IBM Instana Observability PayPerUse (with 14-day free trial)

I usually recommend IBM Instana Observability  for companies in the academic environment, as I have been working in a consultancy company for the last three years, where one of our customers built teaching environments with many connections. I cannot remember the name, but it is in the academic space.

Additionally, I have presented the features and characteristics of IBM Instana Observability  to many customers here in Spain, including BBVA, Consum, a retail company, and Telefónica. My role involved presentations and proof of concepts rather than installation and operation. With the academic-oriented company, I solved some problems related to installation, configuration, and recommendations.

Using IBM Instana Observability  for non-distributed applications does not seem sensible because if an application is housed on a single server, it falls under traditional monitoring systems where you simply check CPU, storage, I/O, and memory. For that, you do not need IBM Instana Observability . The real strength of IBM Instana Observability lies in observing distributed applications, identifying where failures happen across services interconnected on multiple servers.

The impact of IBM Instana Observability on collaboration between development and operations teams is essential because it allows operations to identify incidents before they occur. This capability impresses customers greatly because operations have wide visibility and can pinpoint exactly where issues arise in the system.

This aspect creates a little pressure on development teams because operations can now predict system failures. They used to know when the system was failing, but with IBM Instana Observability, they can see potential failures beforehand.

This advantage enables them to swiftly identify breaking points in the system, communicate effectively with the development team, and enhance overall effectiveness rather than waiting until problems arise.

From my perspective, IBM Instana Observability is quite technical. Compared to some competitors, it offers an abundance of information about system performance but lacks planning or capacity planning information. You do not receive reports with recommendations; instead, it provides only the technical layer.

Other companies, like Compuware, give more functional information about your environment, while IBM Instana Observability provides only limited functional insights. This means you often must interpret the data independently. Unlike other tools that can offer recommendations to save resources or costs, IBM Instana Observability does not provide that functionality.

On the bright side, it is much more affordable than some other options, but it isn't complete. If you want full functionality with IBM Instana Observability, you also need to acquire other products for additional insights in monitoring areas, such as networking monitoring tools or similar products. For instance, we often recommend Turbonomic , which provides complementary insights.

One potential feature that could improve IBM Instana Observability is the ability to translate KPIs into monetary terms. It would be interesting to have a product that integrates IBM Instana Observability with Turbonomic , as Turbonomic can utilize data from IBM Instana Observability to inform you about unnecessary spending and suggest whether you can consolidate servers or optimize containers for quicker response times. Implementing some level of simulation or capacity planning would greatly enhance the current capabilities of IBM Instana Observability.

I have been dealing with IBM Instana Observability for the most two years; it is not a new product, but it is a new addition to the IBM portfolio since IBM purchased it three or four years ago.

In general, we did have experiences where a significant issue arose during implementation, often involving compatibility problems with JavaScript libraries used by IBM Instana Observability. When that happens, I report it to IBM, and since I still have contacts there, it is easy for me to follow up on incidents.

I did not remember that Dynatrace  is the tool from Compuware until now. Dynatrace  is much more comprehensive, and when I visited some customers, they mentioned that while IBM Instana Observability works adequately, they already have Dynatrace, which provides extensive monitoring and a wealth of information, along with recommendations and various functional parameters. However, Dynatrace is also considerably more expensive.

The installation does not take too much time because it operates on the cloud. However, it depends on what you need to observe or monitor. What I do is provide recommendations to customers and solve problems, most of which relate to the user interface. IBM Instana Observability works quite well, especially for monitoring containers and Kubernetes  environments.

The most significant metric I track to assess IBM Instana Observability's effectiveness in reducing mean time to resolution is time. You always want your systems to respond promptly. Another critical metric is cost; IBM Instana Observability can highlight when there are too many or too few resources allocated for a task. For example, in a Kubernetes  environment with containers, it is important to investigate whether more resources or containers are used than necessary. After adjusting the system for optimal resource allocation, the focus shifts back to measuring time, as I aim for the best response times with the fewest resources.

I would evaluate the implementation process of IBM Instana Observability as not complex at all because you pay the license, and IBM takes care of everything. The only problem we occasionally face, due to its nature as a cloud product, is that the monitoring environment or operating system you use can sometimes lead to issues with the user interface or with specific KPIs you want to see.

