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IBM Application Performance Management vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM Application Performance...
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (54th)
IBM Security QRadar
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Application Performance Management and IBM Security QRadar aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Application Performance Management is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 0.6%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
IBM Security QRadar, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 5.6% mindshare, down 9.0% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Application Performance Management0.6%
Dynatrace6.6%
Datadog5.5%
Other87.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar5.6%
Splunk Enterprise Security7.4%
Wazuh7.3%
Other79.7%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Daniel Tamiru - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Database & System Administration at Awash International Bank
A multi-functional solution but has poor stability and performance-related issues
We are using version 4 of IBM Application Performance Management, and it is deployed on-premises. We use it for internet banking and mainly for application performance on-site. For example, if we face performance-related issues in one of our software or managed services, we use this solution to…
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup was straightforward and took minimal effort."
"The transaction tracking feature from IBM is the most important feature for us. It is something that provides a terrific value for us and our clients. It has a lot of data sources and agents that are collectors. It is also stable."
"It's easy to use."
"I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten."
"Because we have partnerships with other partners, I can share a bit about what I've noticed with IBM APM compared to other vendor solutions. Specifically, with IBM, the visibility into detailed process information is more tangible. On the OS level, APM displays all processes (or the top 10 processes) that are consuming CPU or resident memory. This is the most important thing that is not always available with other vendors."
"IBM Application Performance Management helped us increased our response time by 80% and cost 60% less."
"The most valuable feature is the breakdown that it provides, such as a description of the fields for a particular transaction."
"IBM Security QRadar has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to get offenses and threats into our organization, helping me to discover the real threats attacking our organization."
"The tool's most valuable feature is real-time detection."
"The initial setup is not complex or difficult."
"It is a scalable solution."
"I have found the most important features to be the flexibility, tech framework, and disk manager."
"I am generally satisfied with the product."
"What we like about QRadar and the models that IBM has, is it can go from a small-to-medium enterprise to a larger organization, and it gives you the same value."
"The simplicity of the solution is the best feature."
 

Cons

"They should focus on potentially enhancing the dashboard to make it more contemporary and adding some customization options. Furthermore, there might be room for improvement in the pricing policy."
"With APM, we noticed that the agent can cause a lot of issues for the application, making the agent very unreliable. Many issues are happening, and we've had to discuss it with support to try and get a fix. It affects application availability, and sometimes actions fail because of the agent, degrading the performance of the application."
"The stability is not great and should be better."
"The demo that was provided to us is not working very well. At times, there are errors."
"It's still missing some platforms. For example, if you look to applications itself, it is missing the interface."
"Technical support can be slow and needs improvement."
"Its web user interface is a little bit old in comparison to other solutions, such as New Relic, and it should be improved. Its scalability and technical support should also be improved. Currently, it is scalable, but only in a vertical way. They provide good technical support, but the initial steps for a new case can be improved to fasten the resolution process."
"The user interface is a bit difficult to get used to."
"The solution is highly used here in Pakistan and in many sectors, they could improve it by having more SIEM connectors."
"The product can be a bit complex."
"Dashboards and reports could provide better visualization of SIEM activity."
"The modularity could be improved."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup due to bandwidth issues."
"The user interface needs improvement."
"I don't look at only the features and benefits; I also look at the price. It is a bit expensive when compared with other solutions. It is expensive for specific deployment topologies, and the decision-makers go for alternatives like ArcSight. It should also have more AI features or capabilities for better threat intelligence. The more it uses machine learning, the better would be the dashboard, analytics, and other things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees can be paid every six months or on a yearly basis."
"As I previously indicated, I initiated the IBM and uncovered all its elements. Consequently, I'm not inclined towards a licensing approach."
"IBM APM is one of the cheaper products on the market, while everything necessary to get started is included in the license."
"IBM Security QRadar is a very expensive tool."
"It is overly expensive and overly complex in terms of licensing. They have many different appliances, which makes it extremely difficult to choose the technology. It is very difficult to choose the technology or QRadar components that you should be deploying. They have improved some of it in the last few years. They have made it slightly easy with the fact that you can now buy virtual versions of all the appliances, which is good, but it is still very fragmented. For instance, on some of the smaller appliances, there is no upgrade path. So, if you exceed the capacity of the appliance, you have to buy a bigger appliance, which is not helpful because it is quite a major cost. If you want to add more disks to the system, they'll say that you can't."
"The price of this solution is a little high."
"The price of this product is high."
"Go through a vulnerability assessment review for price breaks. A virtualized solution will also cut down on cost."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate the price a one, where one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is a cheap product."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"There is a license required for this solution. There are some limitations depending on what license you purchase."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Retailer
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.
 

Also Known As

IBM APM
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mibtree, EatDrinkDeals.com, IT Performance Advisor
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.