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Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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
32nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
162
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (8th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (12th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

aush.111 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides efficiency in migration and DAW but requires a high level of administrator knowledge for configuration
This solution still relies on inbuilt configuration. For example, I'm pretty much impressed with Dynatrace POC, where we deploy the agent with a simple click, click, click, and then that's it. And we did not build any alerts or anything. We just started getting the alerts, warnings, and everything on its own system, understood what the benchmark is and what is the threshold, and it started giving you the warnings and the caution alerts, the danger alerts. So we expect something like that should be there in Broadcom at the level. But, instead, it expects us to configure. So that is what is missing there. Even if the server CPU usage is 95%t, it doesn't harm you. It doesn't send you any alerts. We think the system is normal. So it's not normal. So this is what they should think and send you AI/ML-related alarms on their own. In future releases, I would like to see more AI and ML capabilities, which are kind of missing. Another area of improvement is its infrastructure monitoring perspective. For example, they are still using UIM, which is a good tool. But for APM, they have come to DXP. However, in terms of UIM, the unified infrastructure management, there is no DXP version or AIML version of it. So they should try to find an updated version of it so that it is not competing with the rest of the solution.
Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is its very light model with monitoring of servers and network items."
"Product performance is awesome. It's covering all aspects of the application; good database metrics and internal application metrics. Just tons and tons of data."
"Being able to pull in and merge the infrastructure and application data."
"Some of its valuable features include transaction traces, dashboards, and metric grouping to see combined data."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is its user interface."
"Attribute decoration is a unique and very powerful feature. We can add meaningful meta information based on our internal demand."
"The APM tool allows us to monitor performance of that application, where are the pain points, where are the slowdowns, to focus on where we can fix those."
"If we see something that we need to change or monitor, we can get it scripted pretty quickly."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
 

Cons

"Very often, we use tools such as Kibana or Jaspersoft for dashboards and reporting on CA APM data because CA APM’s old interfaces do not reflect well in modern displays, compared to those new tools."
"You can sell licenses and install the full tool on service, you can show customers how to install, but how to use it and solve issues cannot be done without the experience."
"The APM SQL feature doesn't perform like we would like it to. I know that's a new feature with 10.5, so it may be one of those things that gets a little better, but it should run faster."
"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."
"It should be easier to install or set everything up. ​"
"The integration with CA Spectrum is quite difficult to create, and it is also only one way, only being used to view alarms coming from CA APM."
"However, ten years ago, the solution was better, and now there are many competitive options."
"CEM needs to be simplified, because it causes too many interruptions in our daily work."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On pricing, CA is very competitive. I think that's going to help in the long run."
"The licensing costs are expensive."
"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."
"All discounts are case by case to accommodate the client's budgets."
"Pricing and licensing are not issues."
"Depends on the size of the product you need."
"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."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark, Intermountain Healthcare, National Australia Bank, BBVA Compass Bank, Innovapost, Dansk Supermarked Group, U.S. Cellular, Orange, Cetip
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.