AppDynamics vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

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AppDynamics Logo
19,417 views|12,620 comparisons
89% willing to recommend
VMware Logo
2,486 views|2,203 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 28, 2023

We performed a comparison between AppDynamics and VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for both AppDynamics and VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront can be either easy or complex depending on who you ask. It's important to involve technical teams during the setup process for both products.
  • Features: AppDynamics offers alerting for issues, release management capabilities, customizable dashboards, and business insights. It is also scalable, stable, and easy to use. VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront, on the other hand, is praised for its ease of deployment, integration with multiple solutions, and support for container platforms. It is also stable, scalable, and easy to use.
  • Pricing: AppDynamics and VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront are both costly solutions, with pricing depending on the size of the environment and the number of apps or IT infrastructure being monitored. AppDynamics has a confusing licensing model, while VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is worth the investment for those who don't have time to build their own solution. The cost varies for each customer and can reach up to $100,000 for multiple solutions with full technical support over a two-year license period.
  • Service and Support: AppDynamic's customer service has received some negative feedback regarding slow response times and lacking knowledge. Meanwhile, VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront's support is relatively new and has garnered mixed reviews, with some users not requiring assistance and others finding it satisfactory.
  • ROI: AppDynamics offers comprehensive performance measurement and connected issue tracking, while VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront boosts performance and customer satisfaction by quickly identifying and resolving problems and optimizing resource usage.

Comparison Results: VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is the favored option over AppDynamics due to its seamless integration with various solutions, support for Kubernetes and open-source technologies, and speedy and stable performance. Users appreciate its ease of deployment and support.

To learn more, read our detailed AppDynamics vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: March 2024).
767,667 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
"AppDynamics is scalable.""I like that AppDynamics allows every organization to have what they want to see, like for my organization, we're able to customize the dashboard to show us details of what we want to see in our transactions.""This is a stable product and we definitely plan to continue using it in the future.""It is a wonderful monitoring tool that manages various aspects such as system resources (CPU, RAM), mobile performance, and infrastructure monitoring.""The transaction snapshots let you find out where the application broke; it pinpoints where in the call stack, and then how long it took to resolve.""AppDynamics provides us with detailed information about the performance of the underlying infrastructure, including servers, databases, and external services.""The real user monitoring helps us evaluate our customers' real experiences, which is valuable as an eCommerce company.""I like how the AppDynamics dashboard portrays the information flows. When a task is executed, various flows between different applications and databases happen in the background. The dashboard is intuitive and helps visualize the connections, the directions of the flow, and the information related to these specific sessions."

More AppDynamics Pros →

"People are very pleased with the implementation.""VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support.""For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights.""The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility.""No issues with stability.""The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation.""The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities.""Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Pros →

Cons
"If AppDynamics could do a one-agent function with their actual monitoring effectiveness, it will be the greatest tool.""Maybe some more CPU power or something like that could be an area to improve.""At this time, we don't have much visibility on the virtual environment, monitoring, and all other things. We have visibility only for database monitoring, and we have noticed performance impact when deploying database agents on the database server. We got to know this from AppDynamics support also that we should not deploy database agents from the database server. When agents are deployed on the same server and the database is monitored from there, we are not getting database server metrics. Therefore, we don't have those insights, and sometimes, we struggle because of that. They can improve this functionality so that we do not have a performance impact, and we can deploy anywhere. This would help us a lot. In terms of end-user monitoring, currently, it is not working for us because there are some complexities. It is a little complicated, and it takes a little bit of time to understand where you need to make changes. It would be very helpful if they can provide some template designs for end-user monitoring. When our servers are running on VMs, we don't get many insights from the VM side. I don't know whether it is possible to have visibility beyond the database, server, and application and whether there are some features where we can deploy AppDynamics on VMs as well. Such functionality would give us more control over storage, VM, OS, and database. It will also provide complete visibility of our hardware and software.""The dashboard can be better. Also, the automated reports could be improved.""There are many KPIs that are not available in AppDynamics.""When you have high stress of visits I do not know if you are more stress because of the amount of visits or because you have to wait eternal 60 seconds to find out it things are going well or you already have mess.""The network diagnostics that they are adding will be really useful. They could add more detail into what is going on in the network.""AppDynamics lacks integration with cloud technology. It probably isn't a good fit for emerging enterprises because it's an on-premise solution, and many newer companies are moving to the cloud. AppDynamics' on-premise technology works reasonably well, but it doesn't have cloud features."

