Broadcom Application Delivery Analysis vs. IBM Instana vs. Splunk AppDynamics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Broadcom Application Delivery Analysis
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Broadcom Application Delivery Analysis is an application performance management tool designed to prove how well a network delivers applications to users with application delivery analysis of performance and availability of SLA measurements.N/A
IBM Instana
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Instana, an IBM company since the December 2020 acquisition, provides APM services for SOA, microservices, containerized applications and Kubernetes, and cloud native applications, as well as discovery and monitoring for IT assets.
$75
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Splunk AppDynamics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
AppDynamics is an APM and Mobile APM program, with application mapping and predictive capabilities. These capacities enable automated remediation and code-level diagnostics in real time. It can be deployed on-premise or as a SaaS.N/A
Pricing
Broadcom Application Delivery AnalysisIBM InstanaSplunk AppDynamics
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essentials
$20
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Standard
$75
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Self-Hosted
$93.80
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Broadcom Application Delivery AnalysisIBM InstanaSplunk AppDynamics
Free Trial
NoYesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Broadcom Application Delivery AnalysisIBM InstanaSplunk AppDynamics
Considered Multiple Products
Broadcom Application Delivery Analysis

No answer on this topic

IBM Instana
Chose IBM Instana
In my opinion, IBM Instana is great for infrastructure monitoring while AppDynamics is ahead in application monitoring
Chose IBM Instana
IBM Instana provides 60 seconds granularity whereas the other products use time series data
IBM Instana automatically detects the Service Endpoints which helps us trace all the calls pinpointed to service endpoints.
IBM Instana provides complete Auto Discovery with no …
Chose IBM Instana
Automatic application discovery with one agent installation instead of manual configuration for each application and multiply agents for each technology stack.

Automatic tracing for application calls without the need to add complex configuration and application instrumentation.
Chose IBM Instana
1- ROI is higher as the budget is much less than other
2- the way of calculating license is much better and fit us and this affect the ROI
3- the ease of implementation
Chose IBM Instana
Instana is better at call tracing than the previous ones and is cost effective as well. But AppD can do a better job at constructing customised metrics, alert profiles and alert conditions as well, but it misses a lot of important details while tracing a call. At the same time, …
Chose IBM Instana
Better value for the money. Easiest license model. Automatic features included to help installation of agents, continuos discovery of services, dependencies and components, update of agents, smart alerts, tracing without sampling and a low step learning curve
Chose IBM Instana
In terms of flexibility Instana wins by providing the auto-discovery functions that are very precious to my company since they allow monitoring and tracing of the application services even after big infrastructural changes. In this regars, competitors still require to hardwire …
Chose IBM Instana
Datadog provides a more comprehensive platform, including APM, infrastructure monitoring, and log management.
AppDynamics like IBM Instana offers end-to-end visibility, APM and business performance monitoring.
IBM Instana competitive advantage might lie in its automatic …
Splunk AppDynamics
Chose Splunk AppDynamics
AppDynamics is more a graphical representation of data, where as other tools like Splunk shows data in a table format using Query structure. AppDynamics helps is in analyzing system performance, but other tools just help to log the data and send alerts upon manual setting. …
Chose Splunk AppDynamics
We compared CA APM and the ease of use was day and night compared to AppDynamics. Just the presentation of information is very modularized and appears very clean in terms of data captured and the console has a flow to its presentation. CA APM uses the concept of buckets with …
Features
Broadcom Application Delivery AnalysisIBM InstanaSplunk AppDynamics
Application Performance Management
Comparison of Application Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
Broadcom Application Delivery Analysis
9.6
1 Ratings
21% above category average
IBM Instana
-
Ratings
Splunk AppDynamics
8.5
81 Ratings
9% above category average
Application monitoring9.01 Ratings00 Ratings9.081 Ratings
Database monitoring9.01 Ratings00 Ratings8.177 Ratings
Threshold alerts10.01 Ratings00 Ratings8.779 Ratings
Predictive capabilities10.01 Ratings00 Ratings8.079 Ratings
Application performance management console10.01 Ratings00 Ratings9.078 Ratings
Collaboration tools9.01 Ratings00 Ratings8.467 Ratings
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications9.01 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Application dependency mapping and thresholding10.01 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Virtualization monitoring10.01 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Server availability and performance monitoring10.01 Ratings00 Ratings8.751 Ratings
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting9.01 Ratings00 Ratings8.350 Ratings
IT Asset Discovery10.01 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
Broadcom Application Delivery AnalysisIBM InstanaSplunk AppDynamics
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(47 ratings)
8.0
(75 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
7.8
(12 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
8.1
(6 ratings)
User Testimonials
Broadcom Application Delivery AnalysisIBM InstanaSplunk AppDynamics
Likelihood to Recommend
Broadcom
Look no farther than this tool if you need an API testing solution that also includes service virtualization. This technology also forces you to move your testing lifecycle to earlier stages of development, which improves the overall SDLC.
