Item: AppDynamics
Rating: 6
Author: Anton Smyslov

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Mainly it's used for application monitoring, as all APM tools. The scope in our case to track performance issues, whenever our app has any issues or downtimes.Moreover we setup alerts for the downtime prevention. And personally I use it for user experience monitoring by looking on the insights of customer journeys.

Pros and Cons

Root Cause Analysis
Monitoring
Impact Analysis

Not enough documentation
Cost
Could be complex for beginners

Return on Investment

Fast issue resolution
Transparency on the health of the app/website
Costs are high
Need a professional, who is familiar with the tool

Alternatives Considered

New Relic, Datadog and Amazon CloudWatch

Unfortunately, I wasn't in the company when the decision was made, hence can tell just because. What I can tell from my experience, it was not a bad choice and alternatives like New Relic or Datadog provide more or less similar functionality. In most cases the main reasons are costs and preference.

Key Insights

Do you think AppDynamics delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with AppDynamics's feature set?

Yes

Did AppDynamics live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of AppDynamics go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy AppDynamics again?

Other Software Used

Graylog, New Relic, Google Cloud Platform

Likelihood to Recommend

It goes without saying that it's not appropriate for low traffic apps. It is certainly not appropriate for beginners or users, who never faced any APM tool before. Also it's not suitable for small start ups, simply because of the costs (afaik) and there are many more cheaper alternatives.
From my experience, high traffic apps/websites will benefit a lot, e.g., e-commerce platforms, financial platforms or travel aggregators. In our particular case - we have quite extensive traffic and this system was just there.

Nice APM for a mid-big size company with a high traffic

Overall Satisfaction with AppDynamics