More AppDynamics Cons →

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack.""The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.""The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved.""In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get.""Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more.""The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high.""The implementation is a long process that should be improved.""They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The product’s licencing policy is competitive. However, properly identify and size your needs to get the best rate."
  • "As a technical person, and as an application development team, they all understand that this is the right tool for us. But when it comes to budget and financial matters, it takes days and weeks to convince upper management to buy this tool. So they should do something more on licensing costs."
  • "It is not a cheap tool, but you also save in manpower to setup because it is easy and fast. At the end of the day, I think the revenue is much better. BUT, they have an awful co-term mode of licensing."
  • "It could be cheaper. It's a little cost prohibitive. There are so many features that also show a lot of value, but it’s not always easy to justify the cost."
  • "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 would be better if there were more solutions incorporated into the base price. ​"
  • "The way it is structured in terms of price could be better. You pay for individual modules and that adds on to the cost, which detracts you from implementing those modules and slows you down."
  • "Take into consideration what you get for specific pricing models and how much it costs to add on things you may need later.​"
  • More AppDynamics Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
  • "I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
  • "The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
  • "I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
  • More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra… more »
    Top Answer:Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your focus on SMBs and enterprises in Israel, Dynatrace seems like a solid choice with… more »
    Top Answer:VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support.
    Top Answer:It's hard to set up Tanzu clusters. It's hard to do a POC. Once you set up a customer's environment, you easily see the problems. The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.
    Ranking
    Views
    19,417
    Comparisons
    12,620
    Reviews
    22
    Average Words per Review
    459
    Rating
    7.9
    Views
    2,486
    Comparisons
    2,203
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    549
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    AppD, AppDynamics APM
    Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
    Learn More
    Overview

    AppDynamics is a leader in APM (application performance monitoring) tools. The solution is designed to help you spot application issues on the spot so you can get to the root causes of problems, all in real time. In addition, AppDynamics offers seamless traceability and is fully capable of enhancing application performance and visibility in the multicloud world. It uses AI to solve application problems and prevent them from occurring in the future. AppDynamics is a great tool that can help your organization make critical, strategic decisions and is ideal for businesses of all sizes.

    AppDynamics Features

    AppDynamics has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Code level visibility
    • Dynamic baselining
    • Powerful alerting
    • Visibility and control
    • Quick installation
    • Mobile real-user monitoring
    • Browser real-user monitoring
    • Application performance management
    • Database agents
    • Server visibility
    • Trend database performance over time
    • Data retention
    • Monitors multiple platforms
    • Troubleshoots performance issues
    • Synthetic monitoring
    • Continuously monitors in a high-volume environment

    AppDynamics Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing AppDynamics. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Deep insights: The AppDynamics solution can provide deep insights into your processes, including real-time insights into performance, user experience, objectives, and business outcomes.
    • Unified monitoring: With AppDynamics, six monitoring applications are combined into a single robust solution. In turn, you gain complete visibility and multi-channel user experience management. The solution’s unified monitoring also quickly produces previews that are more accurate.
    • Data-led customer experience: By using AppDynamics, you can ingest and analyze data across your entire technology stack and transform it into detailed visualizations. This allows you to easily make the right business decisions while enhancing the user experience and also driving better business results.
    • Advanced network visibility: AppDynamics allows you to gain insight across your entire technology stack. As a result, you have greater visibility of the external networks that your applications rely on, which enables you to quickly resolve issues with connections to Domain Name Service (DNS), Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the AppDynamics solution.

    Chandan K., Associate Director at a financial services firm, says, “The tracing is the most important aspect of the solution. The way it traces the information within the particular application or within the particular infrastructure is great. That actually helps. Apart from that, all of the data that's in the production APM is good.”

    PeerSpot user, Yacin H., Responsable Commercial at Zen Networks, mentions, “You can use one module for each server, for each application, and for each API”. He also adds, “With the solution you can put add-ons on it and it's very customizable. You can customize it easily. If you want something that the tool doesn't have, you can add it easily.”

    Another reviewer, a Head Of Information Technology at a mining and metals company expresses, "The solution helps us save a lot of time on certain tasks. The dashboards of the solution are excellent. The stability is good.”

    David G., Systems Engineer at a tech services company, states, “The solution has beneficial application analysis, is highly scalable, and has a great ROI.”

    VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time. 

    With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

    Sample Customers
    Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
    1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm31%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Aerospace/Defense Firm6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization40%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise69%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business8%
    Midsize Enterprise45%
    Large Enterprise47%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    AppDynamics vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about AppDynamics vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    AppDynamics is ranked 5th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 153 reviews while VMware Aria Operations for Applications is ranked 32nd in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 9 reviews. AppDynamics is rated 8.2, while VMware Aria Operations for Applications is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of AppDynamics writes "Very good real-time monitoring capabilities, deep problem diagnosis, and transaction mapping". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware Aria Operations for Applications writes "Easy to deploy, worth the money, and helpful for uptime monitoring and performance insights". AppDynamics is most compared with Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Datadog, Splunk Enterprise Security and New Relic, whereas VMware Aria Operations for Applications is most compared with Dynatrace, Grafana, Datadog, Zabbix and vRealize Network Insight. See our AppDynamics vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications report.

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