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IBM Instana Observability vs ITRS Geneos comparison

IBM and ITRS are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. IBM is ranked #41 with an average rating of 8.0, while ITRS is ranked #34 with an average rating of 5.0. IBM holds a 0.6% mindshare in APM, compared to ITRS’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of ITRS users who would recommend it.
IBM Instana Observability
Read 3 IBM Instana Observability reviews
  • 750 Views
  • 750 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
ITRS Geneos
Read 57 ITRS Geneos reviews
  • 4,056 Views
  • 3,083 Comparison Views
96% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

ITRS Geneos and IBM Instana Observability compete in the observability and monitoring space. ITRS Geneos has an edge in pricing and support, whereas IBM Instana Observability stands out with enhanced features.

Features: ITRS Geneos provides real-time monitoring, extensive data analytics, and robust IT infrastructure management. IBM Instana Observability delivers comprehensive application performance management, automated discovery of application components, and improved overall visibility. ITRS Geneos is stronger in infrastructure monitoring, while IBM Instana excels in application insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Instana Observability's cloud-based deployment model allows for seamless integration and continuous updates, along with responsive customer service. ITRS Geneos requires more effort during the initial setup but offers attentive customer support once implemented. IBM Instana's easy deployment and immediate support enhance user experience.

Pricing and ROI: ITRS Geneos is known for its competitive pricing, offering a quicker return on investment for infrastructure-focused monitoring. IBM Instana Observability, despite a higher initial cost, justifies its pricing through robust features and long-term benefits with thorough application monitoring. ITRS Geneos is the more economical option for budget-conscious users, while IBM Instana provides a comprehensive solution for those prioritizing feature depth.

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To learn more, read our detailed IBM Instana Observability vs. ITRS Geneos Report (Updated: July 2025).
Buyer's Guide
IBM Instana Observability vs. ITRS Geneos
July 2025
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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 Instana Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
41st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ITRS Geneos
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
34th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (69th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (49th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Tomas Kim - PeerSpot reviewer
Not expensive and offers good performance
The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.
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Sanket - PeerSpot reviewer
With the help of the solution, we can predict and prevent failures
Currently, the most valuable thing for an individual is a mobile device. Since that is where people are currently tracking everything, we have multiple applications or apps that are for various products. I would like ITRS Geneos to develop an app, where instead of going to specific login terminals or logging into laptops or desktops to check alerts, we can have visibility in the app itself. Using the ITRS Geneos app, we could see the error message during our travels or wherever we are. I would like to see the capacity of messages for forecasting increased. Since the NSE is the number one derivative stock exchange in the work for three consecutive years, the number of messages is important. We use the capacity planner in ITRS to forecast our data needs for the next two months. The planner is important because the volume of data we produce is becoming more and more volatile compared to when we first started using ITRS Geneos in 2014.
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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."
"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."
"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."
"Custom script toolkits"
"One of the best aspects of Geneos is that it has a broad scope and can cover a lot of use cases. You can write your own scripts to monitor really specific things. And the rules that you can put in place can be quite complex for the alerts."
"The ability to build integrations to tools that are not monitored out of the box is the most valuable feature."
"The great advantage of this tool is real-time monitoring."
"One of the most valuable features is that it can be configured by non-developers. It doesn't require development expertise to configure it."
"It enables us to monitor application processes, to do log-monitoring on a 24/7 basis, to do server-level monitoring - all the hardware parameters - as well as monitor connectivity across applications to the interfaces."
"The built-in plug-ins allow administrators to easily configure monitoring components for market data systems such as Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform and SRLabs Wombat (formerly NYSE)."
"Geneos automatically sends email notifications when any batch job fails, the database is down or the website is down. It is automatically monitoring everything and reduces manual effort."
More ITRS Geneos pros
 

