Business monitoring has pinpointed slow code and queries and now solves recurring client issues
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability for about two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is good; sometimes it cannot go as deep as I expected, but overall it is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution; IBM Instana Observability was the first one that we used.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
I think we are some kind of premium partners with this vendor.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
End-to-end monitoring has improved performance insights and supports faster issue resolution
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability for around one year, maybe six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
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.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used DataDog and Dynatrace, not switching but using three observability tools.
What was our ROI?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM Instana Observability, I evaluated Dynatrace as an option.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Real-time observability has improved performance monitoring and simplifies finding root causes
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM Instana Observability is to help with application performance monitoring. It helps me build understanding of my infrastructure use cases by showing which service belongs to which application and which services are dependent on which applications. It helps me get real-time monitoring of my infrastructure. I have used it to monitor IBM Power systems, VMware vSphere environments, and HMC. I have also used it to monitor the AWS cloud platform. It shows me a roadmap and indicates which services depend on other services.
What is most valuable?
The best features IBM Instana Observability offers include one-second granularity in that it goes down to specific services. For example, when my application is speaking to my database, it helps show me the particular services of the application and the specific services of the database that it is actually speaking to. It helps me build an observability map to show how traffic is flowing from the application down to the database and shows me each service component that is speaking to each other. Another key feature is its ability to build a live map, and it also shows real-time metrics and traces, the application response time, compute resources, and more.
The real-time metrics and observability map from IBM Instana Observability have helped me in my daily work. When I had to manually push the observability to see if I was trying to send real-time dumps to stress test my compute resource, there was a particular time I was trying to stress test it and it showed me that the particular resource was being affected as a result of the stress. IBM Instana Observability has impacted my organization positively in that it has helped me find out what the issue is in real-time because of its one-second granularity and its ability to identify issues as quickly as possible.
I have seen specific outcomes from IBM Instana Observability, such as help monitoring latency in microservices applications. It has helped me get real-time metrics around latency, IO disk utilization, network utilization, read-writes, bandwidth, and compute resources. It also provides traces for end-to-end request flow.
What needs improvement?
IBM Instana Observability can be improved by providing access to the materials. It is not open-source, and I have to be a partner to get more access to the products.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability's scalability is good in that I can still support more features and more container-based applications. When it started, it was basically more about on-premises services, but now I can use it to monitor container environments. More innovations are coming in every day, so it is scalable and more applications are becoming container-based.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support I experience with IBM Instana Observability is great. IBM support for Instana is responsive and helpful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I never used a different solution before.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with IBM Instana Observability. Time saved is a relevant metric because it helps me identify issues quickly. Rather than having to log into every server to see what is wrong with it, once I have the agent installed in my infrastructure, I just need it on one box. From there I can draw in other servers or my virtualized environment. It provides a single pane of glass from which I can see what is happening with all the servers in my infrastructure, which saves time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not have much experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing. I only worked with the product.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options before choosing IBM Instana Observability.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using IBM Instana Observability is that it gives real-time and automated visibility into the application and infrastructure. It helps detect issues faster and helps fix them quickly. I rate this product 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Elevated APM and Observability with Instana's Automation
What do you like best about the product?
