Catchpoint vs. Splunk Enterprise

Proactive Website and API performance testing, Synthetic monitoring, and third-party integration are where Catchpoint is best suited. Catchpoint is less appropriate in Deep Application Performance monitoring, debugging complex user journeys in real-time, Small businesses, and Mobile app performance monitoring. These are the scenarios where I find Catchpoint is well-suited and scenarios where it is less appropriate.

Incentivized

Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.

Incentivized

• Catchpoint Synthetics: We create our synthetic monitoring using catchpoint. Creating the synthetics monitors are easy and requires basic knowledge on selenium and javascript. It allows you to run the test from external(backbone) and internal enterprise nodes. The screenshot and filmstrip feature is an add-on along with various customisations. Once created, It provides a detailed insight of each request that is involved in the application flow which helps us in addressing the issue at the request level.
• Catchpoint API Test: This is another kind of test which we have explored in our organisation. This has helped us to maintain the health check of our APIs and also we have utilised it for a variety of our use cases.
• Catchpoint Dashboard: This is our one-stop shop for all our monitors. It has multiple widgets that displays various application performance metrics. We use this feature immensely and it is of great value to the business.
• Catchpoint UI: It is very user friendly and with basic introduction anyone can just get started with it.

Incentivized

• Real-time + Scheduled alerts - i-e you can set up alerts which are actively monitoring your logs
• Pretty good response time for search results. With our key/value logging, Splunk makes it blazing fast to query the data.
• Dashboards provide insights into historical data
• Love how Splunk indexes all of the data and provides keys to search on

Incentivized

• The ability to monitor the Catchpoint nodes with the ability to setup a take a recovery action based on specific criteria
• The ability to tell us when we are at X% capacity so that we better plan or budget for increasing the "capacity" of the Catchpoint nodes before we get to an overloaded state. The capacity utilization graph is not a reliable indicator for this metric. How can the capacity utilization rate get above 100%, it does not make sense

Incentivized

• At times some queries can run slowly if indices are not on a portion of the query you use.
• Setup time initially can be difficult if your logs aren't stored in common locations or in a common way to write the log.
• Ability to ingest logs from different locations without having to change code to put logs in a certain place (pro and con).
• Searches can be a bit more difficult to look through if your log isn't pulled in a manner that is easy to read through splunk.

Incentivized

we are heavily dependent catchpoint system for the following functions * Detect end-user availability/performance-related problems * Ensures
service level objectives (SLO) are met, that prevents service level
agreement (SLA) breaches * Identify and understand the cause of any
network connectivity or application level issue * Improves the
availability and response time service levels

Incentivized

We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.

It's hard to find the functionalities that I am looking for in the application. Even if I did something in the past, after a time I have to re-learn again where the functionalities are. This is a powerful tool, but not user-friendly. Texts in the buttons and menus are not always meaningful or easily comprehensible.

Incentivized

You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.

Incentivized

When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.

Incentivized

The customer support is fantastic as they keep you updated and follow up even though we may not even follow up. Make sure they send a communication so that we remain updated. They value engineers who will get on a call with you to understand any requirement we have on any test, and they bring in the best developers on call.

Incentivized

Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.

Incentivized

The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.

very easy to implement as the product is user-friendly

Incentivized

Smooth without too many major issues.

Incentivized

Smart Bear Foglight Dynatrace CEM Catchpoint: I have used many synthetic monitoring products. Honestly, there are no big differences in features among all the products listed above or that I have used before. Probably, price and support might play big roles in selecting the products. I do not know the prices of these products.

Incentivized

I wanted to learn a new language that I can quickly master and implement. Splunk is easy, fun to use and best of all, it can be developed in hours not days or weeks. Splunk is fundamentally a programming language that is minimal but yet powerful enough to collect, analyze and visualize data.

Incentivized

Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome

• The ROI has been very good with this product, we have seen multiple folds of time-saving by using this tool and preempting any risk associated with non-performant times of our server, hence increasing the team's capability to respond to certain downtime scenarios and the level of action that needs to be taken.
• Catchpoint’s observability solution makes it easier to have global visibility of our website's performance and to fix issues quicker
• I don't have any negatives, every good product comes with a cost, that is the fact but the Catchpoint tool has ultimately improved our ROI much beyond the changes that we pay

Incentivized

• Overall very positive. It has provided visibility to what is going on within our network.
• One drawback is the time it takes to get up to speed with the application, but this is up to the user, and Splunk education is excellent.
• In my field, IT Security, there are few other friends to have in your back pocket better than Splunk. They are just that good.

Incentivized