Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review The SMP suite is great at what it does, but it can be very complicated to learn how to get it to do what you want. It's a beast! However, when you learn how to the things you want to do, it comes as second nature and you complete them like they're supposed to be done that way. A lot of these things are done to be able to be completed a number of different ways. Take Patch Management, you can deploy patches automatically, via Jobs, or via the "Start Software Update Cycle Now" link in the SMP Agent!
Read full review Pros 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 Read full review Software deployment through policy Engage with customers for feedback Understands the future needs of customers Read full review Cons 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. Read full review The SMP solution is a beast. Each piece is complicated in itself let alone how everything ties together! There is plenty of documentation online on how to perform a specific task, but you need to pay attention to what VERSION the article is written for. I've been halfway through implementing something only to hit a roadblock since I'm running a newer version and the option the article says to click on doesn't exist anymore... Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review The decision to use Symantec was not my own but I believe it competes well against other products such as SCCM offering more features.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Being able to report on the majority of things you want all from one interface, makes it really easy to get the results you want. Because my employer didn't provide training, it took working with support, reading technical documentation, and just playing around on my own to learn how to do certain things. I've had a lot of help from the SMP Support staff and they're great people and very helpful! Read full review ScreenShots