I use IBM Instana primarily for its exceptional application performance monitoring and observability capabilities. I love how it automatically discovers services, maps dependencies, and tracks performance with minimal manual input, which saves me time and effort. One feature that truly stands out is its combination of automation, real-time observability, and intelligent analytics, delivering full observability into complex, modern environments seamlessly. This combination simplifies operations, accelerates root cause analysis, and clarifies even the most complex distributed systems. IBM Instana's automation eliminates the need for manual configuration, ensuring all services are instrumented immediately, which not only saves time but also ensures comprehensive monitoring. This real-time observability provides immediate insight into performance issues, making incident response faster and decision-making more confident. The ease of initial setup with IBM Instana is remarkable; deploying the agent required minimal configuration, and most services were detected in minutes. The onboarding process was effortless, supported by clear guidance and intuitive dashboards. Lastly, the platform’s integration capabilities are impressive, effortlessly pairing with CI/CD tools, logging platforms, ticketing systems, and cloud platforms, offering a versatile and unified monitoring solution.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some areas of IBM Instana could be improved, such as providing more flexibility in customizing dashboards and alert rules for complex use cases. The interface, while clean, can feel overwhelming for new users due to the amount of data being displayed. Pricing can also be on the higher side for smaller teams. Additionally, deeper integrations with certain niche tools would even make it more versatile.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Instana to gain real-time visibility and automate service discovery, solving visibility, troubleshooting, and alerting challenges. It enhances efficiency, accelerates root cause analysis, and maintains high performance with less manual effort.
Real-Time Monitoring with Easy Setup
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate IBM Instana for its real-time application monitoring capabilities, which allow me to gain invaluable visibility into my applications, microservices, APIs, and infrastructure. The distributed tracing feature is particularly effective, providing detailed insights into the interactions and performance across my systems, enabling me to quickly identify and address issues. I also value its infrastructure monitoring, which helps me maintain the health of my operating environment with minimal effort. The initial setup of IBM Instana was straightforward and easy as it requires minimal manual configuration, making the transition seamless and efficient, especially considering my team transitioned from Datadog to IBM Instana. Overall, these powerful capabilities and user-friendly setup significantly enhance the monitoring and management of our systems, which is why I would rate it a 9 out of 10 on the likelihood of recommending it to a friend or colleague.
What do you dislike about the product?
I prefer to have customizable dashboards in IBM Instana. The layout control is limited, which restricts my ability to tailor the monitoring view to my specific needs.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Instana for real-time visibility into applications, microservices, and APIs. It simplifies infra monitoring and offers efficient distributed tracing, making it easy to set up with minimal manual configuration.
Powerful Tool with Pricing Concerns
What do you like best about the product?
I find IBM Instana to be an incredibly developer-friendly observability tool. It's impressive how it automatically discovers service dependencies, policies, containers, and hosts in real time without the need for manual instrumentation or restarting services. This auto-discovery feature is a massive time-saver, particularly when compared to other tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog, which still require configuration. IBM Instana seamlessly identifies everything, which greatly simplifies the monitoring of my CI/CD workflows. The initial setup is notably easy with automatic agent installation and Kubernetes setup requiring almost no customization. Overall, it's a genuine ally for real-time monitoring, making my work far more efficient.
What do you dislike about the product?
The major issue I have with IBM Instana is its pricing, which is quite high. As we scale, the costs become even more prohibitive, especially considering it's priced per host or per agent. This can make it very expensive for managing large Kubernetes clusters with real workloads and a microservices architecture. Additionally, I find the user interface not particularly friendly for first-time users, which could be improved.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Instana for real-time monitoring and troubleshooting of modern applications, providing full-stack visibility and automated root cause analysis. It optimizes performance, reduces downtime, and is a developer-friendly observability tool saving time compared to other tools like Prometheus and Datadog.
Real-Time Monitoring Revolutionizes Microservice Management
What do you like best about the product?
