If you ask what I think of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant, after more than 30 years of experience in mainframes, distributed environments, I would say look to a piece of software and not how to resolve performance problems in a multi-cloud environment.
To give you a few examples, if you have a performance problem and you have for example an APM tool, but the problem is because of a wrong setting in a database parameter, you don't find it with any of these tools. We had situations where they were running problems for over a year and all the vendors were not capable of finding a solution.
You need a total overview of an environment including virtualization, infra, databases, web servers, load balancers, etc. otherwise an APM tool will help if it is an APM problem, but if it is a configuration problem you will not find it.
Same with infrastructure, if I have for example old bios and the latest drivers I will get a lot of system interruptions. Most of the APM tools will not give you a solution, these are only a few examples, so you need to ask first what do you like to do with an APM tool or do I need more and is there a solution for resolving problems quickly and react proactively.
And yes I agree with Gartner but only if I like to monitor and need a sexy interface.
Search for a product comparison in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Academic Application Support at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
May 4, 2020
In the past we found Gartner useful in deciding where to start an investigation into APM but the magic Quadrant view is just not representative of capability. We still had to do the work to find a solution that works for us. One aspect we found annoying is that Gartner does not make a distinction between general APM tools and Technology management tools. As an example in our case: We have been using Dynatrace OneAgent for two year now due to the list of technologies that Dynatrace can monitor out of the box.
We also have Oracle Enterprise Monitoring (Oracle Cloud Control) which in my mind is not really an APM but rather a technology specific infrastructure management tool. It is great at managing patching and deployments but it does not have the APM functions that Dynatrace has. We are running an extensive technology stack that we depend on. Since we have a mix of Microsoft, Linux, Solaris and AIX servers using Dynatrace to get an application overview is important but so is using Oracle EM and Microsoft to manage the technologies.
CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Apr 30, 2020
I think that a major player in this space -eG Innovations - is missing. I have personally used the product to manage our server farms/cloud platforms since 2004 and could not be more pleased. Functionality, cost, ease of use, ROI are all magic quadrant worthy and they are a leader in root cause analysis. The #1 call is why is it slow? eG gives you the answer usually in four clicks. Huge value and huge ROI in my humble opinion.
Senior Account Executive and Channel Manager Poland & Baltics with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Apr 30, 2020
I cannot speak about all range of ranked products because I don't know them well enough. I can speak about current Broadcom offering. It seems that this platform is strenthening since next to new recently issued new release of APM Broadcom introduced new release of Apps Synthetic Monitor. Also part of APM license is currently module App Experience Analytics for user experience monitoring. More than that APM,ASM and App Exp Analytics are part broader of AIOps family next to Uunified Infrastructure Management , NetOps - Spectrum and ML solution called Data Operation Inteligence (DOI).All these solutions are beeing glued with automation mechanisms coming from Broadcom One Automation platform.
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: November 2025.
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...
If you ask what I think of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant, after more than 30 years of experience in mainframes, distributed environments, I would say look to a piece of software and not how to resolve performance problems in a multi-cloud environment.
To give you a few examples, if you have a performance problem and you have for example an APM tool, but the problem is because of a wrong setting in a database parameter, you don't find it with any of these tools. We had situations where they were running problems for over a year and all the vendors were not capable of finding a solution.
You need a total overview of an environment including virtualization, infra, databases, web servers, load balancers, etc. otherwise an APM tool will help if it is an APM problem, but if it is a configuration problem you will not find it.
Same with infrastructure, if I have for example old bios and the latest drivers I will get a lot of system interruptions. Most of the APM tools will not give you a solution, these are only a few examples, so you need to ask first what do you like to do with an APM tool or do I need more and is there a solution for resolving problems quickly and react proactively.
And yes I agree with Gartner but only if I like to monitor and need a sexy interface.
In the past we found Gartner useful in deciding where to start an investigation into APM but the magic Quadrant view is just not representative of capability. We still had to do the work to find a solution that works for us. One aspect we found annoying is that Gartner does not make a distinction between general APM tools and Technology management tools. As an example in our case: We have been using Dynatrace OneAgent for two year now due to the list of technologies that Dynatrace can monitor out of the box.
We also have Oracle Enterprise Monitoring (Oracle Cloud Control) which in my mind is not really an APM but rather a technology specific infrastructure management tool. It is great at managing patching and deployments but it does not have the APM functions that Dynatrace has. We are running an extensive technology stack that we depend on. Since we have a mix of Microsoft, Linux, Solaris and AIX servers using Dynatrace to get an application overview is important but so is using Oracle EM and Microsoft to manage the technologies.
I don't put too much thought into the Gartner reports anymore. The reviews are based on surveys from individuals provided to Gartner by the vendors.
I think that a major player in this space -eG Innovations - is missing. I have personally used the product to manage our server farms/cloud platforms since 2004 and could not be more pleased. Functionality, cost, ease of use, ROI are all magic quadrant worthy and they are a leader in root cause analysis. The #1 call is why is it slow? eG gives you the answer usually in four clicks. Huge value and huge ROI in my humble opinion.
I cannot speak about all range of ranked products because I don't know them well enough. I can speak about current Broadcom offering. It seems that this platform is strenthening since next to new recently issued new release of APM Broadcom introduced new release of Apps Synthetic Monitor. Also part of APM license is currently module App Experience Analytics for user experience monitoring. More than that APM,ASM and App Exp Analytics are part broader of AIOps family next to Uunified Infrastructure Management , NetOps - Spectrum and ML solution called Data Operation Inteligence (DOI).All these solutions are beeing glued with automation mechanisms coming from Broadcom One Automation platform.
I agree with Gartner list as shared