.

    • Infrastructure Monitoring: Convenient broad visibility across your environments is provided with streamlined, automated infrastructure monitoring.

    • Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM): Optimize your applications, provide better support, and improve user experience with a combination of Real User Monitoring (RUM), Session Replay, and synthetic monitoring throughout your environment.

    • Applications and Microservices: For complex cloud environments, Dynatrace can automatically provide visibility and root-cause answers. It can also monitor microservices.

    • Digital Business Analytics: Get AI-powered, real-time answers to analytical business queries with KPIs and metrics that are already flowing through applications.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Dynatrace is the only solution that provides answers to organizations based on deep insight into each user, transaction, and organization's environment.

    Barry P., a managing performance engineer at Medica Health Plans, writes, "With Dynatrace, we have synthetic checks and real-user monitoring of all of our websites, places where members and providers can interact with us over the web. We monitor the response times of those with Dynatrace, and it's all integrated into one place."

    A consultant at a tech service company notes, "A feature that's one of the highlights of Dynatrace is the AI. The second most valuable feature is OneAgent. Between infrastructures, applications, operating systems, you can deploy with just a single agent and can practically install and forget about it."

    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

    Sample Customers
    T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville
    Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
    Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company16%
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Local Government11%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company36%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Insurance Company9%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization27%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Construction Company13%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization41%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise32%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise68%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise71%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise56%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise48%
    Large Enterprise41%
    Buyer's Guide
    Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: April 2024.
    767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.