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ITRS Geneos vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

ITRS Geneos
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
29th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (41st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (29th)
ServiceNow Cloud Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
42nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ITRS Geneos0.9%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability0.7%
Other98.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi ShankarSundarasan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Cloud Architect at Blue Yonder
Real-time monitoring has improved incident response and supports proactive anomaly detection
The advantages and strong points of ITRS Geneos for me personally are seamless integration with existing systems as well as upcoming modern systems. The user interface is really good. From a management point of view, these are the key aspects with respect to the user interface and seamless integration. We get very good community support for this product. ITRS Geneos has impacted my organization positively, and I would rate it 4.5 out of 5.
Uday-Thentu - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Automation has reduced incident impact and is driving proactive self‑healing across hybrid services
ServiceNow Cloud Observability's valuable features include AI agents that can be integrated and triggered with workflows for evaluating and taking the right action in both process and technical aspects. On the process side, it ensures the right approvals are triggered. From the technical aspect, it allows integration for taking relevant action without human intervention, moving towards self-healing. The main benefit of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is real-time data, which helps us move from being reactive to more proactive. By defining and fine-tuning workflows, we were able to implement timely notification and auto-action or auto-remediations. At the same time, if anything involves additional cost or requires intervention, it helps trigger approval notifications, and once approval is received, it timely takes the action. The AI agents help define and fine-tune those workflows further.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The NetProbe carries over 100 samplers which are capable of monitoring hardware, OS, and the application layer."
"As a company looking to onboard, its capacity to monitor just about anything from Unix log files and processes to database memory, and even run queries and provide results, means it can be used as a one stop shop for all your monitoring needs if you understand how to utilise it to its fullest extent."
"The monitoring of queues which helps us to stay ahead of issues and fix them before users start complaining."
"Our support team can monitor our applications and servers easily and we were able to reduce the time in finding errors and providing a solution."
"This is the most amazing monitoring tool I've ever worked with, because it allows you to monitor a lot of things and also to address the issue and assign it to someone so everyone will know it's being investigated."
"The solution is used across the entire investment banking division, covering environments such as electronic trading, algo-trading, fixed income, FX, etc. It monitors that environment and enables a bank to significantly reduce down time. Although hard to measure, since implementation, we have probably seen some increased stability because of it and we have definitely seen teams a lot more aware of their environment. Consequently, we can be more proactive in challenging and improving previously undetected weaknesses."
"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."
"ITRS is the best monitoring tool I have used so far."
"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."
"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."
"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."
"The main benefit of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is real-time data, which helps us move from being reactive to more proactive."
"The UI is very intuitive."
 

Cons

"Some aspects of dashboarding are very proprietary and it makes it difficult, at times, to replicate your work easily."
"Backward compatibility with deprecated features and in-system documentation on what configuration areas are needed to be updated can be improved."
"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."
"Sometimes there were issues with the database. If the database logging was high then the gateway would be slow."
"For the last year or two, I've been asking the vendor about the mobile app."
"We were a little bit confused but once we found out what was needed, it was smooth."
"There is are issues with the compatibility of plugins with AIX servers."
"The main feature that needs work is the Dashboard designer. Currently we have to export metrics data in real-time into some other visualization tools in order to get better picture and have a bit more functional dashboard."
"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."
"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."
"The cost could be reduced or lightweight agents and lightweight modules could be introduced, which would make it much easier to implement."
"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."
"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. They have to look at the model around when we move to cloud and how that's going to work. The licensing cost does pay off because of the improvements in support to our business."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing cost may seem expensive upfront. However, the service is outstanding, the tool does things that no other tools can do, and the customizability more than makes up for the cost of licensing."
"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."
"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 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."
"Given our spend and the amount of service we have in it, the pricing is quite reasonable."
"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
57%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise40
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?
I do not have the pricing information because it lies with the finance team.
What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?
I do not see much room for improvement. Support for data cloud platforms could be great. Modern cloud platforms and data cloud platforms require more attention from the product.
What is your primary use case for ITRS Geneos?
I was using ITRS Geneos at HSBC. I have been using this product for more than two years. I have 20 years of experience working in IT with software in general. I am working with an on-premises deplo...
What needs improvement with LightStep?
The cost could be reduced or lightweight agents and lightweight modules could be introduced, which would make it much easier to implement.
What is your primary use case for LightStep?
ServiceNow Cloud Observability's main use case is end-to-end automation starting from the trigger in the cloud. Currently, it focuses more on self-healing and understanding the complete uptime of e...
What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?
Regarding security, I unfortunately do not have much hands-on experience. My focus has been majorly on self-healing activities, but given what I have observed, it does provide a good opportunity in...
 

Also Known As

Geneos
LightStep
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,
Find out what your peers are saying about ITRS Geneos vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.