It all depends on the problems you want to solve. They all have their strengths. CA is long in the tooth (old) and with NetQoS has new life being pushed into it, but making it all fit is a challenge. Also with CA you may have to open up the applications to add some other custom monitoring of application package names/methods if you want more detail than out of the box.
Understanding the full flow of a transaction when it talks to other transactions was our key to understanding why we had issues. The Riverbed family of products enabled that for us but even that required work on our part to further decode the MQ traffic better than they did. It went into the MQ Black box, and came out, but did not reveal what happened inside the box. There were requests inside the box that went elsewhere. Those had not been picked up with the tool.
Cons for all of them are that they only sample transactions and can't follow a single user from their device all the way through to the backend database or mainframe. Best using dynaTrace if you want true 100% end to end monitoring.
General Manager at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
May 20, 2014
I agree with Mike in everything except the part where he says CA can only provide web transaction monitoring. CA had acquired NetQoS a while back and has integrated NPM to provide and integrated view across web transaction monitoring, deep application diagnostics and network response time monitoring. If you have a CA ecosystem and would like to integrate into it or extend to other capabilities in the near future then logically consider CA. If you are purely comparing APM point solution vendors then seriously look at the others as well.
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: November 2025.
Application Support Engineer with 51-200 employees
Vendor
May 20, 2014
From my experience with CA Wily, it's more expensive and requires a long implementation, it is also less flexible.
We did not consider New Relic because we did not want to have our sensitive data hosted in the cloud. Not acceptable in our business.
AppDynamics offered a short implementation time, immediate satisfaction and only required fine-tuning afterwards. Also the pricing was lower then CA Wily.
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
May 20, 2014
All three are good tools for monitoring web application transactions. Of course, CA has a much broader set of capabilities than the other two - can monitor networks, servers, databases, etc. AppDynamics provides a product that you can use in-house. NewRelic is only a SaaS offering. Which of these is best for you - depends on what you need. If you already have CA deployed, you are probably looking at just web transaction monitoring then. AppDynamics and NewRelic are more current in this area than CA Wily.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability help improve the efficiency of applications by providing visibility and insights into system performance.
Application Performance Monitoring and Observability involve tracking and analyzing the performance of applications and infrastructure. APM focuses on detecting and diagnosing performance issues, while Observability emphasizes gaining insight into the internal state of systems. By combining these approaches, IT teams can ensure...
Saluting Henry from another Henry!
Thanks for your sound advice.
Henry
AppDynamics, New Relic & CA Technologies?
It all depends on the problems you want to solve. They all have their strengths. CA is long in the tooth (old) and with NetQoS has new life being pushed into it, but making it all fit is a challenge. Also with CA you may have to open up the applications to add some other custom monitoring of application package names/methods if you want more detail than out of the box.
Understanding the full flow of a transaction when it talks to other transactions was our key to understanding why we had issues. The Riverbed family of products enabled that for us but even that required work on our part to further decode the MQ traffic better than they did. It went into the MQ Black box, and came out, but did not reveal what happened inside the box. There were requests inside the box that went elsewhere. Those had not been picked up with the tool.
Cons for all of them are that they only sample transactions and can't follow a single user from their device all the way through to the backend database or mainframe. Best using dynaTrace if you want true 100% end to end monitoring.
Saluting Mike, Richard for your sound advice!
Henry
I agree with Mike in everything except the part where he says CA can only provide web transaction monitoring. CA had acquired NetQoS a while back and has integrated NPM to provide and integrated view across web transaction monitoring, deep application diagnostics and network response time monitoring. If you have a CA ecosystem and would like to integrate into it or extend to other capabilities in the near future then logically consider CA. If you are purely comparing APM point solution vendors then seriously look at the others as well.
I have found Dynatrace to be much better. It integrates with more tools than any of the 3 listed above.
From my experience with CA Wily, it's more expensive and requires a long implementation, it is also less flexible.
We did not consider New Relic because we did not want to have our sensitive data hosted in the cloud. Not acceptable in our business.
AppDynamics offered a short implementation time, immediate satisfaction and only required fine-tuning afterwards. Also the pricing was lower then CA Wily.
All three are good tools for monitoring web application transactions. Of course, CA has a much broader set of capabilities than the other two - can monitor networks, servers, databases, etc. AppDynamics provides a product that you can use in-house. NewRelic is only a SaaS offering. Which of these is best for you - depends on what you need. If you already have CA deployed, you are probably looking at just web transaction monitoring then. AppDynamics and NewRelic are more current in this area than CA Wily.