Read full review
IBM
With enterprise IT assets in a multitude of ecosystems, cloud infrastructures and sometimes still left stuck in a legacy on prem architecture, IBM Instana makes it easy to get the right data to drive development and / or DevSecOps processes with tangible input from the target environment itself.
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Cisco
Platforms for software as a service (SaaS) frequently cater to a large number of users with a variety of needs and usage patterns. Because AppDynamics offers multi-tenant monitoring capabilities to track performance across various customer environments, it is a good choice for SaaS platform monitoring. SaaS providers can maximize resource utilization, proactively detect and resolve performance issues, and provide a dependable and consistent user experience for their clients with AppDynamics.
Read full review
Pros
Broadcom
  • This is an excellent tool for implementing Service virtualization in your own and/or third-party web services. This ensures that our automation and performance test environments are always available and consistent.
  • This application also aids in the setup and maintenance of test data, which is an important component of test automation.
Read full review
IBM
  • Can monitor application(s) and system(s) with very large throughput of transactions by the second ( it gets everything !!!)
  • Provide strong drill down for your applications and will tell you where the points of failure of an application's is ( servers , network , Databases , etc you name it )
  • Very easy to set up and have it up and running when using the SaaS solution. There's an on premise solution which works just as well but requires more effort and preparation from an infrastructure point of view for your teams to implement.
  • Continuously improve their features and their agents auto-update and keep up. All while not interfering with your applications.
  • Let's you create your own dashboards and visualizations that can be tailored for different kind of users with the data collected.
  • Create your own events and smart alerts so you can know on the spot if something is happening or is likely to happen that needs addressing on your applications / systems
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Cisco
  • Business Transaction Monitoring is one of its signature strengths. This represents a major differentiator from generic infrastructure monitoring tools.
  • AI‑driven anomaly detection and intelligent alerting provide a significant advantage over traditional monitoring.
  • When combined with Splunk AppDynamics, full‑stack observability becomes a key part of Cisco/Splunk’s unified observability strategy.
Read full review
Cons
Broadcom
  • This tool has a license fee and is not free. Many open-source tools provide free API testing solutions, therefore turning some of this tool's features open-source might be beneficial.
  • The tool's load testing component is not integrated and instead relies on the free Blaze meter.
Read full review
IBM
  • It's very difficult to create custom dashboards, only a handful of scenarios can be visualized to dashboards.
  • Extracting information from Instana to further analysis into excel for example is something that can be improved. Using an API to get data is very limiting.
  • Open telemetry features which allow to send application data to Instana is not working as documented.
Read full review
Cisco
  • AppDynamics may enhance its capacity to track transactions through complex distributed systems and microservices, offering a more comprehensive understanding of application behavior.
  • Better search and filtering capabilities would enable engineers to quickly obtain deeper context by drilling down into individual data points.
