Broadcom DX Application Performance Management Reviews

The most valuable feature is the flexibility and how you can get any data pretty much anywhere. They have a lot of out-of-the-box solutions for applications, servers and web servers, but you can also use their APIs and their EPA to get additional data, building and correlating it altogether.

We have some applications from which we can't get data with out-of-the-box tools from CA or even AppDynamics, so we need the EPA agent to get that data and then compare them to those that are captured with out-of-the-box tools. We really appreciate that that's a strength and a flexibility of APM.

It's critical that we're able to find actual problems or issues with applications on our network. We use APM to do that, as well as to troubleshoot the causes or triage them so that we know where to look for the problem.

It's got a steep learning curve, although some parts of it are easy to use.

I also know that CA is doing a big push to play catch-up to get the UI to be a little more streamlined, easier, and intuitive to use. Hopefully when they do that, they'll have an advantage over other solutions out there, like AppDynamics.

I haven't had issues with deployment.

In the previous releases, that was an issue for both my current and former companies. There was a conflict between the Java agent and our app servers. It was conflicting with some of the web services and so it crashed our servers. In the current release, however, I'm not aware of any such stability issues.

So far, scalability has not been an issue. There's a limit on the number of enterprise managers where the data goes to be reviewed. The solution, however, is that if you reach the single-cluster limits, then you can federate other clusters, so that way you can view up.

The main issue with scalability is, however, that there's a lot of overhead required to keep it expanding. With AppDynamics, on the other hand, you at least only need one server in order to accommodate a lot more agents. With CA APM, you need a lot of central servers and enterprise managers to have that same load. It is scalable, but the maintenance or the overhead to maintain it is a lot higher than other products.

They've been slow at times to get us answers and solutions, such as a few years back when we had the issue of the agent pressuring our servers. I haven't had to submit many support tickets, though, as I have co-workers who do that primarily. The feedback I've heard from them is that AppDynamics has done a better job than CA with support.

We also use AppDynamics.

It was all set up before I joined.

Both CA APM and AppDynamics have their place, but just do your research. CA, I think, has demonstrated their commitment to the product and improving it and playing catch-up in areas where they need to.

It gives us the overall capacity measurement for our current environment.

We're able to determine where there are bottlenecks in our system. To some extent, we're also able to see what might be causing some of these issues.

We are also using the tool for determining performance bottlenecks in our Java-based applications. It provides us with performance metrics.

It provides access to problems, but not to the problem analysis. You cannot track the problem to the root cause. For example, you can see that the applications have a performance bottleneck, but you can't perform a drill-down analysis into the actual code of the problem.

Also, it doesn't provide dynamic analysis. This may be OK for mainframe customers, but for those with distributed systems, DynaTrace may be the better solution. 

I have to test it from version to version first before we implement to make sure it can perform for us.

Setup for a limited scope is easy, but it's difficult for a wider scope, in which case you need a longer deployment time. We have a mainframe-oriented system, so we can scope the old activity to the mainframe. but if we were fully distributed, it's a little bit complicated because we'd have more than 100 servers.

The usability and dashboarding. That's how our clients see the information. Also, deep trace analysis is valuable because that's how we figure out where our problems are.

It's helped us improve in terms of solutions by displaying key system data easily.

Data organization and creation of those dashboards. These seem to be getting better in the newer versions. Also, distribution and version control.

I’ve been using CA APM for between nine or 10 years.

The performance issues we have are on our end and we don't hold CA accountable for that.

The only problems we have are limited by our hardware.

We don't usually end up calling support because the other guy that works on it does a lot of high level development and he's out in Colorado. If there is an issue here I can't figure out, we usually end up having to go to engineers to get it solved. In the past when we've called them it's been really hit or miss. Like on a scale of one to 10, I'd give it a six.
Usually to get our questions answered because we consider ourselves pretty advanced users and we're kinda on the edge of what's going on. We usually have to get a couple of tiers in before we can get the questions that we have answered.

I personally haven't used other solutions. I was hired here specifically because I have experience with Intrascope at my previous job and we had actually deployed it there as our first APM solution.

I've set it up on new systems several times. It's pretty straightforward.

I don't remember back then because I actually wasn't involved in the decision making process. Since we've used it, we are constantly looking at other tools. We looked just to evaluate. We've evaluated a new solution at Dynamic and Dynatrace and a BMC solution or whatever they call it. We were impressed.

I would suggest that they don't underestimate the overwhelming amount of data that will come through and have their clients prepared for that. Because we end up spending a lot of time interpreting data for other people and really getting the users of the application involved is probably the most important thing in order to be successful. Then from a technical standpoint, just don't think for a second that you can skimp on some specifications because you will need all the resources you can get.

