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422 reviews
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    Brajesh S.

AppDynamics - A powerful analytics tool for business transactions and monitoring

  • June 12, 2024
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
AppDynamics is a very versatile tool that is easy to use and integrate with many 3rd party services from SaaS, Cloud services and other data monitoring tools.
It is useful in detecting and monitoring problematic transactions to enhance the productivity of our business.
Configuration of servers, analytics,metrics,alerts,etc is easy with appdynamics.
Frequently used by application engineers and data analysts in the team to monitor outliers.
It is easy to implement with other monitoring and alert solutions like Cloudwatch, Dynatrace,etc.
Customer support is very helpful and is available 24 x 7 in a week.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are a lot of benefits of using Appdynamics but few points need some attention like -
i. Costs are high for large business organizations.
ii. Competitors are giving same services at competitive cost.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
AppDynamics has made a great contribution to our logistics and supply chain industries by detecting the problematic transactions out of the millions of transactions that are running in real time for shipments related data on the production environment, thereby reducing the losses.


    Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui

Helps users monitor the performance and see if there are any delays that occur in the databases

  • June 12, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What needs improvement?

The tool provides more insights, but maybe if in the recommendation section, we can use some AI tool for the optimization of the database, then it would be helpful.

With AI, it would be good if the tool could help us with the database optimization part. If my company can get product support, it would be great since the tool has the ability to make predictions based on the database performance that something may be going wrong and notify us of the precautions to be taken.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AppDynamics Database Monitoring for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The tool is used by four to five people.

How are customer service and support?

Whenever my company interacted with the solution's technical support or engineers, we had a better experience compared to the ones we had with other tools. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase is easy since a separate machine is required, and it is not directly installed on a database as it is a type of proxy. We collect the logs, which is a model that is pretty easy to handle.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a day or two.

What was our ROI?

Cost saving in terms of not an HR-based perspective, but I know that some performance improvements are there. The tool helps in overall cost optimization. Maybe we are not making decisions to increase the database and its resources. Once we know that there are some performance issues, then we can fine-tune the tool and save on the costs. The costs for my company have been reduced by 15 to 20 percent using the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The tool is expensive. If one is expensive and ten is low price, I rate the product price as seven out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

I know about two products. AppDynamics Transaction Analytics was already a part of AppDynamics solution when my company bought it with an enterprise-level licensing, so it provides some business analytics dashboards. The other product I use is not related to analytics, so I didn't use it much.

In terms of optimizing our company's data operations, the tool provides insights on whether there are any challenges in databases or if there is something related to queries, which is helpful. One can monitor the performance and see if there are any delays that occur in the databases when we are dealing with the queries, and it helps to find out what the issues are.

I don't know what the features of the tool are for performance analysis, but when any application generates codes to extract particular information from a database, it sometimes gets stuck on some queries. At the query level, monitoring and providing more insights are beneficial.

A scenario where the real-time monitoring aspect of AppDynamics was crucial for our team was when we were adding a new application and testing it with our production environment or in the UAT; the tool was helpful because we could fine-tune the application and optimize it. If there are certain issues, we can easily identify such issues with the tool, especially when adding a new application since the product helps a lot.

Speaking about how the alerting system in AppDynamics helps in preventing potential database issues, I can say that from my observation, if there is some problem at a certain point in time, we get alerts, but I am not sure if prevention to help us identify issues is available or not in the tool. It would be good if we can identify the issues before it affects our company. There are some slow performance areas that need to be identified.

My company often takes care of the maintenance of the tool. One engineer can maintain the tool.

I recommend the tool to others.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.


    Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui

Offers alerting and correlation features with exceptional root cause analysis

  • June 12, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What needs improvement?

There are certain limitations with the agents in the solution. For some applications, AppDynamics Server Monitoring provides agents only for Linux-based machines.

