15 Top Application Performance Monitoring Vendors: Gartner

The leading application performance monitoring companies who made Gartner’s new 2020 Magic Quadrant include Cisco’s AppDynamics, Broadcom, Microsoft and New Relic. Read to find out what other companies made the Magic Quadrant.

Here’s Who Made Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring

By 2025, approximately 50 percent of new cloud-native application monitoring solutions will use open-source instead of vendor-specific agents to boost interoperability, up from only 5 percent in 2019, according to Gartner’s new 2020 Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) vendors are expanding their ability to predict how application performance impacts digital business along with increased support for cloud infrastructure, says the Stamford, Conn.-based IT research firm.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced businesses to move employees from office environments to their homes, which typically are less secure and slower. COVID-19 has made it difficult for enterprises to ensure the performance of business-critical apps and the digital experience for their users. To solve these issues, Gartner said it requires the usage of digital experience monitoring (DEM) products – many of which are highlighted in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant -- deployed where employees are located or cloud-based APM solutions to provide complete visibility and meet performance goals.

Here are the 15 vendors that made Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring.

Gartner’s Application Performance Monitoring Methodology

The APM market is one of the largest subsegments of the IT operations management market, with forecast spending in 2020 of nearly $4.5 billion with a 11 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) expected over the next three years.

In order to be included in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring, vendors must offer an APM software product which must include application discovery, tracing and diagnostics functionality. The vendor’s product must also include either front-end monitoring or domain-centric artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). The research firm also provided estimated APM revenues for each vendor in 2019, excluding professional services.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant ranks vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision and places them in four categories: Niche Players (low on vision and execution), Visionaries (good vision but low execution), Challengers (good execution but low vision) and Leaders (excelling in both vision and execution).

Leader: Cisco AppDynamics

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $500 million to $750 million

The San Jose, Calif-based networking king ranks No. 1 for execution on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and third for vision. Cisco’s AppDynamics includes core APM, end-user monitoring, infrastructure visibility and business performance monitoring. The company has integrated with Cisco Workload Optimization Manager and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). AppDynamics’ main pillars include an AIOps platform with its Cognition Engine and support for multidomain data; insights across business data, user journeys, infrastructure and security; better workflows and support for cloud-native environments and DevOps users; and improved usability. To help customers deal with coronavirus, AppDynamics is providing free use of its application performance monitoring software through free AppDynamics SaaS licenses for qualified customers until July 15.

Strength: End-users rate AppDynamics business analysis capability, through its Business iQ solution, the highest compared to all other APM vendors, according to Gartner.

Weakness: Users cite tool expense and pricing/contract inflexibility as inhibitions to broader applications adoption.

Leader: Dynatrace

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues : $250 million to $500 million

Dynatrace won the gold medal for vision on the Magic Quadrant and second for execution with its offering available on-premises, as a managed service or software-as-a-service – all using the same architecture. The Dynatrace solution includes core APM, infrastructure monitoring, elements of network monitoring, log analytics, DEM and AIOps. Dynatrace’s AI/ML is not sold as a separate module, leveraging real-time topology and AI algorithms to analyze events, metrics and traces. It automatically detects anomalies, business impact and root cause across users, applications and infrastructure. The Waltham, Mass-based company, which is majority owned by Thoma Bravo, became a public entity last year.

Strength: Dynatrace common data model and embedded AI/ML supports consistent analysis across APM, DEM and third-party data.

Weakness: Gartner said end users report that the company’s pricing model is confusing and should be simplified.

Leader: New Relic

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $500 million to $750 million

New Relic, which recently hired former Dell Technologies star Jay Snyder as its new chief customer officer, ranks No. 2 for vision and No. 3 for execution on the Magic Quadrant. The San Francisco-based company launched New Relic One in September, which combines all of its capabilities into a single UI. New Relic’s APM is complemented by capabilities spanning DEM, infrastructure, logs, metrics and analytics, while also supporting logs, metrics and traces independent of data sources. Following the acquisition of SignifAI last year to enhance its AIOps capabilities, New Relic expanded support for serverless environments with the purchase of IOpipe in November.

Strength: New Relic has made significant inroads in the enterprises, which now generates more than half of its revenue, while also expanding its presence outside America.

Weakness: The company’s architecture uses multiple agents depending on the language and environment, which adds complexity and differs from competitive single-agent models.

Leader: Broadcom

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $250 million to $500 million

Broadcom, which entered the market via its acquisition of CA Technologies in 2018, ranks No. 4 for both execution and vision on the Magic Quadrant. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s APM offering are DX Application Performance Management and DX SaaS, which include infrastructure, network, end-user experience, business transaction, cloud and mainframe monitoring. Broadcom has focused on supporting cloud-native application and infrastructure environments, open monitoring standards, analytics via AIOps, and data ingestion from other platforms including competing offers. In one of the largest IT acquisitions of 2019, Broadcom acquired Symantec’s $2.5 billion Enterprise Security business for $10.7 billion.

