Apica vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Apica and VMware Aria Operations for Applications based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

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"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation.""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.""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.""This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private.""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.""The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities.""The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility.""People are very pleased with the implementation."

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

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"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.""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.""The implementation is a long process that should be improved.""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 documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved.""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.""I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack.""The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing and licensing are very reasonable. At the end of the day, you are using their technology/software and getting X amount of checks for a very decent value. As for discounts, they try to meet your budgets as much as they can. For example, if you need 100 checks and you have X amount of budget for it, then they will try and get down to that price. Costing-wise, it is a reasonably cost product. They will always try and come down to your price if you need them to come down to it by knocking off certain areas."
  • "Apica is pretty cost-effective if you buy both solutions together: Synthetic and LoadTest. If you are going for one solution, the cost is on par with any tool in the market."
  • "The level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. Overall, it has automated a lot of the manual efforts which have been more complex with some of our other scripting tools or monitors. So, it brings things together by doing things faster and saves us money."
  • "License management is another area that Apica could do better. We have already had these conversations with our account teams. This is something that they are looking at largely improving in upcoming releases. I believe that this is already on their roadmap."
  • "The pricing is very reasonable, but it is not cheap."
  • "Another main difference between Apica and the other products was the cost. We really thought that the balance in Apica between the features and costs was the best among all the products on which we did a PoC."
  • More Apica Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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
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    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.
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    Also Known As
    Apica LoadTest, Apica Synthetic
    Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
    Learn More
    Overview

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

    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
    HBO
    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 Firm44%
    Retailer11%
    Hospitality Company11%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm38%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company10%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise82%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise6%
    Large Enterprise80%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise67%
    Buyer's Guide
    Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Apica is ranked 55th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability while VMware Aria Operations for Applications is ranked 32nd in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 9 reviews. Apica is rated 8.6, while VMware Aria Operations for Applications is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Apica writes "Their support makes the product so much easier to use. They sped up our migration process". 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". Apica is most compared with Datadog, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Apache JMeter and OpenText LoadRunner Cloud, whereas VMware Aria Operations for Applications is most compared with Dynatrace, Grafana, Datadog, Zabbix and Prometheus.

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

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