IBM Instana vs. Request Metrics

I would recommend IBM Instana based on its strengths in automating application performance monitoring, dynamic tracing, and its ability to handle modern, containerized environments effectively. The automatic discovery and mapping feature, along with AI-powered anomaly detection, provide valuable insights for proactive issue resolution. However, I would consider factors such as the organization's specific technology stack, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Conducting a thorough evaluation, including a trial or proof of concept, would be essential to ensure that IBM Instana aligns with our unique needs and contributes positively to our technology and business objectives.

Incentivized

Request Metrics is great for small web development teams that want to make fast web applications. It was quick for us to get started and we could use the reports right away without having to read through documentation. If you just need to get some performance metrics, Request Metrics is perfect. It would not be so good for a larger team or a complex backend application as it is pretty limited in what it can measure.

• Collecting Kubernetes and Infra level logs and presenting in easy to understand visuals.
• Tracing the end-to-end journey of an event and also categorizing by technology and Endpoints
• Built-in and custom alerts help to monitor almost all of scenarios without much additional configuration.
• Ability to create Applications to logical group important flows

Incentivized

• Performance charts are really simple and easy for us to understand what is happening
• It was easy to get started and doesn't need administration or training
• It's affordable for our team
• It's fast

• I believe that the "live" option in monitoring does not truly update the status in real-time, thus I must manually update to feel comfortable.
• The call analysis tool might be improved, third-party resources are restricted, and the pricing is slightly more than competitors in comparable categories.

Incentivized

• I wish that it could also do uptime checking of the site
• There is not enough detail to drill into individual users

We chose IBM Instana for several reasons, and the most important one is that we didn't have to make changes in our code for nearly all of our applications for it to work. We are happy with the decision we made to use IBM Instana.

Incentivized

We also consider Speedcurve and Calibre for monitoring. Speedcurve was really nice, but the reports were slow. We had to wait a lot to get information. It was also out of our budget and would require extra justification to use it. Calibre was also nice, but the numbers were based on synthetic rather than real user performance. We felt that this wasn't as helpful for us.

• System down time is shortened as our ability to troubleshoot issues goes up.
• Potential downtime is stopped as we are able to slow down calls/ availability of calls in response to monitoring the dashboard.
• We are able to react to issues quickly through the smart alert system rather than manual checks.

Incentivized

• The launch of our project dashboard was much smoother and more successful because we could fix problems earlier
• It fit without our existing operations budget