Strength: Broadcom created Portfolio Licensing Agreements (PLAs) targeting its top 1,000 global enterprises who want to increase APM capacity.

Weakness: The company’s penetration into cloud-native operations and DevOps teams remains behind competitors.

Challenger: Microsoft

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $100 million to $250 million

Microsoft ranks No. 5 for execution on the Magic Quadrant and among the middle of the pack for vision. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant offers its SaaS-based APM solution Azure Monitor that can connect to the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) on-premises product, and can also ingest data from non-Azure applications directly. Azure Monitor is tightly coupled with Microsoft’s cloud and is integrated into the company’s DevOps capabilities. Microsoft has added native support for microservices on Azure Kubernetes Services and expanded support for more granular distributed tracing monitoring. Microsoft has reported a massive increase in video calls using its Teams apps during the coronavirus pandemic.

Strength: Gartner said Azure Monitor customers report high levels of satisfaction with service and support, particularly for Azure Services.

Weakness: Azure Monitor is optimized for its own technology stack and may be challenging for customers with a diverse technology environment.

Visionary: Splunk SignalFx

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $250 million to $500 million

Splunk recently entered the APM market through its $1 billion acquisition of SignalFx in October. The San Francisco-based company ranks No. 5 for vision on the Magic Quadrant and among the middle of the pack for execution. SignalFx is a SaaS-only APM and infrastructure monitoring solution focused on cloud-native environments. Splunk’s portfolio that includes SignalFx, ITSI, VictorOps and Splunk Enterprise bridges the gap between traditional and cloud-native IT and resonates with the many enterprises trying to balance the two, said Gartner. Splunk has made huge strides to boost annual recurring revenue and migrate its customers to a subscription model.

Strength: SignalFx offers strong support for buyers who are heavily invested in microservice and containerized environments.

Weakness: Gartner’s reference survey of end users rated SignalFx’s ability to provide business analysis among the lowest of all APM vendors.

Visionary: Datadog

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: Less than $50 million

Datadog, who made its stock market debut in September, ranks among the middle of the pack for both vision and execution on the Magic Quadrant. Datadog’s SaaS offering initially focused on cloud infrastructure monitoring, but recently expanded to deliver a full-stack monitoring solution that includes APM. The New York City-based company’s solution includes core APM, infrastructure monitoring, elements of network monitoring, log analytics, DEM and AIOps. Datadog added DEM capabilities with support for real-user monitoring and synthetic monitoring, accelerated by its acquisition of Madumbo in 2018.

Strength: Datadog is ramping up sales investments globally, growing its channel partner base and building out a professional services and technical support organization for large enterprises.

Weakness: The company’s current professional services arm for highly custom and complex APM deployments are less mature than other competitors.

Niche Player: IBM

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $100 million to $250 million

IBM has been in the application performance monitoring market since 2003 and ranks among the middle of the pack for both vision and execution on the Magic Quadrant. IBM’s Cloud App Management is delivered as a cloud-native application that can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. The Armonk, N.Y.-based company’s CAM solution focuses on using lightweight data collects to gather metrics and traces from cloud-native application runtimes. This is combined with new synthetic and real-user monitoring to provide end user experience metrics. IBM’s new CEO Arvind Krishna said the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the shift to hybrid cloud and AI.

Strength: IBM’s blockbuster acquisition of Red Hat offers integration opportunities for automation and DevOps, specifically regarding OpenShift.

Weakness: Gartner said IBM Cloud App Management lacks depth in several APM functions including dashboarding, reporting, predictive insights and root cause analysis.

Niche Player: Riverbed Aternity

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $100 million to $250 million

In January, San Francisco-based Riverbed created a wholly owned subsidiary combining its APM and DEM product lines called Aternity based in Cambridge, Mass. Aternity focuses on the AppInternals and the end-user experience products as part of its overall APM product set, which customers can deploy either on-premises or as SaaS. Other solutions in Riverbed’s portfolio includes AppResponse for packet-based application visibility and NetIM for infrastructure monitoring. Riverbed ranks among the middle of the pack for both vision and execution on the Magic Quadrant. Riverbed’s new CEO Rich McBee is striving to trim the business down to its core WAN optimization, SD-WAN and application acceleration focus.

Strength: Aternity offers flexible pricing options with a single agent for both APM and DEM, allowing customers to optimize their use-case requirements.

Weakness: Aternity is moving away from Riverbed’s extensive channel partner network, while it also lacks integration within the DevOps toolchain ecosystem.

