IBM Application Performance Management vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

IBM Application Performance Management vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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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

IBM Application Performance...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

52nd

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of IBM Application Performance Management is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	2.0%
IBM Application Performance Management	0.5%
Other	97.5%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Daniel Tamiru

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…

Read full review

Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the breakdown that it provides, such as a description of the fields for a particular transaction."

"The initial setup was straightforward and took minimal effort."

"IBM Application Performance Management helped us increased our response time by 80% and cost 60% less."

"The solution overall is very valuable for me."

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring gives us complete visibility without the need for storage."

"It is very easy to monitor multiple cloud environments. It's like a single pane of glass for us. We can use it to monitor our on-prem and both of our cloud environments as opposed to having different tools for each environment. It makes it all come together in one tool."

"Splunk Observability Cloud has enhanced our operational performance and our company's resilience, ultimately contributing to improved customer satisfaction."

"The most valuable feature is log reporting."

"It has been beneficial for our IT infrastructure."

"The features I appreciate the most about Splunk Observability Cloud are the ServiceNow integration feature, which is very seamless, and that's probably my favorite since ServiceNow is big in the observability industry."

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring provided our customers with visibility into their overall infrastructure."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"Technical support can be slow and needs improvement."

"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."

"It's still missing some platforms. For example, if you look to applications itself, it is missing the interface."

"The demo that was provided to us is not working very well. At times, there are errors."

"It would be useful if they provided some help pages. If you don't know too much about the tool, there should be more documentation readily available. It would be useful if they had a help button embedded in the solution so you could ask questions and get answers."

"The licensing model is expensive. We need to monitor the amount of data ingested because the cost is based on the data collected."

"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available."

"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."

"It is essential for the monitoring tool to deliver quick response times when generating analytical reports, instead of prolonged delays."

"The initial setup of Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) was easy. The solution is deployed on-premises."

"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."

"Support from Splunk is not very helpful because Splunk doesn't have a dedicated APM; they only have one APM engineer in Korea."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM APM is one of the cheaper products on the market, while everything necessary to get started is included in the license."

"As I previously indicated, I initiated the IBM and uncovered all its elements. Consequently, I'm not inclined towards a licensing approach."

"The licensing fees can be paid every six months or on a yearly basis."

"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

"Splunk APM is expensive."

"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."

"This is an expensive solution."

"It is expensive."

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

25%

Retailer

14%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	43

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Application Performance Management?

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

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 do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...

BMC AMI Strobe vs IBM Application Performance Management

Comparisons

Compared 24% of the time

Instana Dynamic APM vs IBM Application Performance Management

Compared 17% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs IBM Application Performance Management

Compared 16% of the time

IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager vs IBM Application Performance Management

Compared 13% of the time

Datadog vs IBM Application Performance Management

Compared 11% of the time

More IBM Application Performance Management Competitors

Sentry vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

SigNoz vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Honeycomb Enterprise vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

More Splunk Observability Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download IBM Application Performance Management product report

IBM Application Performance Management report

Splunk Observability Cloud

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

IBM APM

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

Overview

The IBM Application Performance Management portfolio provides visibility, control and automation of your mission-critical applications. It helps pinpoint the root cause of application's issue more quickly and resolve the problem. The integrated capabilities cover the five key areas: discovery, end-use experience, transaction tracking, enterprise diagnostics and analytics. It also easily monitors applications to ensure optimal performance to extend your hybrid management environment capabilities, to measure the customer experience from multiple locations and to further eliminate blind spots in your application environment.

IBM

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Mibtree, EatDrinkDeals.com, IT Performance Advisor

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

IBM Application Performance Management vs. Splunk Observability Cloud