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 #39 with an average rating of 8.0, while ITRS is ranked #34 with an average rating of 5.0. IBM holds a 0.8% mindshare in APM, compared to ITRS’s 1.1% 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

954 Views
935 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ITRS Geneos

Read 57 ITRS Geneos reviews

3,901 Views
2,653 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

IBM Instana Observability

ITRS Geneos

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.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Instana Observability vs. ITRS Geneos Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Instana Observability vs. ITRS Geneos

September 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

39th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

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

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (67th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (46th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 1.1%, down from 1.3% 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 (%)
ITRS Geneos	1.1%
IBM Instana Observability	0.8%
Other	98.1%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Tomas Kim

Managing Director at BA Solutions

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.

Read full review

Sanket

Chief Manager at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

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 most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."

"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."

"Ability to monitor logs for potential issues to prevent app outages before problems get a chance to arise. That's invaluable for our teams in a fast-paced trading environment."

"Custom script toolkits"

"This tool allows one to analyse, integrate and customize as per the systems and allows you to set your own rules."

"The NetProbe carries over 100 samplers which are capable of monitoring hardware, OS, and the application layer."

"Real-time log monitoring with desktop alerts is valuable as it tells us immediately when there is an issue."

"I always appreciate Geneos's stability and ease of use."

"It's a very powerful application monitoring tool across the industry. Many free, open-source tools are available. There are also paid tools, but ITRS Geneos is a real-time application monitoring tool where the user can monitor, self-configure, and manage alerts through their console."

"The ability to logically normalize data gathered from multiple types of sources via pre-built plugins is extremely powerful. This functionality, coupled with the ability to import custom data via the Toolkit plugin allows Geneos to be leveraged to monitor every system in the enterprise."

More ITRS Geneos pros

Cons

"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."

"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."

"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."

"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."

"I would like better access to the data that is being collected."

"I would really like to see something from the Geneos side to set up automated reporting from ITRS. We have to send reporting to management every day. To do that we have to check the dashboard and then we have to report whether everything is fine or not. In the future, I want something, some reporting kind of feature in ITRS, where it can collect all the data and mention what is green, what is amber, what is red in a report."

"The deployment method for upgrading is a bit tricky. It takes a little bit of manual effort. If that could be a bit more automated, it would help us a lot."

"Backward compatibility with deprecated features and in system documentation on what configuration areas are needed to be updated."

"There is one drawback to using lightweight data collection: we lack the feature of observability based on time series, such as historical model data. This makes it difficult to view data in ITRS. ITRS needs to improve this feature."

"For the solution to stay relevant in the cloud-based monitoring environment Geneos needs more plug-ins with more features. Instead of offering clients workarounds, the solution should have a cloud-based out-of-the-box version."

"They have the Webslinger solution where you can see when something is alerting. It's a little bit cumbersome."

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."

"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 product is priced quite high. There are pricing options for customers based on the size of the environment and plug-ins used by the monitoring system."

"The pricing seems reasonable. We're happy enough with it."

"Given our spend and the amount of service we have in it, the pricing is quite reasonable."

"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."

"I can say it's not that cheap because the licensing is a little bit costly"

"Pricing is the touchy subject, even here. Upper management always wants us to find a cheaper solution. But we have so much integrated with ITRS... It's expensive, but it does its job very well. And you set it and go."

"Its price is reasonable. It isn't too expensive, and it isn't too cheap, but it also depends on a company's volume and negotiation."

More ITRS Geneos pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

72%

Computer Software Company

University

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	39

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...

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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...

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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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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Dynatrace vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 23% of the time

Grafana vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 13% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 13% of the time

Datadog vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 8% of the time

More ITRS Geneos Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

September 2025

Download IBM Instana Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

ITRS Geneos

October 2025

Download 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

September 2025

Free Report: IBM Instana Observability vs. ITRS Geneos

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