

Elastic Observability and IBM Instana Observability compete in monitoring and analytics solutions. IBM Instana Observability is perceived as the leading product due to its advanced features and comprehensive functionality.
Features: Elastic Observability offers flexibility with powerful search and adaptable data visualization tools. It accommodates various data sources and provides real-time analysis. IBM Instana Observability provides advanced automation and AI-driven insights for intelligent system monitoring. Elastic emphasizes versatile data handling, whereas IBM focuses on AI capabilities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Instana Observability ensures straightforward deployment backed by excellent customer service and comprehensive support materials. Elastic Observability requires a more manual setup for customized configurations but may demand more technical expertise. IBM's seamless deployment and strong support offer advantages in usability and customer care.
Pricing and ROI: Elastic Observability is recognized for competitive pricing, providing value for budget-conscious businesses. IBM Instana Observability justifies its higher cost with robust, feature-rich solutions. While Elastic targets affordability, IBM aims for high ROI with a comprehensive toolset and advanced analytics.
Elastic Observability has saved us time as it's much easier to find relevant pieces across the system in one screen compared to our own software, and it has saved resources too since the same resources can use less time.
It provides a single pane of glass from which I can see what is happening with all the servers in my infrastructure, which saves time.
It made a notable difference from when we were almost blind to being able to respond to calls immediately.
If we have a monitoring tool, we can save our transactions and see the performance of the application using MTTR and MTTD.
Elastic support really struggles in complex situations to resolve issues.
Their excellent documentation typically helps me solve any issues I encounter.
They are very slow to respond and integrate new features.
IBM support for Instana is responsive and helpful.
My experience with IBM Instana Observability's customer support has been very helpful and responsive.
I rate the scalability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we have never seen issues even with a lot of data coming in from more customers, provided we have the appropriate configuration.
Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.
Elastic Observability is easy in deployment in general for small scale, but when you deploy it at a really large scale, the complexity comes with the customizations.
More innovations are coming in every day, so it is scalable and more applications are becoming container-based.
IBM Instana Observability demonstrates scalability, especially in dynamic, distributed environments such as microservices and Kubernetes.
There are some bugs that come with each release, but they are keen always to build major versions and minor versions on time, including the CVE vulnerabilities to fix it.
It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it.
I would rate the stability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we don't experience any issues.
For instance, if you have many error logs and want to create a rule with a custom query, such as triggering an alert for five errors in the last hour, all you need to do is open the AI bot, type this question, and it generates an Elastic query for you to use in your alert rules.
It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.
Some areas such as AI Ops still require data scientists to understand machine learning and AI, and it doesn't have a quick win with no-brainer use cases.
I had many false positives with IBM Instana Observability. Then I fixed the filters and it became more accurate on the errors reported.
One main issue I found with IBM Instana Observability was the customer support, which was very poor when we needed some features to be enabled or integrated into IBM Instana Observability sensors.
It is not open-source, and I have to be a partner to get more access to the products.
The license is reasonably priced, however, the VMs where we host the solution are extremely expensive, making the overall cost in the public cloud high.
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.
Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not indexing huge blobs of text and trying to parse those.
I find the cost of IBM Instana Observability to be very affordable compared to competitors because the pricing mechanism is based on the host that we monitor, unlike other competitors such as DataDog and Dynatrace, whose pricing is based on other factors.
It is not that costly, especially since we only use two instances.
I think the pricing is good and I do not think it is high.
The most valuable feature is the integrated platform that allows customers to start from observability and expand into other areas like security, EDR solutions, etc.
the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.
All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important.
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted my organization by making it easy to observe the entire infrastructure under one platform, which was the biggest advantage of onboarding onto IBM Instana Observability.
IBM Instana Observability has impacted my organization positively in that it has helped me find out what the issue is in real-time because of its one-second granularity and its ability to identify issues as quickly as possible.
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted our organization by decreasing our 500 errors.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Elastic Observability | 3.0% |
| IBM Instana Observability | 0.8% |
| Other | 96.2% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 9 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
| Large Enterprise | 16 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 4 |
| Large Enterprise | 5 |
Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.
Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.
What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.
IBM Instana Observability offers real-time application monitoring and management, designed for automation and intelligence on modern cloud-based environments.
IBM Instana Observability provides deep visibility into application performance, empowering businesses with automated root cause analysis and intelligent alerts to optimize cloud-native applications. It captures and visualizes comprehensive health metrics to enhance operational efficiency across distributed systems, making it an invaluable tool for IT and DevOps teams seeking to improve application reliability and performance.
What are the key features of IBM Instana Observability?IBM Instana Observability is widely adopted across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, addressing specific challenges in each sector. In finance, it helps manage high-volume transactions with minimal latency. Healthcare benefits from its compliance support and reliable data monitoring. Retail industries utilize it for maintaining seamless customer interactions and operational uptime, ensuring business continuity and customer satisfaction.
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