IBM Instana vs. SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Instana
Score 8.9 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 host
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds® Hybrid Cloud Observability aims to provide a comprehensive, integrated, and full-stack solution designed to optimize performance, improve availability, and reduce remediation time by correlating data from across the IT ecosystem, including networks, servers, applications, databases, and more.
$5
per month node
Pricing
IBM InstanaSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
Editions & Modules
SaaS
$75
per month per host
Self-Hosted
$93.80
per month per host
Essentials
$5
per month per node
Advanced
$9
per month per node
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM InstanaSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is set per node, per month, and billing is annual. The prices listed are base prices that could increase depending on your environment. Please speak to a representative to get a quote.
More Pricing Information
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User Ratings
IBM InstanaSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(27 ratings)
7.9
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM InstanaSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
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.
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SolarWinds
- For small teams serving big organizations - it's a really simple tool to install and set up relatively quickly. - the new installer is also great - I don't have to understand what modules need to be installed; it's all streamlined. - The HCO Licensing allows you to run the Additional polling engines at a scale where the previous licensing model didn't. We can deploy APEs in locations now, which would not have been worth the investment in previously as there weren't enough devices in that location/region to spend the $$$$ on an APE License.
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Pros
IBM
  • 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
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SolarWinds
  • Automated dependency mapping is a big hit.
  • High availability is extremely simple to implement.
  • Simple to use and drill into issues.
  • Analysis of growth patterns driving the recommendation engine.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • 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.
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SolarWinds
  • Orion maps needs to be able to map to groups like atlas can by name
  • web tool set integration, atm this needs to be removed from the server to install Observability
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
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.
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SolarWinds
Solarwinds has the best overlap of the two others I've mentioned - the other two tools (Datadog and Dynatrace) are great in their own way but Solarwinds is just good at everything; if I had to pick one tool of the above, it would be Solarwinds for the compatibility and ease of use, the other tools are more focused on being great at certain things while Solarwinds is the jack of all trades.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • 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.
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SolarWinds
  • Provided the opportunity to offboard a number of monitoring tools that are no longer required.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability Screenshots

Screenshot of ITOM Executive DashboardScreenshot of Observability MapsScreenshot of Performance Analysis DashboardScreenshot of Application Alerting DashboardScreenshot of Network Path Analysis