AppDynamics Serverless APM for AWS Lambda

I have been using Splunk AppDynamics  for almost four to five years now.

My main use case for Splunk AppDynamics  was initially a very limited requirement for monitoring the performance of different applications we have, aiming to achieve real-time full stack observability of all platforms and their impact on our business productivity and client requirements. Currently, we are using it widely for innovating agricultural use cases, actively automating our supply chain in agriculture, utilizing IoT sensor networks, and securing our precision farming platforms. These tools handle massive amounts of machine-generated data within the Indian agricultural ecosystem, and Splunk AppDynamics has proven its worth every year.

A specific example of using Splunk AppDynamics in one of our agriculture projects relates to optimizing crop yields and preventing equipment downtime in farm mechanization. Through Splunk Apps, we streamline our extensive sensor networks, which are crucial for precision agriculture. Soil moisture, temperature, and humidity must be regulated, as failure to do so can lead to disastrous outcomes, and Splunk AppDynamics monitors these conditions twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It aggregates data, tracks environmental conditions, and provides customized insights tailored to specific soil and states, achieving prediction accuracy of approximately ninety-five to ninety-nine percent.

Furthermore, we monitor our digital dashboards and mobile apps for controlling irrigation systems and tracking crop health, which helps ensure compliance with food control environmental regulations mandated by the CAG audit in India, making Splunk AppDynamics truly a savior for our organization.

I have additional insights into our main use cases with Splunk AppDynamics. Previously, we lagged in real-time data insights and observability of farmers' applications. Earlier, we experienced reporting and log analytics issues, especially regarding security. However, since implementing Splunk AppDynamics, we are effectively managing farm-level execution with end-to-end operational visibility. There is no lag in data information travel, ensuring seamless data logs from farm to lab. This transparency has fostered client confidence and satisfaction, creating a win-win situation for both users and implementers.

In terms of features, Splunk AppDynamics excels in application performance monitoring, competing favorably with platforms like Datadog  and New Relic . It stands out for tracking end-to-end user requests across various environments, which previously posed challenges in mapping and fetching data. The usability and navigability are also noteworthy; business users provide positive feedback about the platform's accessibility without needing extensive training. The automated security features have helped protect our significant cloud investment from threats, identifying potential risks and providing remediation options, making it a reliable choice for our organization's needs.

All the features I highlighted are vital, but performance metrics particularly stand out as they aid in troubleshooting processes by allowing us to identify root causes effectively. This capability ensures recurring issues are addressed at their source. Additionally, we now correlate performance metrics with business outcomes, providing clear visualizations. The deployment of Splunk AppDynamics was smooth and quick, successfully integrating into our business processes and standard operating procedures within a fifteen-day period, which we appreciate.

Splunk AppDynamics positively impacts our organization by allowing real-time performance monitoring, enabling us to optimize various business applications and visibly enhance their performance. We realized the extensive market demand for compliance and governance, especially given potential IoT threats we encountered. Splunk AppDynamics helps monitor performance, diagnose root causes, and streamline the use of complex software applications, improving the experience for users who manage different applications. Client satisfaction has also significantly increased as the application functions seamlessly on both web and mobile platforms, mapping the complete user journey. This streamlined approach in our precision farming sector has resulted in substantial cost savings—approximately one to two crore this year—through effective monitoring.

Regarding areas for improvement, I have not encountered any significant issues with the features we have tested from Splunk AppDynamics; however, we do believe their twenty-four hour, seven days a week chat support could be enhanced and integrated with phone and email options. The automated chat system often fails to resolve issues promptly in a single interaction, which could improve customer experience and support.

To ensure continued improvement, real-time data insights and performance-related dashboard reporting must strengthen decision-making processes. We have requested an anomaly detection dashboard for identifying potential threats, which is vital but has yet to materialize. Increasing dashboard visibility and analytics would significantly benefit our operations.

Splunk AppDynamics proves stable; we have not experienced any outages or significant issues. While minor downtimes may occur, particularly at night, the app remains reliable and effective, even on weekends.

Its scalability has been impressive, accommodating our organization's growth as we expand digital applications and leverage IoT for supply chain management. Our integration of Splunk AppDynamics aids in generating valuable data insights and allows proactive troubleshooting on a larger scale, enhancing operational effectiveness in agriculture.

Customer support from Splunk AppDynamics is fair but requires enhancements in ticket resolution times. We often encounter long wait times for issue resolution, highlighting a need for improved service efficiency as our business volume grows.

Before adopting Splunk AppDynamics, we used Datadog  for several years, initially seen as a strong market player. However, the high costs prompted us to search for more affordable solutions, leading us to switch.

The deployment of Splunk AppDynamics was smooth and quick, successfully integrating into our business processes and standard operating procedures within a fifteen-day period, which we appreciate.

In evaluating options before choosing Splunk AppDynamics, we considered New Relic  and tested Datadog. The performance consistency and favorable peer feedback heavily influenced our decision in favor of Splunk AppDynamics.

My advice for those considering Splunk AppDynamics is to actively explore its capabilities. It stands out from other platforms, providing real-time monitoring and significant data insights. I urge organizations, particularly in agriculture, to leverage the potential of Splunk AppDynamics to empower their operations further. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I work for a supply chain SaaS organization, and Blue Yonder is a global supply chain SaaS company that provides supply chain management solutions for global enterprise customers. For handling enterprise-class customers, we definitely need an enterprise-class product rather than an open-source observability or log management solution. That is why we picked Splunk AppDynamics  as our strategic observability and log management solution, and the deployment was completed in a couple of weeks with the help of a third-party vendor.

