Google Cloud&#39;s operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

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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

Google Cloud's operations s...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

25th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (29th), Cloud Monitoring Software (22nd)

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

40th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, down 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

Anand_Patel

Senior Technical Architect at T-Systems International GmbH

Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations

As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.

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VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."

"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."

"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."

"I like the monitoring feature."

"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"

"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."

"It's easy to use."

"Google's technical support is very good."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) pros

"The UI is very intuitive."

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"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."

Cons

"It could be even more automated."

"The process of logging analytics can be improved"

"It could be more stable."

"The logging functionality could be better."

"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."

"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."

"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."

"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) cons

"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."

"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."

"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

"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."

"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."

"The cost could be lower."

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

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850,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Retailer

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?

If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.

What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?

I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.

What advice do you have for others considering Google Stackdriver?

The Ops Agent and logging transport feature of the solution have had a major impact on improving application performance. The solution also allows the transport of logs into log buckets, which is h...

What do you like most about LightStep?

The UI is very intuitive.

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...

AWS X-Ray vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Comparisons

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Compared 21% of the time

New Relic vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 6% of the time

Dynatrace vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 5% of the time

Prometheus Group vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)

Compared 5% of the time

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Grafana vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 33% of the time

Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 21% of the time

Helios vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 21% of the time

Dynatrace vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 16% of the time

New Relic vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 9% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) product report

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) report

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring

LightStep

Overview

Real-time log management and analysis

Cloud Logging is a fully managed service that performs at scale and can ingest application and platform log data, as well as custom log data from GKE environments, VMs, and other services inside and outside of Google Cloud. Get advanced performance, troubleshooting, security, and business insights with Log Analytics, integrating the power of BigQuery into Cloud Logging.

Built-in metrics observability at scale

Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, uptime, and overall health of cloud-powered applications. Collect metrics, events, and metadata from Google Cloud services, hosted uptime probes, application instrumentation, and a variety of common application components. Visualize this data on charts and dashboards and create alerts so you are notified when metrics are outside of expected ranges.

Stand-alone managed service for running and scaling Prometheus

Managed Service for Prometheus is a fully managed Prometheus-compatible monitoring solution, built on top of the same globally scalable data store as Cloud Monitoring. Keep your existing visualization, analysis, and alerting services, as this data can be queried with PromQL or Cloud Monitoring.

Monitor and improve your application's performance

Application Performance Management (APM) combines the monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities of Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring with Cloud Trace and Cloud Profiler to help you reduce latency and cost so you can run more efficient applications.

Google

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability