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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Accedian Skylight and Apica 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: March 2024).
765,386 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
"For us, the most valuable feature is something called TWAMP that allows for real-time traffic in a way that is 10 times lighter than things like SolarWinds. It's in the sub-milliseconds of accuracy, and you can divide tasks so that you can literally see things like the tagging for Quality of Service. That had been incorrect with the carrier, but there was no way on this planet you'd be able to tell a carrier that they're wrong. I have dozens of scenarios where we found "No, that's not right," and got it resolved instantly.""This solution has helped to improve the interaction between our network, datacenter, and application teams. I have used other tools, but this tool can pinpoint the root cause of my application or network issue in the majority of the cases. So, it helps different divisions or groups in the IT department to troubleshoot together and get an issue resolved. This tool helps a lot in our day-to-day networking application and IT operations.""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.""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.""The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online.""If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas...""The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

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"As always, within the IT industry, everybody's always looking to upgrade and update everything else like that. Apica has been one of those things but it's really hard to replace because it offers us the unique capability to see what the customer is seeing. A lot of other ones can do Selenium script and things like that, but there's a lot in Apica that we use right now. We utilize a lot of the scenario options in Apica right now, and there's a lot of other ones that do parts of it, but it doesn't do everything that Apica does.""With the ZebraTester, the ability to have and store dynamic variables, when setting up the monitors, means you can extract that value and use it in a subsequent service call. This is something that has made our lives easier... This is one of the features that I like the most because it helps us in configuring these services, in a certain flow, without the need to re-record the whole thing.""You can tell from the operational space of people who are using and consuming this data that they are more integrated. It is not dependent on one team anymore. It saves a lot of time by capturing and pinpointing the exact problem that is happening quickly. We have moved from getting escalations manually to getting escalations synthetically.""It helps with releases because we monitor them in staging. We can tell if something is critically wrong before it gets into production, e.g., if it was load related or function related and also what was different in the dev stage. It then alerts us straightaway inside of our production monitors once it has been released. Therefore, it has improved how we run our systems since we monitor multiple environments.""We see the benefit almost every day. It allows us to be alerted whenever there is a store that is not responding properly around the world. We do have a network operation center (NOC) who receives these alerts, immediately checking if everything is okay.""One of the biggest advantages of moving to Apica is the ability get to a hybrid model with the architecture in the cloud and our agents on-prem. We also have access to Apica's cloud agent across the globe. That has changed the way that we have our load testing setup at this point. Previously, it was always internal. Now, with this change in the way it is implemented for load testing, we can test anywhere across the globe and from the list of agents available within Apica's cloud. If I don't have an agent available in a second location, it just takes an email to their customer support, then it is spun up within 24 hours. That flexibility has changed the way that we perceive our load tests, not just in the US, but globally.""There are several features that are really good. The first one is the flexibility and the advanced configuration that Apica offers when it comes to configuring synthetic checks. It provides the ability to customize how the check should be performed and it is very flexible in the number of synthetic locations that it can use. It allows us to run scripts from different locations all over the world, and they have a really good number of these locations.""Our application SREs do script checks in such a way that closely mimic our customers' actions using the platform. Because there are so many different ways and options to be able to configure checks to closely mirror your applications' capabilities, it provides a lot of optionality for teams to create the right type of check that can notify when there are any issues. At the end of the day, we want our monitoring tools to be able to catch any outage before our customers do. This is where Apica Synthetic does a great job."

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Cons
"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.""The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve.""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.""I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration.""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.""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.""This solution is expensive compared to some others."