I know IBM products because I have been working for IBM for 18 years, so I am familiar with them, but obviously, it is very difficult to know each product. In the monitoring area, now called observability, I know IBM Instana Observability and IBM SevOne  because they are part of the observability portfolio, but I have not been working with these products intensively. However, I can learn fast because I have been working for such a long time at IBM, learning new products and portfolios every year.

The key is knowing how to interpret the performance metrics and responding accordingly.

To be honest, I have not used IBM Instana Observability's automated discovery feature. That is a functionality that comes by default as I understand it, so when you activate it, you see all the elements in your environment, but as I mentioned earlier, I am not an expert in all the features of IBM Instana Observability.

As for the insights gained from IBM Instana Observability's AI-powered analytics for predicting potential application disruptions, I do not have much to say because the installations I managed have been quite straightforward. We monitored several servers, some containers, and cloud services, but the service portfolio we monitored was relatively simple. From my understanding, the AI is already embedded in IBM Instana Observability, so you do not need to do much more.

I would rate this product an 8.5 overall.

I typically use IBM Instana Observability  to monitor infrastructure and application. IBM Instana Observability  shows what the issue is, what the incident is, and what the problem is. For example, it can identify if a server is at almost full storage capacity or if a Kubernetes  cluster service is going down.

I use IBM Instana Observability  for health checks, such as uptime service monitoring. IBM Instana Observability  has synthetic monitoring capabilities that check if an endpoint is still up or going down and display the latency.

In my experience, the best features IBM Instana Observability offers are the APM trace. I believe it is the best option because you install one agent and IBM Instana Observability has a discovery agent to find the other services inside the server. I have tried DataDog and Signals, and IBM Instana Observability is superior.

The tracing feature of IBM Instana Observability stands out for me because the dashboard and UI are easy to view. You can see which service has a problem, what the point of slowness is, where it is slow, and what the root cause is. For example, the dashboard can identify that a database query is slow.

IBM Instana Observability has had a very positive impact on my organization because it shortens the time required to find the root cause when we have a problem. IBM Instana Observability pinpoints the exact issue. With multiple servers and multiple applications, IBM Instana Observability allows us to resolve issues very quickly because we immediately know that a disk is full, the storage is full, or the database is down. I think we can resolve issues in one hour.

The newest feature I saw in IBM Instana Observability is the integration with IBM Console to check for vulnerabilities, and it integrates generative AI. IBM Instana Observability checks the cost for using the AI, including how many tokens are used.

IBM Instana Observability can be improved because the current software is quite large with many components in a single software package. If you need to install the IBM Instana Observability core backend, it uses a large scale. An improvement would be to reduce the capacity required for installation.

The pricing for IBM Instana Observability is something I would address in terms of needed improvements because it is expensive. I understand it is easy and good to use, but I think it is expensive for a small to medium-sized enterprise to use.

I have been using IBM Instana Observability for two years.

IBM Instana Observability is stable.

IBM Instana Observability's scalability is good because the platform uses containers, which makes it scalable.

IBM Instana Observability has ticket support available.

I have seen a return on investment with IBM Instana Observability, particularly in the time saved. IBM Instana Observability can quickly reduce the time to resolve problems from one day to one hour.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Instana Observability shows it is expensive for the pricing and licensing. IBM Instana Observability counts per server, which they call MVS.

Before choosing IBM Instana Observability, I evaluated other options including DataDog.

My main use case for IBM Instana Observability  is running agents on a host to monitor infrastructure and applications.

I have a specific example of how I use IBM Instana Observability  to monitor my infrastructure. When I installed IBM Instana Observability  backend, I installed some IBM Instana Observability  agents on the VMs that were going to be monitored and then I followed the monitoring on the infrastructure tab on the IBM Instana Observability backend.

The best features IBM Instana Observability offers are business monitoring by far.

I can tell you more about what I appreciate about the business monitoring capabilities. It can go deeper into the application, especially because we are using a lot of IBM BAW software, and it has helped us identify what code in the application or what query is taking a long time or consuming resources incorrectly.

Custom dashboards are also a good feature because we can customize them to our needs and we can discuss them with clients to better demonstrate how IBM Instana Observability works and helps them.

IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted our organization because it has helped us solve many problems and sell some products. For example, a client had a problem recurring every Thursday, and they did not know what the problem was. When we installed IBM Instana Observability and got it running, we easily monitored and found what was causing the issue on that specific day.

I think it would be great if IBM Instana Observability stayed focused on on-premise environments because not every client has implemented cloud environments and infrastructure yet.

I have been using IBM Instana Observability for about two years now.

IBM Instana Observability is stable.

Its scalability is very good, but I am not certain what you mean by scalability.

I did not have any challenges because the IBM documentation is well explained and we can use that documentation for scalability purposes. We did not have many problems.

Customer support is good; sometimes it cannot go as deep as I expected, but overall it is good.

I did not previously use a different solution; IBM Instana Observability was the first one that we used.

I did not evaluate other options because we are clients with IBM and we are premium partners, and this solution was the best for us by all means.

I think we are some kind of premium partners with this vendor.

I think the pricing is good and I do not think it is high. The bundle when you need to buy another 10 licenses for host agents and for VMware agents is good because we can monitor and see IBM Instana Observability functionality. You can see IBM Instana Observability backend functionalities immediately because when you have 10 licenses, you for sure have 10 VMs where you can monitor or you can set up the agent.

My advice to others looking into using IBM Instana Observability is to use it. Do not worry or take second guesses; it is a good platform. I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for IBM Instana Observability  is for end-to-end monitoring from the application side, and also from the infrastructure and log monitoring.

For end-to-end monitoring in my work, I use IBM Instana Observability  to monitor the transaction of application services and know the performance of the request latency and error rate. And for the infrastructure, I also monitor the utilization of CPU, memory, disk, and network.

The best features IBM Instana Observability  offers right now include application monitoring and APM  because they are very insightful for monitoring the performance of application services.

The application monitoring feature of IBM Instana Observability stands out for me because the analysis of the metrics and telemetry provides a lot of data, making it very helpful for the operational side.

IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted my organization because basically our company is in IT consulting, and our customers have a use case for monitoring, which creates a lot of demand for monitoring tools.

IBM Instana Observability can be improved by simplifying the installation process, reducing the number of manual steps and dependencies, especially for hybrid, on-premise environments.

I think the Instana team can improve the recommendation feature so that the tool is not only for identifying issues but can also give recommendations.

I have been using IBM Instana Observability for around one year, maybe six months.

IBM Instana Observability is stable.

IBM Instana Observability demonstrates scalability, especially in dynamic, distributed environments such as microservices and Kubernetes  and can handle growth, service, and workload efficiently with minimal performance impact.

I think the customer support for IBM Instana Observability is good.

My experience with IBM Instana Observability's customer support has been very helpful and responsive because they have a minimum SLA to support us if we have a problem with IBM Instana Observability.

I have used DataDog and Dynatrace , not switching but using three observability tools.

If we are using IBM Instana Observability, we can save money because first, the pricing is very affordable. Second, if we have a monitoring tool, we can save our transactions and see the performance of the application using MTTR and MTTD. We can also use metrics such as request latency and error to know the performance of our application transactions.

I think the cost of IBM Instana Observability is cheaper.

I find the cost of IBM Instana Observability to be very affordable compared to competitors because the pricing mechanism is based on the host that we monitor, unlike other competitors such as DataDog and Dynatrace , whose pricing is based on other factors. IBM Instana Observability offers an all-in-one package that allows us to calculate with just one host for the hosts we want to monitor, including infrastructure, application, real-user monitoring, and logs.

Before choosing IBM Instana Observability, I evaluated Dynatrace as an option.

I think maybe our customers need IBM Instana Observability for monitoring the IBM platform, such as from AS/400 IBM.

I think for the error rate on the application side, using IBM Instana Observability helps our customers to know the root cause that triggers a failed request or transaction.

For others looking into using IBM Instana Observability, I would recommend that they consider adding a recommendation feature to IBM Instana Observability.

My additional thought about IBM Instana Observability is that my concern for the future is only that IBM Instana Observability can add a feature for correlation and recommendations.

The interview was very good and there's nothing I would change for the future. I would rate this review an 8.