When our organization deals with environments where only Windows-based applications are running, we face challenges using AppDynamics Server Monitoring. Some community-based agents are available with a solution that utilizes the CPU and memory of the hardware devices in excess.

The vendor should make changes to support Windows-based applications or develop single agents to support all applications. Recently, a single agent feature was announced; if it's easy to use, then the solution will have an edge over others and simplify the deployment process.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for one or two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are about 15 users of AppDynamics Server Monitoring in our organization. At our company, we try to avoid frequent or regular maintenance of the solution as it can disturb daily operations. I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. If the deployed environment grows, there are no challenges in increasing the resources in the solution, hence the solution can be easily scaled.

How are customer service and support?

The tech support from the vendor is satisfying. I would rate the tech support an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

There are some complexities in the initial deployment process of AppDynamics Server Monitoring. It's an agent-based solution, so there are different agents for varying apps, the compatibility of the agent with the app is not straightforward. When our company's team is installing the agents, they are facing some challenges related to agent compatibility and product performance. The main controller setup of the solution is comprehensible.

The installation of AppDynamics Server Monitoring takes more than a week in total. The main controller can be installed within a day, but the agent installation for different applications takes around a week.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing cost is fairly high. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees for AppDynamics Server Monitoring.

What other advice do I have?

Customers of our company use the solution to monitor servers in digital banking, online banking applications and other financial entities. AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a user-friendly solution. The dashboard, flow providing maps of varying applications and the back-end calls are easy to understand in the solution.

The alerting mechanism works satisfactorily and efficiently as other solutions. Notifications are provided in the dashboard, or they can also be sent to users via email or SMS by AppDynamics Server Monitoring, other solution don't have multiple alerting options.

After implementing the solution, we haven't witnessed any operational cost reduction, but performance improvements have been identified. The solution has provided exceptional root cause analysis and technical solutions for problem identification and resolution.

The correlation feature available with AppDynamics Server Monitoring is absent in other competitive solutions. The aforementioned feature helps evaluate the impact of one application's issues on the other, pinpoint the error location, and check the dependency between applications. Compared to the NMS, the APM can provide more information on user monitoring.

Some security features and threat loophole identification features can be included in AppDynamics Server Monitoring by the vendor. As the solution also maintains baselining, it can take a proactive approach based on historical data to gain AI capabilities. If AI features are included, then AppDynamics Server Monitoring will probably be able to predict upcoming application failure by analyzing some metrics that have gone down.

I would recommend AppDynamics Server Monitoring to other users due to its user-friendliness. A Competitor solution from Dynatrace provides almost the same features as AppDynamics Server Monitoring, but their dashboards and overall usability are quite complex. Many financial sector companies and government organizations often prefer an on-prem version, which is provided by AppDynamics Server Monitoring, but other solutions like Datadog are available as SaaS. I would rate AppDynamics Server Monitoring as nine out of ten.


    Salvatore Campana

Lacks investment in new technologies like Kubernetes, but has a good alert mechanism

  • June 06, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We analyze data for performance and availability, which is produced by servers, infrastructure and cloud. However, it's not sufficient to only use Dynatrace because it makes a lot of data. This data is interpreted by AppDynamics automatically with technical data to understand the business impact, thus improving productivity. In Europe, enterprises widely use SAP, and AppDynamics effectively supports this by monitoring the core IT environment and the services around SAP, like CRM, Salesforce, and logistics systems.

What is most valuable?

The alert mechanism in AppDynamics enhances server management tasks by using agents installed on each server. These agents capture numerous metrics, collaborate to describe specific transactions, and allow us to monitor each transaction based on user interactions. We can see where any transaction might falter in the SAP server, application server, or presentation database, helping us identify the exact point of failure or degradation in transaction time, extract anomaly detection, or pinpoint real failures in SAP or other applications. This mechanism is very similar to Dynatrace, but AppDynamics is currently the best option for SAP.

What needs improvement?

