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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
31st
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
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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%, up 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.
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CA APM is very scalable and used in a clustered environment because it supports more than its technical capacity."
"We are able to easily and quickly find some of the problems with the applications and coding, and some of the performance problems."
"The configuration and the manager tool are good features."
"Cross-VM transaction traces provide a complete "what happened where"."
"Our development cycle has definitely improved as far as the turnaround time on fixes and improvements."
"The deployment was easy."
"JVM memory monitoring and connection pool monitoring are valuable features."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is its user interface."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"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."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
 

Cons

"However, ten years ago, the solution was better, and now there are many competitive options."
"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."
"They need to add support for new frameworks, or at least provide a broader guide/perspectives to add them to monitoring specific agents to retrieve metrics with thresholds as a reference to guide the customer as to where they must go to achieve this."
"The main areas for improvement include making dashboards and interfaces easier to understand."
"The technical support is very poor."
"One of the challenges is agent releases. So as we employ agents, they are done relatively manually. A little bit of automating of agent release would be helpful."
"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."
"Improve the targeting interface is to make it more user-friendly and current."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."
"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."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
 

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."
"Depends on the size of the product you need."
"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."
"Broadcom is a better and cheaper option from the financial perspective. It also depends on the DLP plug."
"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."
"Negotiate a lot, but do not forget to buy the product because it is worth it."
"The license for Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is annual. The licensing model could improve because there is not any limit to deploying the agent, there should be some limits on it."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
 

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 needs improvement with Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
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...
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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.