Cons

"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."
"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."
"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."
"Sometimes, if there is a lot of data coming onto the servers, we have observed a little bit of slowness on the gateway servers which are doing the ITRS dashboard monitoring."
"ITRS have started to make some major changes that we haven't taken on board yet, in the creation of dashboards and more visibility of the metrics that we collect. At the moment, that's something that's lacking, but I know they have addressed it. Still, it’s not that easy to create stuff to help with visibility and dashboarding in Geneos."
"One thing that could be improved in terms of rapid scaling would be more ability to clone aspects of an implementation. It seems like there are opportunities in this area, where we have repetitive tasks to do when it comes to implementing things on new servers or on new gateways. It would be great if there was an easy way to clone something that had already been done."
"ITRS Geneos is not on the cloud at a time when everyone is moving to the cloud."
"The main feature that needs work is the Dashboard designer."
"I would like ITRS Geneos to develop an app, where instead of going to specific login terminals or logging into laptops or desktops to check alerts, we can have visibility in the app itself."
"Much of the reporting outside of the user interface is very basic and requires much customization to be useful."
"A lightweight version which could host more than 100 gateways, as we can see slowness while loading all our gateways."
More ITRS Geneos cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."
"The pricing seems reasonable. We're happy enough with it."
"The market tools are on par with this solution, but if the solution included more features, then it would be well within the range for the cost."
"Based on feedback from colleagues and friends working in the financial sector, Geneos is relatively costly. Many companies have been switching from Geneos to Dynatrace, Sysdig, or other monitoring tools in the past two years because of the price."
"The organization is not just purchasing a license for the product, but also managing services and professional services from ITRS. Another factor is if the implementation is going to be in production, non-production, or both."
"Given our spend and the amount of service we have in it, the pricing is quite reasonable."
"You will get the best price if you get a single global deal."
"The pricing is fairly market-related. They have been very lenient because we have been working with them for so long. An example is that we're currently migrating some of our services to AWS, and they've given us a grace period for some of the things to help with the migration and not to grow additional costs while we are migrating, but it's still on par with the market."
"When I first came in, their pricing was very high. ITRS had a high expectation of what their price should be based on perceived value. I think they have been realizing, more recently, that there are other competitors, so their pricing is a lot better. Licensing for on-premise is okay, however I feel there is quite some work to be done for cloud and containers. We're still working with them to try and work out what that pricing should look like."
More ITRS Geneos pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Hospitality Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
73%
Computer Software Company
6%
University
5%
Construction Company
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?
The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.
See all answers
What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?
The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?
Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?
The pricing is high. Licensing fees might be around 500$ per server monthly.
See all answers
What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?
ITRS Geneos is a legacy system. It predicts or provides proactive measures once an issue is resolved. It doesn't offer any predictive capabilities or root cause analysis. They throw a lot of data i...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for ITRS Geneos?
ITRS offers multiple products, including upgrades for synthetic monitoring and a SaaS platform. Geneos is used for infrastructure monitoring, covering KPIs such as CPU, memory, processes, network l...
See all answers
 

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
August 2025
IBM Instana Observability reportDownload IBM Instana Observability product report
Buyer's Guide
ITRS Geneos
August 2025
ITRS Geneos reportDownload ITRS Geneos product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Geneos
 

Overview

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?
  • Automatic Discovery: Identifies application components and dependencies without manual configuration.
  • Real-Time Monitoring: Delivers live data for instant visibility across application metrics.
  • AI-Powered Root Cause Analysis: Quickly pinpoints issues to reduce downtime and enhance user experience.
  • Intelligent Alerts: Provides actionable insights, minimizing false alarms.
  • Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with popular DevOps tools.
What benefits should users look for when evaluating IBM Instana Observability?
  • Increased Productivity: Reduces manual monitoring efforts, enhancing team efficiency.
  • Enhanced Performance: Improves application responsiveness and user satisfaction.
  • Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resource allocation, leading to reduced operational costs.
  • Scalable Solutions: Adapts to growing business needs, ensuring long-term value.
  • Detailed Insights: Offers granularity in monitoring, aiding in swift decision-making.

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.

IBM

ITRS Geneos is a real-time monitoring tool designed for managing increasingly complex, hybrid and interconnected IT estates.

Built with financial services and trading organisations in mind, it collects a wide range of data relating to server performance, infrastructure, trading, connectivity and applications, and analyses it to provide relevant information and alerts in real time.

Geneos can give full stack visibility across highly dynamic environments and presents all the information through a single pane of glass and its configurable and customisable dashboards provide end-to-end visibility to both technical and business users.

For more information, please visit https://www.itrsgroup.com/products/geneos

ITRS
 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ITRS Geneos is used by over 170 financial institutions, including JPMorgan, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Clients range from investment banks to exchanges and brokers.
Buyer's Guide
IBM Instana Observability vs. ITRS Geneos
July 2025
Free Report: IBM Instana Observability vs. ITRS Geneos
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