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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
35th
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
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
Broadcom DX Application Performance Management0.8%
Other97.9%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

EG
Director of Technical Part at NOS SGPS
Dashboards facilitate prompt alerts but discovery feature needs enhancement
I would recommend Broadcom DX Application Performance Management if a customer doesn't have any existing performance solution. However, ten years ago, the solution was better, and now there are many competitive options. My overall rating would be between six and seven. The product rating I would give is 6.5 out of 10.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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 is the flexibility and how you can get any data pretty much anywhere."
"Now, we know we have a problem, because there is a primary layer of alerting or metrics monitoring put in place, that is the good part."
"We are able to see errors in the code that users would experience and then give that information to our developers to troubleshoot."
"We are able to easily and quickly find some of the problems with the applications and coding, and some of the performance problems."
"Command center is a new feature that provides agent maintenance and support without involving the application team, and it saves lots of time for the APM team."
"If you have a large web firm or a group of servers, it does a great job of aggregating performance metrics into single viewable graphs or dashboards."
"Our ROI is the fact that our applications have the ability to stay up longer because we are more proactive in how we monitor and performance test our applications so that when they go to market, they are fully functional."
"In terms of stability, it has been stable so far."
"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."
"SolarWinds fit the bill because it gave many possibilities in monitoring with a good amount of out of the box capabilities."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
 

Cons

"The product displays some graphics and sometimes we want to have some different metrics in the same graphic but it doesn't display in the same scale, so it's quite complicated to see the metrics."
"The other thing that can be improved is that the dashboard edition in the CA APM is very limited and basic."
"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."
"If you will ask me about the general Level 1 support of the CA, and I would give them a two or three out of 10 because it takes a long time to get to them to focus on the program."
"The installation could be improved. Also, they need to concentrate more on the cloud for cloud monitoring."
"Dashboards need to be improved in order to make them self-explanatory."
"Setup of the solution was straight forward, but our first application was too complex and therefore the first initiative failed."
"The upgrade was complex. The documentation could have been a little bit better, but other than that, it was okay.​"
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"Having two places to build and manage alerts is not efficient and not all alerting tools are available in the trap manager."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"The technical support is nothing special."
"There is one feature that is a report writer, and they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting."
"PerfStack can be made more effective."
"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing structure should be based on memory or CPU usage rather than the number of agents, as it makes the solution more expensive for us."
"Negotiate a lot, but do not forget to buy the product because it is worth it."
"The licensing costs are expensive."
"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."
"All discounts are case by case to accommodate the client's budgets."
"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."
"On pricing, CA is very competitive. I think that's going to help in the long run."
"Pricing and licensing are not issues."
"The price is too high."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"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 would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Performing Arts
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise124
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your primary use case for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
Our primary use case involves having a large dashboard with significant information for alerts, alarms, and metrics to summarize the state of critical businesses and applications. When an issue ari...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...
 

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: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.