  • AppDynamics might be more widely available to engineers and organizations if it offered subscription plans or tiered pricing options.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
Instana has been able to fulfill our all requirement and provide out of box solution for multiple component like AWS RDS Monitoring and real time alerting setup on basis of that. it is also easy to integrate with other open-source alerting and monitoring tools which makes it easier to incorporate into our solutions
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Cisco
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate our likelihood to renew Splunk AppDynamics as a 10. Our leadership is fully committed to the State of Indiana’s Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Program, which has become a national leader within the SLED (State, Local, and Education) vertical. AppDynamics plays a critical role in our ability to deliver reliable, high-performing digital services to citizens and stakeholders. Its capabilities align closely with our strategic goals around operational excellence, proactive incident management, and data-driven decision-making, making it an indispensable part of our technology ecosystem.
Read full review
Usability
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM Instana totally alters our monitoring approach since it increases the stability of the system and simplifies the process of problem solving. And since it helps to lower the degree of alert exhaustion that we experience, it is a total game changer for us.
Read full review
Cisco
Since I'm a regular user of appD and have been using it for the last 3 years, I believe it does pretty well for what it's designed to do. It works well for monitoring and tracking issues, working on load testing - checking traffic, request failure, and improving, so overall I'm satisfied, and it really helped a lot to improve our application overall, so happy to review and rate it.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
No answers on this topic
Cisco
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the availability of Splunk AppDynamics as a 9. Overall, the platform has proven to be highly reliable and is available when we need it. It consistently supports our monitoring and performance management needs across critical applications and infrastructure. There have been occasional issues with platform availability, such as intermittent application errors or brief unplanned outages. However, these instances have been infrequent and typically resolved quickly, minimizing any significant impact on operations. The stability and uptime of the platform have met our expectations, and we continue to rely on it as a core component of our APM strategy.
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Performance
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
No answers on this topic
Cisco
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the performance of Splunk AppDynamics as a 6. While the platform generally delivers the expected functionality, we’ve experienced periodic slowness—particularly with page loads and report generation. These performance issues can be frustrating, especially when trying to quickly access critical data during incident response or analysis. One contributing factor may be our use of a shared controller environment with other enterprises, which can introduce resource contention and impact overall responsiveness. In some cases, this has led to delays in accessing dashboards or completing complex queries. Despite these challenges, the platform remains a valuable tool, and we’re exploring options to improve performance, including potential changes to our deployment model and support agreements.
Read full review
Support Rating
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM instana support team is good but when we ask them for support, they keep asking same thing again and again and mostly there is no solution
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Cisco
AppDynamics has its own community site that includes forums and a knowledge base. On the forums, you can converse with other members of the community and ask technical questions as you have them. Though this forum isn’t filled with people there are active members for you to gain some valuable insights.
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Online Training
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
No answers on this topic
Cisco
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the online training for Splunk AppDynamics as a 7. The training was generally acceptable and covered the core concepts and functionality of the platform. However, there were some challenges with communication during sessions—particularly around clarity and instructor engagement—which occasionally made it difficult to fully grasp certain topics. Additionally, the training could benefit from being more focused and tailored to specific roles or use cases. A more structured approach with clearer learning paths and practical, hands-on examples would enhance the overall effectiveness and help users apply the knowledge more confidently in real-world scenarios.
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Implementation Rating
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
No answers on this topic
Cisco
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate our satisfaction with the implementation of Splunk AppDynamics as a 9. The deployment process was smooth and well-coordinated, thanks to the collaborative efforts between Cisco Professional Services, our internal business stakeholders, and agency technical teams. Key Insights from the Implementation: Cross-functional Collaboration Was Critical: Engaging both technical and business teams early in the process ensured that the platform was configured to meet a wide range of operational and strategic needs. Value of Expert Guidance: Cisco’s Professional Services provided invaluable expertise, helping us navigate complex configurations and tailor the solution to our environment. Their involvement accelerated deployment and ensured best practices were followed. Importance of Planning and Communication: A well-defined implementation roadmap and regular communication across teams helped us stay aligned, manage expectations, and address challenges proactively. Scalable Architecture: We designed the implementation with scalability in mind, allowing us to expand usage across agencies and applications without major rework. Overall, the implementation laid a strong foundation for our APM program and positioned us for long-term success.