It's awesome. But I think CAPM is a little behind, at least up to this point with the versions we're on. On displaying data and making it easier to use for people that aren't in the tool eight hours a day.

The CEM end-to-end transaction feature is the most valuable.

I like APM because it is a complete solution that helps the production environment to identify the root cause of problems before affecting the application or services.

QA and production.

I have been using CA APM for three years.

The QA environment helps us to identify and fix stability issues and release it to production.

We have not had scalability issues. You can scale up to 10 collectors.

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10. The technical support is always really amazing.

I tried different solutions, but CA APM is the most complete solution on the market.

It was complex configuring the service transactions from CEM.

I have no information about pricing.

We did look at alternatives and all customers made bids.

Being a leader in the market for more than 14 years is one reason it is the best choice.

CA APM is currently used in two areas of our business (SAP estate and SMART estate) but slowly we are delivering APM to a vast amount of people in the business. I think that is the biggest compliment I can give as more and more people are wanting to use APM.

I feel the ability to easily see a variety of metrics is great for us as a business, as we are able to view our systems in more depth. If there are any issues we are able to spot the exact problem very quickly. We are able to spot issues much quicker with the use of the out-of-the-box metrics given to us by CA. But we also develop that further with the use of the EPA Agent and expand what we can give and show the business by creating our own scripts. This has allowed us to develop our own self-monitoring and before anybody else sees the issue we are on hand to solve that as quickly as possible.

I don’t believe that there are many improvements from the product point of view, as the future upgrades which are coming will solve many of our issues.

No.

No.

The technical support is superb. They are always willing to help as well as give guidance as and when you need it. whether on a chat, face to face, or through the CA communities site where you can talk with other users.

Straightforward as we had a CA technician in with us to help us set up and tell us what was needed to be done and how we can do it.

Might seem quite expensive but definitely worth the money invested.

The CA APM product is great to show you how your business is doing and where improvements can be made. We are using this in our SAP estate and SMART estate and, as said above, we are exploring how we can deliver this product to more areas around the business helping our company grow!

The Webview because I can obtain more detail and CEM because I can quantify the business.

It helps us find the cause and the errors in our application quickly.

Team center can give more information.

5 months.

When we made the upgrade to 10.3 we have some problems with the new version.

No.

Is really good but sometimes the answer time is really slow.

The setup is easy. The problem begins when you need an specific installation.

When the installation begins, read the documentation because sometimes important configurations are not configured by default.

In our organization, it was very common to create crisis rooms where we gathered experts from all areas to investigate an application problem by allegations of users about problems of slowness and errors. After we started using APM in our environment, we managed to reduce the creation of these rooms by 90%.

• Detection of errors that occur to users
• Measurement of response time
• Transaction traces

Currently, we have in our park 600 servers monitored with the APM, and we have on average 2000 applications still to be included in the monitoring. As our environment is very large and we support all of them with a team of about 20 people, we cannot verify all the logs looking for these errors. So, we set up rules in APM to warn us when the application starts to present errors, and we already interact directly with the development team to handle these errors. This is also true for the average response time. The tracers use the same ones when a more in-depth investigation of the problem is necessary to discover the exact point of the problems that we are investigating.

The creation of a report is an area with room for improvement.

The reports are a key part of APM in my vision because it is through them that we manage to generate the evidence to direct the development team and operational support to address. However, we can not extract the information of the tool through reports. We have needed several times to use screen print screen, CTRL + C and CTRL + V. I cannot change the font, color, size, bold or any text I put in the report, I cannot change the page size among other things.

We have vital information in the tool that we cannot extract as topology changes, application topology design, type-separated error relationship, and so on.

We did have stability problems in versions 10.1 and 9.7.

We had many problems of instability, but when we upgraded to version 10.5, these problems reduced drastically.

At this moment, we have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent. Whenever I needed support, I had an excellent service.

We did not previously use a different solution. We just did a PoC.

All settings have always been pretty simple.

Negotiate a lot, but do not forget to buy the product because it is worth it.

We evaluated AppDynamics and HPE Diagnostics.

APM only worked here in the company because CA's after sales is very present here and acted as a true partner for us. I strongly recommend having someone from CA “together forever”, because at the beginning it was very difficult to understand what the tool was reporting.

My organization can find the correct solution to an alert the first time around. This shortens the resolution time.

I found the solution's end-to-end analysis and flexibility most valuable.

Java Console uses too much memory.

I have not encountered any issues with stability.

I have not encountered any issues with scalability.

I would rate the level of technical support as "Good."

We used a different solution in the past. We switched because of this solution's end-to-end analysis feature.

We did not evaluate other options, since there were no other solutions that we knew about with the capacity for end-to-end analysis.