AppDynamics Server Monitoring lacks investment in new technologies like Kubernetes and cloud solutions. Dynatrace has received significant investment in these areas and is better suited for cloud-native applications. However, AppDynamics still holds value for traditional applications used in banks or larger companies.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've worked with AppDynamics Server Monitoring for five to six years. My experience in monitoring systems started around 2020-2022, focusing on serviceability for SAP ERP environments.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Regarding stability, I would also rate it at nine out of ten as it is highly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I'd rate the scalability of AppDynamics Server Monitoring at nine out of ten, indicating it's highly scalable.

How was the initial setup?

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is deployed based on the organization's needs. For instance, installing it on a single server is better for a few clients for on-premises deployment. On the other hand, different solutions are available for cloud monitoring applications. The trend is shifting towards new paradigms like DevOps. AppDynamics adheres to these standards and can be used for both on-premises and cloud environments, depending on the specific requirements and business model of the organization. Maintenance requires a dedicated team, which can be extensive, especially in large organizations like banks.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup of AppDynamics as seven out of ten.

What was our ROI?

The return on investment with AppDynamics Server Monitoring has been significant in certain areas, especially for SAP environments. However, there hasn't been as much focus on the broader market due to their emphasis on cloud messaging applications. It ultimately depends on the customer's specific needs and how well the solution aligns with them.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing for AppDynamics is expensive, but it is possible to negotiate special pricing through bids.

What other advice do I have?

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is integrated into the infrastructure through agents installed on the servers, and it utilizes REST APIs for process control and integration with other solutions. In terms of AI usage, AppDynamics uses AI for anomaly detection and resource forecasting.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is recommended, especially for SAP environments or cloud-native applications. However, the recommendation depends on the specific needs of the organization.

Overall, I would rate AppDynamics Server Monitoring as seven out of ten.


    CanselÖzcan

Centralized solution from the analytics perspective and monitors application performance proactively

  • May 30, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

For business purposes, the analytics side is a very unique part of the APM solution. There are lots of different APM products in this ecosystem, but other than AppDynamics, there is no business insight or very limited capacity. Other APM solutions on the business side are limited. Most of our bank customers and fintech customers use the Analytics side with very high priority.

From the C-level perspective, they mostly do not care about the operational metrics, for example, response time, CPU memory, or different kinds of technical metrics. They focus on the business side. The business impact of their application: Is it good? Is it healthy? Is their revenue increasing or not? Or stable? With the business analytics side, we provide a hundred percent of this business info. Before their end-to-end process, we provide real-time business metrics.

For example, one of our banking customers uses business analytics to measure real-time ATM transactions, how much their customers withdraw or deposit from the ATM machine, or maybe POS machine, or in Europe, SEPA and SWIFT transactions. Customers manage their transactions from another site. We also measure real-time money transfers.

From each level, for example, ATM side, Internet banking side, mobile banking side. The business analytics side is the further version of an APM product for all APM products.

How has it helped my organization?

When you use the full AppDynamics product, for example, analytics and the performance measuring site, when you gather all this information correctly and fully, you can easily talk the same language between business and technical teams.

Most of the issue is not only the exact application problem or response time problem. Mostly, we face the issue of telling this problem or understanding the problem from the business side to the technical or operational team side. We cannot use the transition between this level. So AppDynamics gives us a good approach, good visibility, and a good language for both teams.

For example, business, operational, software, and database teams use the same language to understand each other very easily. It decreases the meantime to resolution and TTR metrics, for example.

What is most valuable?

It’s a very centralized solution from the analytics perspective. So, when users expand their licenses, they can expand their visibility. For example, they measure the license count from the analytics perspective, daily transactions. They measure daily transactions, for example. One transaction analytics license gives visibility to one million transactions per day.

So if users want to expand the visibility, if users want to expand their usage of the Analytics site, they need to expand the license also, based on your transactions per day. So it’s easy.