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Alternatives Considered
Broadcom
Along with the Parasoft SOA tool, it is unquestionably among the top leaders in API testing and virtualization. Many open-source API testing libraries are free, including Rest Assured, Karate, and even Postman and SOAP UI, which goes against CA.
Read full review
IBM
As a DevOps engineer, I've explored various Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools, including New Relic for real-time insights, AppDynamics for code-level visibility, Dynatrace for AI-driven monitoring, Datadog for comprehensive observability, Splunk for log management, Stackify Retrace for error tracking, and Raygun for crash reporting. Each tool offers distinct features, and the choice depends on specific use cases, technology stacks, and organizational needs. Thorough evaluations, considering factors like ease of use, integration capabilities, and scalability, help in selecting the most suitable APM solution for effective application monitoring in a DevOps environment.
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Cisco
It is distinguished from these programs because the platform provides visualizations of application processes, showing the interplay between various parts and services. Understanding the architecture of complicated apps and finding their weak spots is greatly aided by this.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
No answers on this topic
Cisco
While the overall value of the Splunk AppDynamics platforms is strong, the pricing structure and contract terms can be complex and difficult to navigate. Unit pricing, licensing tiers, and billing frequency are not always intuitive, which can make it challenging to align purchases with the State’s evolving needs. I rely heavily on our Account Manager to help interpret and tailor the licensing model to our specific requirements. Their support has been invaluable in ensuring we make informed decisions. The most impactful change would be to simplify the licensing and pricing model. Clearer documentation, more transparent pricing tiers, and streamlined purchasing processes would significantly improve the experience and reduce administrative overhead.
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Scalability
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
No answers on this topic
Cisco
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the overall scalability of Splunk AppDynamics as a 7. The platform is designed to support enterprise-wide deployments across multiple departments and sites, and it performs well in large-scale environments. Its architecture allows for horizontal scaling and supports a wide range of application types and infrastructures. However, the agent management and deployment process can be complex and time-consuming, especially when onboarding a large number of applications or systems. Coordinating agent installation, configuration, and updates across diverse environments requires careful planning and often significant manual effort. Streamlining these processes—perhaps through more centralized management tools or automation—would enhance scalability and reduce operational overhead. Despite these challenges, once deployed, AppDynamics scales effectively and provides consistent performance and visibility across the enterprise.
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Professional Services
Broadcom
No answers on this topic
IBM
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Our experience with the professional services team supporting Splunk AppDynamics has been exceptional. They demonstrated deep technical expertise, strong collaboration skills, and a clear understanding of our business objectives. Their guidance was instrumental in the successful implementation of our APM program and platform integration. The rating of 9 reflects our high level of satisfaction, with a small margin left to acknowledge that continuous improvement is always possible. Overall, their support has been a key factor in the success of our deployment.
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Return on Investment
Broadcom
  • In our group, this instrument produced a high return on investment. We saw a considerable reduction in downtime in our test environments thanks to service virtualization.
  • In addition, service virtualization reduces the expenses of interacting with third-party services, which is common in low-cost contexts.
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IBM
  • Increase up time by early failure identification and performance optimization based on findings in Instana.
  • Enhance user experience by mapping user issues with backend failures
  • Automated actions help fixing known issues without human intervention
  • increase support team efficiency by root cause analysis which decrease the incident solving time
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Cisco
  • Through the identification of performance bottlenecks and efficient resource allocation, AppDynamics has contributed to cost savings and resource optimization. This has a direct positive impact on our overall return on investment.
  • While AppDynamics' numerous capabilities help maximize efficiency, they may place a strain on your system. Organizations with limited infrastructure capacity may have difficulties and therefore give this serious thought before implementing it.
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