Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Application Performance Management vs Splunk Enterprise Security 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 (50th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
366
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Application Performance Management is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 0.4%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 9.3% mindshare, down 11.6% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Application Performance Management0.4%
Dynatrace8.8%
Datadog7.2%
Other83.6%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security9.3%
Wazuh10.9%
IBM Security QRadar7.2%
Other72.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Daniel Tamiru - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Kyle Vernham - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in searches and unified data access streamline alert investigation and boosts analyst efficiency
The two features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the built-in searches, which have been very easy for us to get started with right out of the box, and the fact that it accesses all of our other systems. You can access it as a pane of glass rather than having to search individually. We also have the option to compare our analysts from our service to service. Splunk Enterprise Security helps our SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by providing a more in-depth look and the ability to access a lot more of our data. Instead of jumping from several segmented systems, it allows us to have everything brought together in one place. For example, you have to move from our purview to our build system and to Splunk Enterprise Security, and it enables us to streamline that process. The built-in features of Splunk Enterprise Security, which we recently procured, have given us a good starting point and demonstrated the value of the product, providing an easy way to sell it to our company. The ease of getting everything into our purview helps us, and it serves as a good start for the investigation part in one location rather than what we usually have, which is jumping from system to system to system. Splunk Enterprise Security plays a role in our company's strategy to combat insider threats and advanced persistent threats by currently being in its technical test phase. We are still rolling it out, and it should help us find any insider threats based on information that our policy states should not be present in our system. Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting (RBA) has impacted our alert volume and analyst productivity because we've got many different systems feeding into it. However, it has helped to make it easier for our analysts to go through a set of events rather than 100 alerts. RBA allows us to streamline the process and customize it for our analysts. When it comes to leveraging Splunk Enterprise Security's dashboards and visualizations to communicate security posture to executives, it's pretty straightforward for any type of information. The visualization is easy to understand, but I haven't had any direct conversations with our executives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"It's easy to use."
"The initial setup was straightforward and took minimal effort."
"The stability of Splunk Enterprise Security is very impressive; it is a very stable product."
"We can present to our management in real time the security of the batch management for the PCs, security regarding the network equipment. We're currently working in the Azure Cloud project, so we can send any logs from the cloud to Splunk. We can monitor them and we can present to the managers and customers. It's a very good solution for reporting. We use Splunk for reporting and monitoring of any solution in the company."
"I really appreciate the all-integrated SIEM feature of Splunk Enterprise Security, which serves as a one-stop shop to get all security tasks done."
"It's extremely scalable. It's a very robust solution and certainly has the capability of handling far bigger data requirements than a lot of the other tools. Generally what ends up happening with me is that my clients tend, for the most part, to be mid-tier organizations where the cost of that solutions would be accompanying requirements for people just becomes way too prohibitive. Especially considering the model that they use for costing, which is based on the volume of data. Of course, they're going to put everything including the Coke machine as the ability to collect data off of it, because of course the more they can put through the tool the more money they make."
"Previously, it would take us days to properly analyze, triage, and respond to insider threats; now with risk-based alerting, we are able to reduce that to 10 minutes."
"It has a big user base, so the community is useful."
"The ability to analyze huge amounts of sales data and accurate prediction of sales forecasting is the most valuable feature."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting has been a game-changer for us, adding intelligence to alerts by considering behavioral or internal asset-based criteria, effectively helping us prioritize alerts and filtering out noise that can be ignored."
 

Cons

"Technical support can be slow and needs improvement."
"The demo that was provided to us is not working very well. At times, there are errors."
"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."
"It's still missing some platforms. For example, if you look to applications itself, it is missing the interface."
"The stability is not great and should be better."
"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."
"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."
"Splunk needs local technical support."
"The incident response technique should be available out of the box. That isn't as available as we would expect."
"Its user interface for everything other than the charts can be improved. Some parts of it can be simplified a bit, such as when importing documents that have the network traffic. When you're going through the information about the network traffic, you have to have the expertise, but even if a program is supposed to be for IT support, it is good to make it user-friendly because it gets easier to train people. When something goes wrong, the more difficult a program is in terms of UI, the harder it is to fix the issue."
"Professional support is great, but too expensive."
"Customizing our commands should be simpler. Creating custom commands in Splunk requires a long, complex process. For example, we have a command to add all the column data, but we don't have a command to get the average of the column data at the end. It would be useful to have a blank at the end to create our commands and leave the rest to others."
"The main improvement needed in Splunk Enterprise Security is its system visibility after installation."
"I find the process for customizing, developing, testing, deploying, and refining detections in Splunk Enterprise Security to be challenging at times. It takes some of our more advanced engineers to be able to work through a lot of those processes."
"The incident response dashboard could be more user-friendly."
 

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."
"It is economical than other solutions."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is an expensive solution."
"The tool's licensing is good and we haven't received any complaints from the team handling it."
"The subscription is monthly."
"I believe there is room for improvement in reducing costs, particularly in the financial aspect, as Splunk tends to be pricier compared to other options."
"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."
"As a team, we prefer the old pricing model with a perpetual license. We are still evaluating the whole subscription-based model."
"The pricing and licensing of the product are quite high."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Retailer
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 Business109
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise255
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Application Performance Management?
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. ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Application Performance Management?
I monitor business applications for more than four end users.
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 a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

IBM APM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mibtree, EatDrinkDeals.com, IT Performance Advisor
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Application Performance Management vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.