The premise has its own AI capabilities, both on the SaaS and the on-prem side. So, if users want to use this AI feature, other than the other APM product, for example, Dynatrace, users can easily use it as a disconnected on-prem application. This means there is no need to communicate with the Internet connection or product owners, only the communication between the data center and the Internet site. So users can easily use it as a disconnected on-prem, which is the only solution in the APM ecosystem. For example, the big competitor in this area is Dynatrace. Dynatrace has its own daily static analytics features, which need a source connection.

So, even if users use an on-prem solution, if they want to use the AI options, they need to communicate with their analytics units via an Internet connection. This is important from a technical perspective.

Another thing is it’s totally free when users own this product with different kinds of agents. Users can also own these AI features. For example, when someone looks at the Dynatrace site, they need to pay for daily data units. So it’s cost-based. It’s a transaction-based cost with another product, but in AppDynamics, there is no additional cost. So this is one of the advantages.

What needs improvement?

AppDynamics and the other APM products are really, really much further than other products. So, with this perspective, there are some minor enhancements that can be made, but for the major sites, there is no negative impact or any alternative application.

For example, some cosmetic enhancements. We live in Turkey, so we have our currency, we have some number formats, or something like that. Sometimes, we can face issues getting the business metric and using or calculating it because of this format or some locality issue. So, I’m specifically talking about this kind of enhancement to enhance its localization capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for more than 12 years now. I have been using it since the beginning. I use it both on cloud and on-premises.

More than as an application performance management [APM] site other than AppDynamics, I have used APM products for more than twenty years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been super stable. I can easily rate it a ten out of ten because there is no overhead or something like that. There’s no code application, and no code declaration is needed here, so it’s very superior.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

From an analytics perspective, when users expand their visibility, there’s no need to expand the license level other than, for example, there’s no additional code application, no additional technical improvement, or something like that. Users only need to expand the license based on their daily transactions. So it’s super easy.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It has been stable, scalable and manageable.

In Turkey, we are working with more than 75 different companies. We are also responsible for the EMEA region, including Qatar and Austria. So, these are medium to larger organizations.

How are customer service and support?

This is a global company, so there are lots of different support teams all over.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used to work with lots of different APM products in my personal career. More than maybe six different products, for example, Dynatrace, CUI, HP Diagnostic (now Micro Focus APM solutions), and other free APM solutions, open-source APM services I used to work with.

We are an APM company. So we make PoCs with lots of different APM vendors throughout the years. For example, last year, I made maybe three different PoCs with other APM vendors.

But now, for the last nine years, my personal technical perspective and the customer needs in Turkey really align with AppDynamics because it’s a very unified platform. It’s very easy to understand, easy to use. So because of that, I’ve been working with AppDynamics for the last nine years.

How was the initial setup?

We can divide it into two sections. One of them is the agent-based installation, and the other one is the platform-based.

This is a server-side application, so it has lots of different components. Based on my experience, it is easier than other APM solutions as a platform and data warehouse. But the agent side is very different because there are lots of different applications.

The agent side includes .NET agent, Java agent, Linux agent, Windows agents. There are different types of products on the agent side. It depends on the agent types you need. But from a general point of view, I used many different kinds of APM products, for example, NetTrace, Riverbed, Eternity, and HP Diagnostics. I have a license here too.

So, the initial setup has been simple for me.

What was our ROI?

AppDynamics delivered financial benefits to our clients. For instance, we are monitoring the money transfer services’ performance metrics, such as response time, how many calls per minute are in a specific time range, and how many other transactions are per minute in a specific time range. These are the technical metrics, the performance metrics specifically. But we are also measuring their business metrics inside the method parameters for HTTP data collectors.

So we can get this business metric data easily without any code application. This is a very important part. We don’t need any code declaration or development on the development side. We can measure parameters like the amount of money, the success of their transactions, and other business success metrics from these method parameters without any code declaration.

Another example is a loan team in a bank that measures their loan services from their clients. They track how many applications are processed within a specific time range, the success rate, and the correlation of their performance metrics, such as slowness or error rates, with their business outcomes.

