Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →The “15 Top Application Performance Monitoring Vendors: Gartner” headline refers to a CRN article summarizing Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring (APM). It is a historical list, not a current 2026 ranking. Gartner’s more recent public research looks at the broader markets of observability platforms and digital experience monitoring (DEM), which overlap with APM but are not the same category.
What the 2020 list represents
CRN summarized 15 vendors included in Gartner’s 2020 APM Magic Quadrant. CRN was the publisher; Gartner supplied the market research and category placements. The list was not a simple ranking from first to fifteenth: Gartner grouped vendors as Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, or Niche Players using its Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision framework. Those placements reflected Gartner’s defined market and the 2020 evaluation period, not a universal verdict on product quality. Gartner explains its Magic Quadrant methodology here.
Gartner’s 2020 inclusion criteria, as reported by CRN, required an APM product to provide application discovery, tracing, and diagnostics, plus either front-end monitoring or domain-centric AI/ML. CRN also reported Gartner estimates of nearly $4.5 billion in APM revenue for 2019, excluding professional services, and a forecast 11% compound annual growth rate over the following three years. These are historical estimates and forecasts, not current market figures.
The 15 vendors in Gartner’s 2020 APM Magic Quadrant
The table preserves the historical categories and the strengths and weaknesses CRN attributed to Gartner’s 2020 analysis. Product descriptions and company structures may have changed since then.
#1 Best Overall
![MixPad Free Multitrack Recording Studio and Music Mixing Software [Download]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71ltIxIuz1L._SL160_.jpg)
- Create a mix using audio, music and voice tracks and recordings.
- Customize your tracks with amazing effects and helpful editing tools.
- Use tools like the Beat Maker and Midi Creator.
- Work efficiently by using Bookmarks and tools like Effect Chain, which allow you to apply multiple effects at a time
- Use one of the many other NCH multimedia applications that are integrated with MixPad.
| 2020 vendor or product | Gartner category | Historical strength reported by CRN | Historical weakness reported by CRN | Current qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cisco AppDynamics | Leader | Business analysis through Business IQ; CRN said it ranked first in Ability to Execute and third in Completeness of Vision. | Users described pricing and contract terms as expensive and inflexible. | Gartner Peer Insights currently presents AppDynamics in a Cisco Systems/Splunk context; do not assume the 2020 portfolio structure is unchanged. Gartner Peer Insights: AppDynamics. |
| Dynatrace | Leader | Common data model and embedded AI/ML across APM, DEM, and third-party data; CRN said it ranked first in vision and second in execution. | Users found the pricing model confusing. | Included in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms and Digital Experience Monitoring research. |
| New Relic | Leader | Enterprise expansion and growing international reach; CRN said it ranked second in vision and third in execution. | Multiple language- and environment-specific agents added deployment complexity compared with single-agent competitors. | Included in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms and Digital Experience Monitoring research. |
| Broadcom (DX APM and DX SaaS) | Leader | Broad portfolio spanning infrastructure, network, end-user experience, business transactions, cloud, and mainframe monitoring; CRN reported fourth place for execution and vision. | Cloud-native operations and DevOps adoption lagged leading competitors. | Not listed among the providers in Gartner’s publicly summarized 2025 Observability Platforms Magic Quadrant; that does not establish its status in every Gartner market. |
| Microsoft Azure Monitor | Challenger | Azure integration, distributed tracing, and monitoring for non-Azure applications; customers reported satisfaction with Microsoft service and support, particularly for Azure services. | Optimization for Microsoft technology could make it less suitable for heterogeneous environments. | Included in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms research, which evaluates a broader market than standalone APM. |
| Splunk SignalFx | Visionary | Support for microservice- and container-heavy environments. | Gartner reference customers rated its business-analysis capabilities poorly. | The 2020 name reflects an acquisition-era configuration. Splunk appears in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms and Digital Experience Monitoring research; do not assume SignalFx remains a standalone product. |
| Datadog | Visionary | Investment in international sales, channel partners, enterprise support, and professional services. | Professional services for highly customized and complex deployments were less mature than those of some large competitors. | Included in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms and Digital Experience Monitoring research. |
| IBM | Niche Player | Potential to integrate with Red Hat, automation, and DevOps; capabilities included cloud-native monitoring, metrics, traces, synthetic monitoring, and real-user monitoring. | Limited depth in dashboarding, reporting, predictive insights, and root-cause analysis. | Included in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms and Digital Experience Monitoring research. |
