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IBM Instana vs. SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Instana

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AInstana, 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 Managed Virtual Server (MVS)

    SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® 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
    Essentials
    $18
    per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
    Standard
    $75
    per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
    Self-Hosted
    $93.80
    per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
    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 Details—Pricing 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
    Best Alternatives
    IBM InstanaSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
    Small Businesses
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Datadog
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Datadog
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Enterprises
    NetBrain Technologies
    Score9.2 out of 10
    NetBrain Technologies
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM InstanaSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (30 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM InstanaSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    With enterprise IT assets in a multitude of ecosystems, cloud infrastructures and sometimes still left stuck in a legacy on prem architecture, IBM Instana makes it easy to get the right data to drive development and / or DevSecOps processes with tangible input from the target environment itself.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • Can monitor application(s) and system(s) with very large throughput of transactions by the second ( it gets everything !!!)
    • Provide strong drill down for your applications and will tell you where the points of failure of an application's is ( servers , network , Databases , etc you name it )
    • Very easy to set up and have it up and running when using the SaaS solution. There's an on premise solution which works just as well but requires more effort and preparation from an infrastructure point of view for your teams to implement.
    • Continuously improve their features and their agents auto-update and keep up. All while not interfering with your applications.
    • Let's you create your own dashboards and visualizations that can be tailored for different kind of users with the data collected.
    • Create your own events and smart alerts so you can know on the spot if something is happening or is likely to happen that needs addressing on your applications / systems
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • It's very difficult to create custom dashboards, only a handful of scenarios can be visualized to dashboards.
    • Extracting information from Instana to further analysis into excel for example is something that can be improved. Using an API to get data is very limiting.
    • Open telemetry features which allow to send application data to Instana is not working as documented.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Can be complex to setup
    • Is strongest with network resources
    • Assumes a fairly large amount of base knowledge
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    IBM
    Instana has been able to fulfill our all requirement and provide out of box solution for multiple component like AWS RDS Monitoring and real time alerting setup on basis of that. it is also easy to integrate with other open-source alerting and monitoring tools which makes it easier to incorporate into our solutions
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    IBM
    IBM Instana totally alters our monitoring approach since it increases the stability of the system and simplifies the process of problem solving. And since it helps to lower the degree of alert exhaustion that we experience, it is a total game changer for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    - decent ease of use - good training materials - good documentation - acceptable level of expected knowledge
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    IBM
    IBM instana support team is good but when we ask them for support, they keep asking same thing again and again and mostly there is no solution
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    As a DevOps engineer, I've explored various Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools, including New Relic for real-time insights, AppDynamics for code-level visibility, Dynatrace for AI-driven monitoring, Datadog for comprehensive observability, Splunk for log management, Stackify Retrace for error tracking, and Raygun for crash reporting. Each tool offers distinct features, and the choice depends on specific use cases, technology stacks, and organizational needs. Thorough evaluations, considering factors like ease of use, integration capabilities, and scalability, help in selecting the most suitable APM solution for effective application monitoring in a DevOps environment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • Increase up time by early failure identification and performance optimization based on findings in Instana.
    • Enhance user experience by mapping user issues with backend failures
    • Automated actions help fixing known issues without human intervention
    • increase support team efficiency by root cause analysis which decrease the incident solving time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • one license requiring 1 PO to be raised
    • sharing costs between departments for monitoring under one platform using APEs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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