I love how fast and automatic everything feels with IBM Instana. The real-time monitoring is honestly the standout for me. When something goes wrong, I do not have to wait for dashboards to refresh or keep hitting reload; the data updates almost instantly, and that alone has saved me a lot of time. I also really like the distributed tracing. It just works without me having to configure a bunch of stuff. Being able to follow a request across all our services in one clean view makes debugging so much easier. Another thing I appreciate is the automatic discovery. The moment something new gets deployed, IBM Instana picks it up, maps the dependencies, and starts showing metrics without me touching anything. The level of automation is a big deal when you are dealing a lot with moving parts. So yeah, the combination of real-time visibility, smart tracing, and the fact that it basically sets itself up is what stands out the most for me. These features mainly save me time and reduce guesswork. Real-time monitoring lets me spot problems the moment they happen. Distributed tracing shows exactly where a request slows down, so debugging is faster. And automatic discovery removes all the manual setups - IBM Instana just maps everything on its own. Together, they make it much easier to understand what's going on in the system without digging through a bunch of logs or dashboard.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing that I find could be improved with IBM Instana is the UI speed. While powerful, it sometimes feels a bit heavy, especially when loading large service maps. The alerting is generally effective, but it can be somewhat noisy if things spike for just a few seconds. Furthermore, the pricing can accumulate quickly as the environment grows. Overall, while IBM Instana works well, a lighter interface, smarter alert tuning, and a slightly simpler pricing structure would enhance its value.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Instana to quickly diagnose microservice issues with real-time monitoring and automatic discovery, reducing guesswork in debugging and saving time on manual setup.
Effortless Real-Time Monitoring with Powerful Insights
What do you like best about the product?
"Real-time monitoring with fast root-cause detection."
"Automatic service discovery and deep visibility."
"Easy troubleshooting through smart insights."
"Powerful observability with minimal setup effort."
"Accurate performance insights across services."
What do you dislike about the product?
"Dashboards can feel cluttered for new users."
"Pricing can be high for smaller teams or startups."
"Initial configuration requires careful tuning."
"Alert noise can occur without proper setup."
"UI performance slows down with large datasets."
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Instana has been instrumental in quickly identifying performance issues, which has helped us reduce downtime and enhance the reliability of our services. Its real-time visibility into microservices has made troubleshooting both faster and more precise. The platform automates service discovery and root-cause analysis, allowing us to save a considerable amount of engineering time. By unifying logs, metrics, and traces, Instana has improved observability throughout our environment. Additionally, it enables us to monitor application health proactively, helping to prevent incidents before they affect our users.
Fast, Reliable Monitoring with IBM Instana
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate IBM Instana because it is ideal for teams operating in dynamic, complex environments where conventional monitoring solutions struggle. Its speed, automation, and intelligent insights ensure that systems remain reliable and customers stay satisfied. I love that it provides real-time monitoring, automatically finds services, spots problems quickly, and scales easily across complex systems. This capability helps teams to work more efficiently, avoid downtime, and enhance the customer experience. I find it particularly useful because it makes monitoring easy by giving fast, automated insights to keep services operating smoothly. It is also highly recommended for its fast and reliable monitoring capabilities, which have earned it a 9 out of 10 in my recommendation.
What do you dislike about the product?
I found that pricing could be improved, suggesting that the cost structure may not be optimal for all users. The setup ease also has room for improvement, particularly for large organizations, which might require more extensive initial configurations. Additionally, the dashboard flexibility needs enhancement to better cater to varied user requirements.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Instana for real-time monitoring, which automates insights, spots problems fast, ensures system reliability, and enhances customer satisfaction. It scales across complex systems, helping us work quicker and avoid downtime.
Effortless Setup, Reliable Monitoring with AI Insights
What do you like best about the product?
I find IBM Instana's AI-based staging feature to be a standout element, allowing for easy installation on any platform, which is a very good feature. The simplicity of the setup is remarkable, with minimal effort required beyond providing credentials, and it quickly becomes operational. This ease of setup is complemented by its effective monitoring capabilities, as you can log in from various systems and view the monitoring dashboard effortlessly. It requires no additional configuration on virtual machines, which is particularly valuable. Overall, the installation process's ease and its quick readiness for use work exceptionally well for me.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find that IBM Instana's AI agent sometimes gives false alarms. This can be disruptive and lead to unnecessary inspections or actions based on inaccurate alerts. Improvement in the accuracy of these alerts would be beneficial.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
IBM Instana solves downtime issues by effectively monitoring our software applications and infrastructure. It offers AI-based staging, easy installation, and setup, making it operational across any platform, enhancing our monitoring efforts.
