Amazon CloudWatch vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.7, while Broadcom is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.6% mindshare in CMS, compared to Broadcom’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Amazon CloudWatch

Read 49 Amazon CloudWatch reviews

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3,242 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

7,944 Views
3,336 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Amazon CloudWatch

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Amazon CloudWatch both compete in the application performance management and cloud monitoring space. VMware Aria Operations for Applications shines with its detailed analytics and user-friendly experience, while Amazon CloudWatch's comprehensive integration with AWS services gives it an upper hand in cloud-native environments.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications focuses on customization with precise application insights, dashboards, and alert systems for hybrid infrastructures. Its analytics and support for on-premise environments are key strengths. Amazon CloudWatch excels in real-time monitoring and seamless integration with AWS, offering automatic dashboards and robust log management, particularly suited for AWS cloud users.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications could enhance its scalability for larger cloud environments and further streamline its integration with third-party platforms. It may also expand its real-time monitoring capabilities to match its analytics depth. Amazon CloudWatch might benefit from improving its user interface for non-AWS users and expanding analytics features. Additional support for non-AWS integration could enhance flexibility for diverse cloud setups.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is known for straightforward deployment in hybrid and on-premise setups with strong customer support, ensuring minimal downtime. Amazon CloudWatch offers effortless deployment within AWS, backed by the extensive AWS support network. The deployment experience varies significantly with the infrastructure context and integration with AWS services.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications involves higher initial costs but offers significant ROI through advanced performance insights. Its investment in detailed analytics pays off for users prioritizing performance monitoring over cloud-native integration. In contrast, Amazon CloudWatch provides cost-efficient pricing scaled by usage, ideal for AWS users targeting budget-friendly solutions. Its scalable model aligns well with businesses using AWS infrastructure, balancing cost with cloud monitoring capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon CloudWatch vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

September 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (19th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (14th), Container Monitoring (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.6%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	2.1%
Amazon CloudWatch	1.6%
Other	96.3%

Cloud Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Azam S M

Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC

Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration

Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.

Read full review

Ajay Shukla

Consultant at HCLTech

Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome

The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"You can automate actions or use AWS functionalities like auto-scaling, where you can configure the metrics to add more nodes if the threshold is exceeded."

"It's a very simple logging system."

"I can put it in a simple term, its simplicity is always there."

"The tool enables live monitoring."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is intrusion prevention."

"We can set CPU thresholds using the solution."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and UI."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."

More Amazon CloudWatch pros

"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"This solution will give you a single pane of glass for everything, and centralized monitoring."

"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."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"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."

"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"Improvement of SSSD logs would be beneficial."

"The integration with third-party tools must be made easier."

"The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement."

"The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action."

"Even though the product works well with most AWS, it is a nightmare to use with Snowflake."

"It would be beneficial for CloudWatch to provide an API interface and some kind of custom configuration."

"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."

"The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement. We get a very good high-level overview, but when we drill down, it becomes a little less clear. We have given this feedback to AWS as well and hope they will improve this in the future."

More Amazon CloudWatch cons

"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."

"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."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."

"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."

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon CloudWatch has very cheap pricing, and it hardly costs my company $25-$30 a month for fifty systems, so it's pretty affordable."

"It’s an open-source solution."

"What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."

"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap solution."

"The tool is not expensive."

"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."

"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."

"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."

More Amazon CloudWatch pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"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."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?

The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Amazon CloudWatch has been positive. It was very easy to set up because it is built into AWS and does not require separate licensing, bein...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?

For improvements, I think Amazon CloudWatch could enhance certain areas, particularly regarding pricing structure. I wish to see simpler pricing, more intuitive dashboards, easier log queries for b...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon CloudWatch?

My main use case for Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and analytics of the application servers. I basically use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the microservices and AWS infrastructure, helping me ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch

September 2026

Download Amazon CloudWatch product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 2026

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

Amazon CloudWatch integrates seamlessly with AWS, providing real-time monitoring and alerting features. Its interface supports task automation, enhancing troubleshooting and analytics capabilities, while offering strong security and scalability at a cost-effective rate.

Amazon CloudWatch is an impactful platform for monitoring AWS resources and managing application performance. It simplifies infrastructure performance monitoring by providing comprehensive analytics capabilities, including application insights and event scheduling. Users appreciate CloudWatch for its detailed metrics, dashboards, and support in issuing alerts to detect anomalies. It efficiently tracks performance, optimizes resource utilization, and ensures service availability. CloudWatch is recognized for its robust alerting features and integration with other AWS services, further supporting its resource monitoring capabilities. However, there is room for improvement in dashboard customization, log streaming speed, and integration with non-AWS services. Enhancements in API integration, machine learning features, and support for third-party tools are also desired.

What features does Amazon CloudWatch offer?

Seamless Integration: Works effortlessly with AWS for cohesive service management.
Advanced Metrics: Provides detailed monitoring of CPU, memory, and more.
Real-time Monitoring: Offers up-to-the-minute alerts on infrastructure status.
Dashboards: User-friendly and informative for quick insights.
Automation: Supports task automation for efficient troubleshooting.

What benefits does Amazon CloudWatch provide?

Cost-effectiveness: Efficient resource monitoring without high costs.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing infrastructure needs.
Security: Strong protocols for safe monitoring activities.
Improved Performance: Enhances application insights and operational efficiency.
Operational Insights: Provides comprehensive logging and performance analysis.

Industries implementing Amazon CloudWatch often focus on optimizing IT infrastructure. Companies in sectors like finance and e-commerce rely on its monitoring and alerting capabilities to ensure service uptime and performance. The platform's automation and analytics features empower teams to proactively manage performance and detect potential issues promptly.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

September 2026

Free Report: Amazon CloudWatch vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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