For example, yesterday, they released a new application update to address performance issues. Today, we are monitoring their application performance. After this release, their performance went down, response time increased, and success rate decreased. By measuring these performance metrics, their C-level executives and business teams can correlate these performance issues with business impact.

Normally, there’s a baseline, for example, on Wednesday from 10 AM to 11 AM, where they process ten loan applications per minute. If this release negatively affects the business, they can see that response time is increasing, error rate is increasing, and it is impacting their loan applications. So, instead of processing ten applications per minute, they might only process five or three. They can easily measure this impact on their business.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is very competitive because the prices depend on the customer and customer priority. Based on my knowledge, if I can correlate the business effect and business opportunity to their price, I would rate it a nine out of ten, with one being not cost-effective and ten being very cost-effective.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend it to other users. Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.


    Mohammed Hassan

Provides real-time analytics and helps with operational decision-making

  • May 07, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Is to gain full visibility and performance insights across our infrastructure and applications.

We use it to monitor system health, analyze logs, and detect anomalies in real time, ensuring proactive incident management and minimal downtime.

The environment consists of hybrid infrastructure — on-premises servers, cloud workloads (Azure), and multiple business-critical applications.

How has it helped my organization?

We gained real-time insights into application and infrastructure logs, allowing faster incident detection, root cause analysis, and compliance reporting. AppDynamics complemented this by providing deep application performance monitoring, enabling us to identify bottlenecks, optimize transaction flows, and enhance user experience.

What is most valuable?

I am satisfied with the product. The most beneficial features are the ones that give us full visibility for the API integration. The real-time analytics is good. It enhances our operational decision-making. Before using the tool, we had issues between the network and application teams. The solution saves time and cost.

What needs improvement?

The infrastructure is not as good as other solutions. AppDynamics is designed for application performance. Some solutions also cover infrastructure and server performance. AppDynamics specializes only in application performance. The product is not easy to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for eight months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It works perfectly, and we haven’t faced any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It works perfectly, and we haven’t faced any issues.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is amazing.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes, we have worked with various products, including Microsoft SCOM and other open-source solutions. However, we transitioned away from them due to limited capabilities in SCOM and the lack of adequate support for open-source tools.

How was the initial setup?

The tool is not easy to deploy. It needs some experience. It is not difficult, but it is not easy. The time taken for deployment depends on the applications and the size of the environment.

What about the implementation team?

It was through our team

What was our ROI?

It takes one year to get a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The product is a bit expensive compared to other tools.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

AppDynamics has the needed features, but it is not as good as NETSCOUT.

What other advice do I have?

I am a partner and reseller. I will recommend the tool to other businesses that manage complex applications. It aids a little bit in AI-driven initiatives. Overall, I rate the product an eight and a half out of ten.


    Noorul Mustafa Khan

Widely used by most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors

  • May 01, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is that you can easily determine the load on the application. You can find out how many users are using it, whether there are any response time issues, whether any errors are going high for your application's transactions, etc.

What needs improvement?

The solution's user interface should be improved. Since it's a GUI tool, traversing from the error to the root cause can sometimes be difficult if you are not thorough with AppDynamics. This could slow down the tool, thereby causing you trouble.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AppDynamics since 2016.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors, use AppDynamics. The solution's user base is very high.

How was the initial setup?

The solution's initial setup is moderately easy. Installing the tool on old applications like Unix and Linux should be much easier. However, there could be some issues installing the solution on the cloud. The regular pre-defined agents might not work, and you will have to customize and then use them.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

AppDynamics was initially a startup. Later, it was sold to Cisco, which has been quite aggressive in its pricing. I would say the solution is affordable because it is widely used across financial service sectors.

What other advice do I have?

Currently, the solution is on the cloud as well. You can have your cloud applications onboarded to AppDynamics without any issues. AppDynamics has its own SaaS environment and SaaS controller on which you can onboard your application. You will need to install some of the AppDynamics agents.

