ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

ServiceNow and VMware are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. ServiceNow is ranked #41 with an average rating of 7.5, while VMware is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.0. ServiceNow holds a 0.4% mindshare in APM, compared to VMware’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of VMware users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

765 Views
453 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 12 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

1,509 Views
966 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and ServiceNow Cloud Observability both compete in the cloud management and monitoring category. ServiceNow Cloud Observability appears to have the upper hand due to superior feature comprehensiveness and a higher perceived ROI.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers robust integration capabilities, real-time analytics, comprehensive dashboards, and an alerting system. ServiceNow Cloud Observability excels with workflow automation, extensive reporting features, and deeper insights into cloud resource use, often leading to higher overall satisfaction.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications users suggest enhancing scalability, extending third-party integration support, and addressing the steep learning curve. ServiceNow Cloud Observability users desire more customization options, faster response times, and further refinement of existing features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is straightforward to deploy but has complex initial setup steps. Customer service is rated positively with timely responses. ServiceNow Cloud Observability is also efficient in deployment, with comprehensive support resources and proactive customer service, ensuring a smoother experience.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is cost-effective, with favorable setup costs and positive ROI outcomes. ServiceNow Cloud Observability has higher costs but is often seen as worth the investment due to streamlined operations and powerful analytics, providing substantial ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 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

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

41st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

27th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (30th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 0.9%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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ToniLindberg

senior consultant at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement

I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 UI is very intuitive."

"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."

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"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 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."

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

10%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about LightStep?

The UI is very intuitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. 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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Prometheus Group vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

May 2025

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

May 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

LightStep

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

VMware

Sample Customers

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 2025

Free Report: ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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