Log management is the primary purpose for which Splunk AppDynamics  is used.

We use Splunk AppDynamics' data collection feature, and using the OpenTelemetry  standards, we were able to integrate with our existing set of systems for log management, metrics, traces, and everything that is part of the observability solution offering.

We sell our application management solutions, and the application's digital user experience in Splunk AppDynamics is really good for our global customers. When an external customer is impacted due to application slowness, my support team or my SRE team can go to Splunk AppDynamics portal where we can drill down into the problems, the SLAs, and the response times using this digital experience feature.

For infrastructure monitoring, we are not using Splunk AppDynamics, but for application monitoring, we are using it. The performance is really good and the product features are really good. We have more than 100-plus applications being monitored using Splunk AppDynamics, and for application performance monitoring, the product features are really good.

The team is still evaluating AI-related functionalities in Splunk AppDynamics, but from what I understand from the application owners, they are able to drill down into the application performance impacts during the incidents and they are able to proactively fix the incidents before application portal performance bottlenecks happen.

Splunk AppDynamics did assist me with detecting and protecting against vulnerabilities. It detects the critical vulnerabilities and the legacy things in the larger infrastructure, and it is able to address the critical vulnerabilities in the legacy systems. In that, the product was really useful.

Splunk AppDynamics did help improve my organization's business resilience by reducing the vulnerabilities and the attack surface.

For Splunk AppDynamics, the major headache is cost, and the pricing options are not very flexible. The contract negotiations or the pricing options for a multi-year commitment, along with the renewal cost options, are not very flexible.

In the long run, it is definitely beneficial for an organization like Blue Yonder, because as a supply chain SaaS organization, we are onboarding many customers every quarter, so the infrastructure grows at the backend for the SaaS infrastructure. If the pricing is flexible, we are going to buy more licenses or more quantity.

Internal solutions were developed, but not third-party products prior to adopting Splunk AppDynamics.

The deployment process of Splunk AppDynamics was done by the third-party consulting firm called HCL.

The deployment was completed in a couple of weeks with the help of a third-party vendor. The deployment process of Splunk AppDynamics was done by the third-party consulting firm called HCL.

I rate eight out of ten for the support for Splunk, and for Splunk AppDynamics, I would rate approximately nine for the support our team is getting. I would rate Splunk AppDynamics eight out of ten overall.

We have been using Splunk AppDynamics  for around one year and one month and started with just APM  pieces for our back-end services and, over time, expanded it to cover business transaction and database monitoring.

The most valuable feature is the end-to-end transaction tracing, which provides genuine insights by allowing users to follow a single transaction across multiple microservices to pinpoint delays or errors, thereby saving hours during major incidents.

The auto-discovery and application mapping feature automatically maps out our entire application technology, showing service dependencies accurately, saving considerable manual configuration time.

The baseline and anomaly detection feature learns what normal looks like for your app, alerting on deviations beyond static thresholds.

A few things genuinely frustrate me about Splunk AppDynamics . First, the UI, while powerful, is dense and not modern compared to products like DataDog or New Relic , requiring a learning curve for new team members. Navigating feels unnecessarily deep, often requiring additional clicks.

Second, the alerting configuration is overly complex. Setting up health roles and policies isn't intuitive, leading to potential alert storms or missed incidents if configured incorrectly.

Lastly, the CPU-based licensing model complicates understanding costs with scaling, necessitating more straightforward processes.

We have been using Splunk AppDynamics for around one year and one month.

My experience with the application performance monitoring capabilities of Splunk AppDynamics has been largely stable. Issues with Splunk AppDynamics performance itself have been minimal. The agents are very reliable once deployed, running automatically without the need for manual intervention.

We contact technical support when we do the implementation and onboarding of Splunk AppDynamics, as it is part of our enterprise contract. Sessions with the solution engineer helped us in defining the initial architecture and sizing, which was fundamental.

We used DataDog previously, which offered a more extensive collection of frameworks, about seven or so. However, we've switched to Splunk AppDynamics for its straightforwardness, simplifying our processes.

The initial deployment is very straightforward if one reads the documentation correctly. All steps are clearly outlined in the documentation, making the setup hassle-free.

Technical support, part of our enterprise contract, assisted us during the implementation and onboarding of Splunk AppDynamics. We had sessions with a solution engineer for initial architecture and sizing, which was beneficial.

Pricing for Splunk AppDynamics is higher, attributed to the additional features it offers over other tools. While the cost is significant given we have around 120 services, it remains manageable and offers the value we're seeking.

Regarding the effectiveness of the features like auto-discovery and mapping, they visualize your application ecosystem. This feature is very useful to us because we don't have to do the manual effort. Using this feature has saved us around 20 to 30% of time. We don't need many people in the environment. If you have four to five people to handle that feature for 400 or 500 products, then we need only one to two people. Thus, it is resource-efficient and saves time.

We use AI-powered features in Splunk AppDynamics such as anomaly detection and root cause analysis. We have Splunk AppDynamics plus Splunk integration apps which eliminate the need for manual checks.

Using the APM , there are features in Splunk AppDynamics which allow for easy troubleshooting of code-level issues, removing the need for manual interventions.

Regarding the downsides of Splunk AppDynamics, we did not have major dislikes; most features are well-appreciated.

Splunk AppDynamics is a solution we recommend to our customers and vendors if they're within Splunk ecosystem, as it saves time and leverages the ecosystem's features.

Our overall review rating for Splunk AppDynamics is 9 out of 10.