I used to contact the tools team, and they used to answer our queries mostly. If not, they used to take it to the support and then come back with their solution. Users need to list all the servers related to their application on which they want the AppDynamics agents installed. Depending on whether your application is cloud-based or non-cloud, you need to list all your servers. Then, a further installation process would be recommended.

To use AppDynamics, you need to understand the different flows. If an issue is currently ongoing, you need to check which GUI flow is being used. If you want previous data, it will be in the history, and that's a different flow. Working with the tool is tricky, but two to three weeks of continuous work on it should bring you up to date.

Suppose you are working in a bank. For your application, you can configure everything regarding the business transaction. For balance transfers, you can have one business transaction that will monitor balance transfers. There can be another business transaction that can monitor credit cards. You can configure different flows and transactions within the flows in terms of business transactions. Wherever there is an issue, that exact business transaction will start developing.

The integration of AppDynamics within our CI/CD pipeline has positively affected our deployment frequency and application quality. Whenever there is a deployment or release, we see some hiccups in AppDynamics. There will be some things going on on that server, which we can easily identify in AppDynamics. Only after we validate that do we give the next go.

Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.


    Mohammed Shahpoup

Offers transaction snapshots and monitoring features with outstanding stability

  • April 25, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

AppDynamics is used to monitor multiple applications in our company. Our company recently faced an issue with a mobile banking application. The tool conveyed that many people logged in successfully in the aforementioned application, and for others, the login failed.

AppDynamics showed us at our company that the customers on a specific telecom carrier have a problem with the SSL certificate between the mobile device and our company's firewall.

In our company, we also had an issue with slow functionality in a mobile application that also belonged to the mobile banking category; AppDynamics showed us that it was an issue with the database, as found in database monitoring. Another use case of the solution is for basic server monitoring such as CBU, disk memory, Network I/O, and similar operations.

What is most valuable?

The transaction snapshots are the most valuable feature of AppDynamics. I find this feature valuable because for every transaction running through any application server that is detected by AppDynamics, you can check the code that makes the flow list and an issue, which can come from any functionality, and in our company, we can utilize the saved time for troubleshooting and reduce the time to repair and the developers can enhance the security and functionality.

What needs improvement?

The solution is available at an inflated cost.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AppDynamics for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. In our company, AppDynamics has been deployed in the main data center and we have two controllers related to a single application, we haven't faced any issues related to the application's stability. The stability of the solution depends on the number of applications being monitored efficiently using AppDynamics.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Our company has integrated AppDynamics to around 8000 end users. In our organization, we are using AppDynamics to monitor applications, infrastructure, and a few network devices. Numerous cloud-based applications in our bank are monitored using AppDynamics.

How are customer service and support?

AppDynamics offers excellent customer support from professionals, process, and technology perspectives. I would rate the tech support a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before AppDynamics, our organization used New Relic APM, CA APM, and Broadcom APM. In our company, we switched to AppDynamics because it supports numerous applications developed in Java, PHP, Dot.Net, and other programming languages.

CA APM offers support for a limited number of languages. AppDynamics is used for end-user monitoring, while CA APM is used for front-end or back-end applications. Our company switched to AppDynamics for end-to-end monitoring, starting from the customer to the data center.

What was our ROI?

Our company is an institutional bank with numerous customers who need to avail themselves of and be satisfied with our digital services. AppDynamics helps us reduce the response time and investigate issues related to the end user. Our organization has received an ROI with the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need to pay $1000000 every year. AppDynamics is subscription-based and can cost between $800 to $1000000.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing AppDynamics, we evaluated New Relic and Dynatrace. The troubleshooting feature is more enhanced in New Relic and Dynatrace than in AppDynamics. In our company, we have an instant or global agent in our application.

The NOC team and application support team in our company use AppDynamics to extract the root cause analysis for an incident, when evaluating multiple tools it was found that AppDynamics has more features in this area.