| Riverbed Aternity | Niche Player | Flexible pricing and a single agent for APM and DEM; covered end-user experience and packet-based application visibility. | Weaknesses in DevOps toolchain integration and changes to channel strategy. | Riverbed appears in Gartner’s 2025 Digital Experience Monitoring research. The 2020 product structure and packaging should not be presumed current. |
| Instana | Niche Player | Automated instrumentation, broad language and database support, and a single-product licensing approach. | Less breadth beyond APM, including weaker log-management capabilities and less support for legacy environments. | Gartner’s publicly summarized 2025 Observability Platforms list does not name Instana separately. Its current product and ownership status should be checked before comparison. |
| Oracle | Niche Player | Existing Oracle customers could extend monitoring through their broader Oracle relationship; the offering supported application and infrastructure monitoring. | Limited competitiveness outside Oracle-centric environments. | Included in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms research, but not in the publicly summarized 2025 DEM list. |
| SolarWinds | Niche Player | Self-service design and a wider IT-management portfolio. | Less advanced AI/ML for anomaly detection and analytics. | Included in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms and Digital Experience Monitoring research. |
| Tingyun | Niche Player | Transaction-based pricing for its business-intelligence product; capabilities included real-user and synthetic monitoring. | CRN reported limited international expansion, local-support constraints, and data-storage limitations centered on China. | These are historical geographic and product observations; they should not be treated as current without first-party confirmation. |
| Zoho ManageEngine | Niche Player | Monitoring support for commercial off-the-shelf applications and hyperconverged infrastructure. | Scaling limitations in highly complex environments and a stronger SMB orientation. | ManageEngine appears in Gartner’s 2025 Digital Experience Monitoring research. Current product names and packaging may differ. |
| Micro Focus | Niche Player | Prometheus support and coverage of legacy environments. | Gartner considered its competitiveness to be falling behind, with limited feature development. | Treat this as a historical entry; it is not named as a separate provider in Gartner’s publicly summarized 2025 Observability Platforms list. |
CRN highlighted different product combinations across the list. For example, Dynatrace’s 2020 capabilities included infrastructure monitoring, log analytics, digital experience monitoring, anomaly detection, root-cause analysis, and business-impact analysis. New Relic’s included logs, metrics, distributed tracing, serverless monitoring, and AIOps. Microsoft’s included Azure DevOps integration and monitoring microservices on Azure Kubernetes Service. Those descriptions explain the historical assessment; they are not a current feature checklist.
How the Gartner market framing changed
Gartner’s public 2025 research uses two useful lenses rather than a standalone APM Magic Quadrant: Observability Platforms and Digital Experience Monitoring. They address related but distinct needs. The 2025 Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms includes APM within a broader view of telemetry and operations. Its publicly summarized 20 providers are Amazon Web Services, Apica, BMC Helix, Chronosphere, Coralogix, Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, IBM, ITRS, LogicMonitor, Microsoft, New Relic, Oracle, ScienceLogic, SolarWinds, Splunk, and Sumo Logic.
Rank #2
- Used Book in Good Condition
The 2025 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring focuses more directly on how users experience applications. Its publicly summarized providers are Blue Triangle, Catchpoint, Checkly, Conviva, Datadog, Dynatrace, IBM, ip-label, ITRS Group, ManageEngine, New Relic, Riverbed, SolarWinds, and Splunk. A provider’s presence in one list does not imply a particular position in the other, and absence from a public summary should not be treated as proof that a product lacks relevant capabilities.
Gartner’s associated Critical Capabilities work further distinguishes what platforms are built to do. Observability coverage includes telemetry ingestion and storage, interoperability, exploration, cost control, LLM observability, actionable insights, user experience and business analysis, automated response, SRE, platform operations, software engineering, and cost optimization. DEM capabilities include real-user monitoring and session replay, customer-journey mapping, synthetic transaction and API monitoring, mobile-app monitoring, and internet-performance monitoring. See Gartner’s 2025 Critical Capabilities for Observability Platforms and 2025 Critical Capabilities for Digital Experience Monitoring.
Recommended Free Tools
Rank #3
- Used Book in Good Condition
APM, observability, and DEM are not interchangeable
- APM centers on application performance: tracing, service dependencies, code-level diagnostics, errors, and transaction behavior.
- Observability platforms broaden the view across metrics, logs, traces, infrastructure, event correlation, automation, and increasingly AI-related workloads. Gartner’s 2025 framing treats APM as a component of this broader market.
