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Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Broadcom DX Application Per...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
162
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (7th)
ServiceNow Cloud Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
39th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

MarioGomez - PeerSpot reviewer
Improve application performance management by deploying easy-to-use dashboards but face challenges with support access
The main areas for improvement include making dashboards and interfaces easier to understand. Our version might be a bit old, and we may need to upgrade it. It is also difficult to access the right person in support, and sometimes incidents need to be escalated, taking several contacts to resolve.
Prashant-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides effective observability and offers robust alerting and monitoring capabilities
We use some SDK to integrate like tips in our code, in our Java code or whatever code, rightly, Skylight or whatever. So, the SDK that we use is not very easy to get a hold of. So, a person who is more experienced is able to write proper code so that an operation can have an operation name to set. So, SDK would be improved for developers so that the integration and code will get easier. The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement. Currently, what happens is, suppose in a stream, we have lots of spans. So if there is something I can filter, for example, in a single trace, there are ten calls with it. And if I have to filter, I have to go inside the individual trace to get the call. In future releases, I want to see if it is possible to filter them at a very high stream level. So, for example, I want to filter the calls only from service A, ten calls, and I want to filter only two calls out of ten. So, instead of doing that filter at the trace level, can I do it at a stream level.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The executive dashboard we created gives a lot of visibility. There's no working on something for a little bit before someone knows."
"Measurement of response time"
"Being able to pull in and merge the infrastructure and application data."
"Attribute decoration is a unique and very powerful feature. We can add meaningful meta information based on our internal demand."
"It has a random transaction trace which gives our customers the ability to look at how their transaction performs."
"Enables me to monitor multiple servers, applications, resources, and users"
"​Deep Dive and Transaction Analysis Triage capability.​"
"The configuration and the manager tool are good features."
"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."
"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."
"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."
"The UI is very intuitive."
 

Cons

"I think as we're all moving forward to automated deployments, it'd be nice to have that out-of-the-box with this product."
"They can make it easier to configure."
"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."
"We need more capabilities to analyze the information that tools collects; for example, using artificial intelligence, or something like that."
"​Needs the ability to dynamically create dashboards. Right now, we do custom dashboards. Everything is created manually."
"As applications move to the cloud, we need more cloud-based solutions from CA APM. This is currently unavailable."
"Our users lag how to identify the root cause with this solution. If they could come up with a more user-friendly version, that would be a good thing, since other vendors currently have better features and more user-friendly products than CA APM."
"Its profiling. The uniqueness instead of me looking at sampling data, I need to know the m-1 event that actually triggered my scenario where that m event caused a catastrophic event, like a ripple effect; I need to know that m-1. What triggered my major event means I need to understand the event that triggered it and before the cause of that event itself."
"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."
"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."
"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."
"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dynatrace is the most expensive of these tools followed by AppDynamics which is "medium-expensive." CA APM is a bit lower in price than either Dynatrace or AppDynanics... In my opinion, if you can afford it, go for AppDynamics instead of CA APM."
"Setup costs are quite competitive relative to other solutions, and simpler."
"I'm unable to give information on Broadcom DX Application Performance Management licensing costs, but all Application Performance Management products have expensive pricing. This means that it's not only Broadcom that's expensive, and it would be an advantage if the cost would be a little bit cheaper."
"Pricing and licensing are not issues."
"All discounts are case by case to accommodate the client's budgets."
"The licensing costs are expensive."
"It is definitely expensive for what we get, but there isn't an alternate option at the moment."
"There is some research needed to determine licensing costs, based on the number of DataPower instances for the Nastel agent, for example."
"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...there is a very easy way to deal with it by adding more servers to the application.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The initial pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions. The challenge arises during annual renewals, as the price increase can be significant, around twenty percent or more, ...
What needs improvement with Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The first area for improvement is the discovery feature, which should be enhanced to collect comprehensive information from applications and services. This includes using agents or scripts to gathe...
What needs improvement with LightStep?
There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.
What is your primary use case for LightStep?
I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...
 

Also Known As

DX APM, CA APM, CA NetQoS Performance Center, Wily Introscope, CA Wily APM, CA App Experience Analytics, CA AXA
LightStep
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark, Intermountain Healthcare, National Australia Bank, BBVA Compass Bank, Innovapost, Dansk Supermarked Group, U.S. Cellular, Orange, Cetip
InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,140 professionals have used our research since 2012.