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Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications 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

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (3rd)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (14th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)0.7%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.1%
Other98.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Naguib - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Techpace
Identifying complex diagnostics and alert management improvements needed
The best features of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) are the APM, the Application Performance Monitoring, and the diagnostic capabilities. It is state-of-the-art. The intelligent alerting in Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is very good. The predictive analysis can give you proactive information about potential bottlenecks that can occur on applications, desk, storage, SQL servers, databases, or other systems. It is very effective. The customizable dashboards in Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) facilitate our customers because they are highly adaptable. We have multiple types of dashboards, depending on who will be utilizing them, such as engineering, middle management, IT heads, or NOC teams that will be monitoring systems. The metrics I rely on for monitoring in Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) depend on what kind of asset or CI we are monitoring. For applications, we have the number of concurrent transactions, response time from the database, and write time on the desk. There are multiple parameters and metrics that we utilize in the monitoring part within ITSI.
AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Alerts and episodes are valuable to me."
"ITSI includes a feature called a glass table."
"The search function is the most valuable. It includes regular expressions and wild card searches. We'll write searches using field and case-sensitive services and use all of these search types to write an alert condition. Splunk ITSI has another feature called Glass Table that offers a visual representation."
"The most valuable feature of ITSI is the service KPIs. No other tool provides you with the same level of observability and enterprise security or the search and reporting applications."
"The feature that stood out to me most from Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) was automated dashboarding or reporting. The solution lists the severity level of issues, and the response times."
"The most valuable feature is event correlation, which ensures that only one ticket is generated per issue, eliminating duplicates and reducing noise from multiple alerts."
"ITSI's KPI and correlation search aspects are powerful, and the service creation suits the project well. It allows for good segregation of the monitoring solution, and up-to-date quick-time monitoring. We're notified quickly when something goes wrong."
"The solution has been stable."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."
"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."
"No issues with stability."
"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."
 

Cons

"After upgrading Splunk ITSI from version 4.11 to 4.13, the analyzer stopped finding values for KPS and services."
"Predictive analytics, in terms of preventing incidents before they occur, still needs time to mature."
"The dashboard queries should be improved. More queries should be suggested in order to produce better dashboards."
"The end-to-end visibility in Splunk ITSI is limited and has room for improvement."
"The license cost is expensive."
"We experience occasional delays in receiving solutions from Splunk technical support. Splunk's support for P3 cases seems inadequate, as they frequently switch support personnel. For instance, in a single P3 case, we had three different technical support representatives assigned. We were ultimately forced to escalate the issue to our account manager to get it resolved. In essence, we never receive complete support from a single point of contact; instead, the support team keeps changing, necessitating us to explain the problem from scratch each time."
"They should make it easier to use. Many people are new to it. It is hard and has a steep learning curve."
"There should be entity conflict resolution, specifically regarding duplicate entities. There should be case sensitivity for various keys amongst entities, specifically host names. We need IT metrics-based indexes and more content packs. I know they are coming out with these features"
"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."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Splunk ITSI is a premium application and comes with a premium price tag."
"It is interesting. I am not involved that much lately, but if I recall correctly, you license primarily on the volume of data that you are using in Splunk ITSI, but there is no way Splunk can ever check if that is true, so that is interesting. We are not doing it, but someone can pretend to just use 10%, and it would be super cheap. It is tricky, but it is more tricky for Splunk than for us."
"Splunk ITSI is a pay-per-use service that is priced fairly based on the amount of data we use."
"Splunk pricing is high."
"I would prefer that the price be reduced, as it would be easier to implement it and to sell it."
"I wouldn't say there's been an issue with the solution's pricing because we went through the AWS marketplace and negotiated directly with Splunk."
"Splunk ITSI is expensive."
"Its pricing has been changed as per the market. You get a good support service with it as well. They have 24/7 customer support. There is a portal, and if you are having issues, they are available in order to resolve them. So, its pricing isn't too much."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
Pricing can vary significantly based on the selected modules and deployment choices. Splunk ITSI tends to be more expensive compared to some open-source solutions.
What needs improvement with Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) can be improved in terms of the service management function, which is the only drawback, and there are some limitations in terms of event correlation, specific...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TransUnion, Cox Automotive, Carnival Cruises, Leidos, Econocom, National Ignition Factory, Entrust Datacard, Molina Healthcare, United States Census Bureau
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.