Niche Player: Instana

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: Less than $50 million

The startup offers a single product, Instana APM, that offers end-user and infrastructure monitoring, as well as analytics. Instana among the middle of the pack for both vision and execution on the Magic Quadrant. Instana has extensive support for all major application languages, databases, and container and orchestration environments. It was one of the first vendors to focus on microservices and containerized applications, with automated instrumentation through code injection at runtime in such environments. The company has played a key role in developing open-monitoring standards. Instana’s headquarters are in both Germany, where it was founded in 2016, and Chicago.

Strength: Instana’s single licensing pricing model provides full-feature APM capabilities at lower cost than many competitors.

Weakness: The company lacks capabilities beyond APM, such as log management, and lags behind competitors regarding support for legacy environments.

Niche Player: Oracle

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $50 million to $100 million

Five years ago, Oracle launched Oracle Management Cloud that monitors applications, infrastructure, and digital experience, and can collect logs, metrics and traces from external sources. The SaaS only product is optimized for Oracle workloads and environments, often sold as part of bundled solutions. In 2019, Oracle added the ability to add custom instrumentation to non-Oracle technologies and control over the storage of personally identifiable information. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company ranks among the middle of the pack for execution on the Magic Quadrant, but in the bottom group for vision. Oracle has been investing billions in the global built-out of dozens of new data centers for Oracle Cloud.

Strength: Customers who investment in the Oracle stack can extend monitoring capabilities through Oracle Management Cloud as part of their existing licensing.

Weakness: Gartner said Oracle is rarely seen in competitive bids as a competitor to leading APM vendors other than in Oracle-only environments.

Niche Player: SolarWinds

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $50 million to $100 million

SolarWinds is entered the APM market through the acquisition of SaaS-based APM assets from AppNeta, Pingdom and Loggly. SolarWinds’ core capabilities include APM and infrastructure monitoring with AppOptics, synthetics with Pingdom, and log analytics with Loggly. AppOptics is optimized for cloud-native environments and supports code-level instrumentation and infrastructure monitoring, but also supports on-premises and traditional environments. The Austin, Texas-based company ranks among the bottom group for both vision and execution on the Magic Quadrant. SolarWinds recently acquired SaaS-based database performance management specialist VividCortex for $117 million.

Strength: SolarWinds designs products to be self-service. Its APM solutions are also complemented by an array of other products around network, security and configuration management.

Weakness: SolarWinds lags behind competitors in the use of AI/ML for anomaly detection and other analytics capabilities.

Niche Player: Tingyun

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: Less than $50 million

The China-based company provides APM and DEM tools with an expanding set of offerings that includes support for monitoring the highly popular Chinese app WeChat. Tingyun, whose customers are mostly in Asia-Pacific and Japan, offers both an on-premises and a SaaS version of APM. The company’s SaaS offer is comprised of Tingyun APM, Tingyun DEM, Tingyun Business Performance Intelligence and Tingyun NeurAlert. The solution provides monitoring for digital experience using real-user monitoring and synthetic transactions, in addition to monitoring for business performance, log files, database, mobile, cloud and containers. The company ranks among the bottom group for both vision and execution on the Magic Quadrant.

Strength: Tingyun offers innovative pricing for its business intelligence solution based on the number of business transactions monitored.

Weakness: The company has struggled to expand outside of China due to security issues, a lack of local support and because user data storage is limited to China.

Niche Player: Zoho ManageEngine

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $50 million to $100 million

ManageEngine, the IT management division of India-based Zoho, offering Applications Manager for on-premise and Site24x7 as its SaaS option for APM. Applications Manager is part of the larger ManageEngine portfolio of IT operations management products that includes security and analytics. It is integrated with OpManager Plus which includes network performance monitoring and diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring. Site24x7 provides performance-agent-based monitoring through bytecode instrumentation, along with support for real-user monitoring. ManageEngine ranks last place for vision on the Magic Quadrant and near the bottom for execution.

Strength: The company’s support for monitoring commercial off-the-self applications and hyperconverged infrastructure is a strong differentiator from competitors.

Weakness: ManageEngine’s scaling abilities are behind other competitors. Its focus on the SMB market can make it difficult for customers with complex architectures.

Niche Player: Micro Focus

Estimated 2019 APM Revenues: $50 million to $100 million

U.K.-based Micro Focus ranks last place for execution on the Magic Quadrant and near the bottom for vision. The company provides mostly on-premises APM products with some components delivered via SaaS. Micro Focus’ offering includes Business Process Monitoring, Diagnostics and SiteScope, each at different levels of maturity and with different deployment requirements. The company offers a broad set of monitoring tools beyond APM, including primary support for legacy and modern environments. Micro Focus provides maintenance-level updates for its APM product, with only minor updates in visualization, OS and database options. Last year, the company acquired security startup Interset to boost its machine learning and analytics capabilities.

Strength: Gartner said the addition of Prometheus metric support will appeal to buyers concerned about the company’s lack of attention to microservice environments.

Weakness: Micro Focus’ APM competitiveness has fallen behind the market in recent years, with minimal new features developed.