What other advice do I have?

We have an NOC team in our company that is responsible for monitoring the response time of bank applications. The core responsibility of the NOC team is to monitor the response of each channel, which is supported by a customer-facing application for the bank.

The aforementioned channels include end-users, data centers, and each vital component. I would rate AppDynamics as eight out of ten overall. AppDynamics lacks a DR architecture; customers will receive benefits from the product, but the value versus cost is extremely high.

AppDynamics keeps up with the market trends in application performance management. One of the market trends is analytics performance, and AppDynamics addresses it with the feature of a smart agent, where you can deploy one agent and procure insights on the application's infrastructure, performance, and analytics. The vendor is constantly working on the development and improvement of AppDynamics.


    EmilSiric

Ensures invaluable insights into user experience and performance while providing seamless troubleshooting and optimization for critical web applications

  • March 22, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our customers typically leverage Browser Real-User Monitoring for a variety of purposes. Primarily, they seek to gain insight into end-to-end user experiences. This entails tracking user interactions comprehensively, from frontend actions to backend system responses. They desire seamless correlation between user-triggered actions and the subsequent journey through various backend components such as servers, databases, and APIs. Additionally, they aim to contextualize this data within the broader environment, encompassing infrastructure status, network health, and application performance. Ultimately, they prioritize the ability to view these interactions as cohesive transactions, facilitating efficient troubleshooting and optimization efforts.

How has it helped my organization?

Our customers often rely on browser real-user monitoring primarily for troubleshooting slow web application performance. This process is streamlined, often dubbed as 'three clicks to your root cause'. Initially, they identify slow transactions or those exhibiting dependency issues. Subsequently, they employ a drill-down approach to pinpoint problematic areas. This can be executed from either the user's perspective, known as the Browser perspective, or from a session viewpoint. Moreover, they have the flexibility to delve into backend processes, identifying slow or stalled processes. This comprehensive approach enables them to correlate performance issues across all layers, spanning from business processes to infrastructure, network, database, and even security considerations.

Monitoring AJAX requests and understanding user interactions are crucial components of web application performance management. While AJAX requests may seem like standard requests, their monitoring is essential for gaining insights into how users interact with the application in real time. This functionality is a fundamental aspect of modern web development and is vital for ensuring optimal user experience and application performance.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the capability to automatically detect and identify encounter rates and problematic sections within transactions. This encompasses all systems, code, APIs, analyses, metrics, and baselines. While this feature remains unchanged, envisioning the ability to effortlessly identify slow transactions and potential causes stands out as an invaluable option. Essentially, it streamlines the management of end-to-end transactions, facilitating seamless troubleshooting and optimization.

The standout feature for real-time performance monitoring in this tool is its ability to seamlessly correlate frontend and backend functions. It provides a comprehensive view across all layers and systems, enabling users to swiftly identify the root cause of any issues. This primary function is particularly valuable, offering precise insights into problem areas and bottlenecks. Additionally, the tool facilitates the identification of peak times and other performance patterns.

The page load time traffic analysis feature has been instrumental in assisting our customers with optimizing the web experience for their users. It enables the identification of slow sessions and offers insights into the factors influencing page load times.

One noteworthy feature is user journey analysis, which enables tracking user interactions and conversion paths on a website. This capability provides insights into where users encounter obstacles or drop off, allowing for targeted optimization efforts. For instance, in an e-commerce setting, it's possible to pinpoint precisely where users abandon their purchases or encounter difficulties, facilitating improvements in those specific areas of the user journey.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with it for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the system is exceptionally robust, with no reported downtime. I would rate it nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is a straightforward process that involves simply adding more licenses to the existing setup. There are no additional tasks or complex actions required; it's a simple and seamless adjustment. Our customer base consists of enterprises. I would rate it nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support provided is highly professional, swift, and knowledgeable. I would rate it nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. I would rate it nine out of ten.

