Splunk Observability Cloud vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Splunk and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Splunk is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.7, while VMware is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.8. Splunk holds a 2.1% mindshare in CMS, compared to VMware’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Splunk users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 69 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

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1,602 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

2,704 Views
1,055 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and VMware Aria Operations for Applications compete in the observability and application performance management category. VMware Aria Operations for Applications appears to have the upper hand due to its superior integration with VMware-specific infrastructures.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud handles diverse data sources and offers strong dashboard customization and scalability for cloud environments. VMware Aria Operations excels in its integration with the VMware ecosystem, offering extensive application performance management and advantages for VMware-centric operations.

Room for Improvement: Splunk users recommend improvements in its pricing model, third-party integrations, stability, and user-friendliness for smaller enterprises. VMware Aria Operations could enhance predictive capabilities and user-friendly alerting, besides better support and documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk supports hybrid and cloud deployments, offering flexibility, though its customer service may delay detailed technical responses. VMware Aria is preferred for on-premises and hybrid environments, with responsive support and effective documentation, especially in VMware settings.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud is costly but delivers significant ROI with real-time insights and improved operations. However, VMware Aria Operations proves more cost-effective within VMware environments, especially when bundled with other VMware services, offering reduced overall spending.

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

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

7th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (6th), Container Management (7th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

17th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Container Monitoring (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.8%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	2.1%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.8%
Other	96.1%

Cloud Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

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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.

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 features are pretty much ready out of the box."

"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."

"Initially, before Splunk, we had a long time to resolve issues; now, with Splunk Observability Cloud, we will be able to solve them quickly and know exactly where the issue is."

"The Add data feature lets you gather any type of log and easily analyze it."

"Initially, before Splunk, we had a long time to resolve issues. Now, with Splunk Observability Cloud, we will be able to solve them quickly and know exactly where the issue is."

"It has been beneficial for our IT infrastructure."

"It is very easy to monitor multiple cloud environments. It's like a single pane of glass for us. We can use it to monitor our on-prem and both of our cloud environments as opposed to having different tools for each environment. It makes it all come together in one tool."

"The product's deployment phase is good and very easy because it is done with OpenTelemetry for most of the parts."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"No issues with stability."

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

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

"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."

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

"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."

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."

"The only strain point we've encountered with Splunk Observability Cloud is that the search times can be lengthy for some things. We have a large environment, so that's expected."

"There is not a lot of support for the tool's on-premises version, especially since everything is on the cloud."

"It's a bit difficult to use. It takes some time to get into it and to get it to do what you would like it to do. It is not straightforward to use it."

"Splunk Observability Cloud has not yet completely improved our operational performance for our company's resilience as we are just starting out, however, it will help us ultimately to reduce incident time."

"In terms of additional features I would want to see in future releases, since Cisco acquired Splunk, more Cisco integration could be beneficial."

"Splunk's functionality could be improved by adding database connectors for other platforms like AWS and Azure."

"Primarily, the logs in Splunk APM can be challenging to navigate and comprehend, making it difficult to understand the details within each log. Compared to other tools like LogDNA, which are more intuitive in this aspect, the logs in Splunk APM can require more effort to understand."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."

"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."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"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."

"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."

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

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."

"It is expensive."

"Splunk can be expensive, as its licensing is based on the daily data ingestion volume."

"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."

"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

"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 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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	44

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

August 2025

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

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

Overview

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

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

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

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

Splunk Observability Cloud vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

September 2025

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Observability Cloud vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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