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"We have been focused on reducing polling times for synthetic checks. We have gone from 10 minutes down to five minutes for a pretty broad swath, but there is some appetite to reduce that further, which could be an improvement.""When it comes to the way the internal agent is installed, because you can install an application on a server, I would love to see the application Docker-ized. If you could install internal agents using Docker or using containers, it would be easier for us to manage them and spin up internal agents.""The initial screen on their dashboard could have a bit more data, but this is a small thing. It could have more data, so we do not need to drill down to a screen behind that initial information. I would like them to get a little better on the user interfaces that we need to go into.""The accuracy of alerts can be improved a little bit. Right now, it's pretty good in terms of alerting pretty quickly about failures or changes in response times. However, what we have seen happen is the number of alerts that we are getting is very frequent, and we would like to tone down the number of alerts. That's the only trouble we have. Apica could tone down those settings because there is no option for us to tone it down to a level that would reduce the alerts to a minimum. As a platform, it does send us good alerts, but it could be improved a bit.""The having to install an application on your desktop to utilize something like ZebraTester is a little cumbersome. It would be nice to see that become a web-based application. Having the documentation a little more accessible, and easier to digest by people who are just learning how to use the framework, especially when it comes to more complex or more edge-based cases would be really helpful to have.""There are some components of the user interface that are not up to date. Just to give you an idea, today we have web applications that are called single-page applications that are much faster than the old style of web application. If we can move faster into the flow of the graphic user interface, and in a more effective way, it will save us a lot of time.""The reporting part that we use for our executives needs a bit more customization capabilities. Right now, you can use only the three main templates for reporting. We would like to be able to customize them.""Learning the tool has always been a little difficult from a scripting perspective because the framework is proprietary and unique. Once we became used to what it does and how to perform it, then it became easier for my team and me. I would like to see some of the testing steps be part of a more well-known language, like Java or Python. That would be a big improvement."

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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 →

  • "The pricing and licensing are very reasonable. At the end of the day, you are using their technology/software and getting X amount of checks for a very decent value. As for discounts, they try to meet your budgets as much as they can. For example, if you need 100 checks and you have X amount of budget for it, then they will try and get down to that price. Costing-wise, it is a reasonably cost product. They will always try and come down to your price if you need them to come down to it by knocking off certain areas."
  • "Apica is pretty cost-effective if you buy both solutions together: Synthetic and LoadTest. If you are going for one solution, the cost is on par with any tool in the market."
  • "The level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. Overall, it has automated a lot of the manual efforts which have been more complex with some of our other scripting tools or monitors. So, it brings things together by doing things faster and saves us money."
  • "License management is another area that Apica could do better. We have already had these conversations with our account teams. This is something that they are looking at largely improving in upcoming releases. I believe that this is already on their roadmap."
  • "The pricing is very reasonable, but it is not cheap."
  • "Another main difference between Apica and the other products was the cost. We really thought that the balance in Apica between the features and costs was the best among all the products on which we did a PoC."
  • More Apica 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 useful now that encryption is so widespread.
    Top Answer:The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is… 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 clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change… more »
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    9.2
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    976
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    Comparisons
    Datadog logo
    Compared 22% of the time.
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    Compared 21% of the time.
    AppDynamics logo
    Compared 20% of the time.
    Apache JMeter logo
    Compared 13% of the time.
    OpenText LoadRunner Cloud logo
    Compared 13% of the time.
    Also Known As
    Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
    Apica LoadTest, Apica Synthetic
    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.

    Apica offers a unified perspective on the entire technology stack, encompassing logs, metrics, traces, and APIs. This operational data fabric facilitates quick identification and resolution of performance issues throughout an enterprise's infrastructure. The platform's user-friendly features, including a drag-and-drop interface for dashboards and seamless integrations with tools like Prometheus and Elasticsearch, enhance ease of use and management. Apica's active observability swiftly analyzes telemetry data in real-time, enabling prompt issue resolution, while automated root cause analysis, powered by machine learning, streamlines troubleshooting in complex distributed systems. The platform's advanced data management centralizes observability data, simplifying storage, search, and analysis, thereby unveiling valuable insights and patterns. Apica also ensures compliance and governance, providing audit trails to help enterprises meet regulatory requirements. Whether for enterprises of all sizes or those with intricate distributed systems, Apica emerges as a robust tool to elevate technology stack observability and performance.

    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
    HBO
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company16%
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Local Government11%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company35%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm44%
    Hospitality Company11%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Insurance Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm38%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company10%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise32%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise82%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise6%
    Large Enterprise80%
    Buyer's Guide
    Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Accedian Skylight is ranked 14th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 23 reviews while Apica is ranked 55th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Accedian Skylight is rated 9.0, while Apica is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Accedian Skylight writes "Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Apica writes "Their support makes the product so much easier to use. They sped up our migration process". Accedian Skylight is most compared with ThousandEyes, SolarWinds NPM, Zabbix, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE and Dynatrace, whereas Apica is most compared with Datadog, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Apache JMeter and OpenText LoadRunner Cloud.

    See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

    We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.