What about the implementation team?

The deployment approach varies depending on client preferences. Some clients prefer a conservative approach and opt for on-premises deployment, while others are more open to cloud-based solutions. Regardless of the chosen deployment method, the process is relatively simple and straightforward. Typically, it can be completed within a short timeframe, such as half a day to a full day.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing falls within the mid-range category. I would rate it between three to five because considering the features provided, it offers value for money. If utilized effectively, the investment is justified. However, for certain businesses, the price may be perceived as slightly high.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend it, especially if you have critical web applications or internal systems, particularly in finance or the public sector. In today's environment, troubleshooting without such a solution can be extremely challenging. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.


    EmilSiric

Offers insights into peak usage hours, the application's status, and that of secondary services, such as databases and APIs

  • March 19, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

The use case involves evaluating a mobile application's performance and user experience. We seek insights into peak usage hours, the application's status, and that of secondary services, such as databases and APIs, to gauge the mobile user experience.

We also want to identify potential bottlenecks and mobile degradation. We aim to ensure that mobile user monitoring is effective, similar to other forms of user monitoring. Although mobile devices present a different medium, they aim to detect errors, service degradations, slowdowns, and other issues.

What is most valuable?

In the case of a mobile banking application, AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring successfully reduced the response time from eight seconds to just one second. In another example, the tool identified an issue within the mobile app, causing lost transactions in the billing system.

The product offers end-to-end visibility. This means seeing a user's actions, such as which mobile version they're using, their operating system, location, and the specific services they're accessing. This visibility allows for effective troubleshooting of their session. Additionally, end-to-end visibility provides insights into how the application performs across different layers, such as the backend infrastructure, including application servers, integrations, and databases.

The tool offers many entry points to observe issues from the backend, for example, through dashboards or tracking business transactions for degradation. You can then drill down to specific user sessions to identify slow ones and trace them back to the backend to understand the issue. That's the product's most useful technical feature.

The user session tracking feature is embedded in the infrastructure and correlates all lines, including API and database calls. It also correlates with other metrics from the infrastructure and database.

What needs improvement?


The only improvement I see is intercepting calls in a mobile application without injecting additional code. Currently, when instrumenting or monitoring a mobile application, it's necessary to release updates, prompt users to upgrade, and inject code into the backend. It would be beneficial if there were a method to intercept these calls without requiring users to download and upgrade the application. However, I'm unsure about the feasibility of such an approach.

Additionally, there's potential for enhancing the pricing structure, particularly as scaling up can become expensive. Given the continual growth of the mobile landscape, revisiting the pricing model could be beneficial.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with the product for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring's stability as nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate the tool's scalability a nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring's support tickets are tricky. We are a major partner, and we get instant support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I rate the tool's deployment a nine out of ten. It is easy. The deployment time for this solution is typically quite fast. Most typical technologies, such as Java or .NET applications, can take days. However, for more complex scenarios, it might take a few weeks. Overall, the deployment process is generally swift.

The usual deployment process starts with a technical assessment. Following this, the appropriate technology is acquired. Next, access to the client's systems is obtained, enabling the deployment of the agent onto their systems.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I rate AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring's pricing as seven out of ten. Mobile monitoring is paid based on the number of instances utilizing the mobile monitoring service, which increases as the scale grows. Consequently, your mobile user count can proportionally surpass all other applications.

What other advice do I have?

Our customers for AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring are enterprises. If they have a critical mobile application, I think it's necessary to consider a monitoring tool. When your business relies on it, you need visibility into what's happening—peak hours, virtual access, performance, user experience, drop-off rates, conversion rate, and other relevant metrics.

Integrating AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring with existing mobile application infrastructure is generally straightforward, although there's room for improvement to make it even easier. I would rate it at nine out of ten in terms of ease of integration. However, sometimes, clients hesitate to interfere with their CI/CD pipelines.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.