- DEM centers on user-facing performance, including real-user monitoring, synthetic checks, session replay, mobile experiences, customer journeys, and internet-path performance.
A backend trace can identify a slow database call while a synthetic test reveals that users in one region cannot complete checkout. These are complementary signals, not competing definitions of monitoring. A team that buys an APM tool for deep code diagnostics may still need separate or integrated DEM coverage.
How to build a current shortlist without misusing the old quadrant
Start with the operational problem, then use Gartner’s current categories as one input. The following are use-case routes, not Gartner rankings or product test results.
- Broad cross-stack observability: Consider providers in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms market such as Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk, Microsoft, IBM, Elastic, or Grafana Labs, then test the exact telemetry and workflow coverage your estate needs.
- Azure-heavy operations: Microsoft Azure Monitor is a natural candidate when workloads, identity, and operations are centered on Azure; test how well it covers non-Microsoft systems if your estate is mixed. Microsoft’s current product page is Azure Monitor.
- Deep application analysis: Compare trace depth, profiling, database visibility, service maps, exception analysis, deployment correlation, and business-transaction views. Candidate platform pages include Dynatrace, New Relic, Datadog APM, and Cisco AppDynamics.
- Customer-facing experience: If the requirement is RUM, session replay, synthetic transactions, mobile monitoring, or internet-path analysis, compare providers in Gartner’s DEM market rather than relying only on APM placement.
- Open-source-oriented or composable stacks: Evaluate Grafana Cloud, Elastic Observability, and Honeycomb against your team’s appetite for platform integration and governance. Their inclusion in the 2025 observability market does not mean they are interchangeable.
- Hybrid and traditional environments: Test coverage for mainframe, packaged applications, older runtimes, network paths, and on-premises systems instead of assuming that a cloud-native product’s breadth extends equally to legacy workloads.
Other current commercial options listed in Gartner’s 2025 Observability Platforms research include LogicMonitor, Sumo Logic, and Splunk Observability. For product fit, use their capabilities and architecture in your environment rather than their presence on a market list as a proxy for suitability.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Evaluation checklist for APM and observability buyers
Confirm telemetry coverage and instrumentation
- List the languages, runtimes, databases, Kubernetes distributions, serverless platforms, and packaged applications you must monitor.
- Verify support for traces, metrics, logs, profiling, errors, and service maps, plus any needed RUM, synthetics, session replay, mobile, network, or mainframe monitoring.
- Check native OpenTelemetry support alongside vendor-agent features. Confirm automatic versus manual instrumentation, custom spans and attributes, sampling, overhead, and whether telemetry can be exported to another backend.
Model cost at production scale
No dependable current public dollar prices are established here, so request a quote or calculate costs using the vendor’s current terms. Ask for the billing unit and model how telemetry growth changes the bill.
Windows Errors? Fix Them Before They Spread
Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallCrashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?
Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteBest Value
![MixPad Multitrack Recording Software for Sound Mixing and Music Production Free [Mac Download]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51kaO82jYOL._SL160_.jpg)
- Mix an audio, music and voice tracks
- Record single or multiple tracks simultaneously
- Intuitive tools to split, trim, join, and many other editing features
- Loaded with audio effects including EQ, compression, reverb, and more.
- Load an audio file and export to all popular audio formats from studio quality wav to high compression formats
- Identify charges for hosts, containers, monitored units, ingest, spans, logs, queries, retention, RUM sessions, replay, synthetic executions, seats, support, data egress, and professional services.
- Ask about annual minimums, overages, renewal terms, retention tiers, and any included allowances. Do not compare pilot costs without modeling production volume and retention.
- Run a representative workload through the product and check whether filtering, sampling, and retention controls can keep spend predictable without discarding signals needed for diagnosis.
Check deployment, governance, and operations
- Determine whether the offering is SaaS-only, self-managed, hybrid, or available as a managed service. Verify regional storage, private connectivity, encryption, PII redaction, compliance, and air-gapped requirements.
- Test integrations with incident management, ticketing, chat, CI/CD, Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, cloud services, and any security or event-management platform in use.
- Assess whether application teams can onboard and build dashboards and alerts without a central team doing every change. Review role-based access, tenant separation, alert quality, and ownership workflows.
- Plan for implementation work: naming conventions, service ownership, alert tuning, sampling, PII controls, dashboard standards, runbooks, and telemetry governance still require operational discipline.
Prove portability and fit before committing
- Choose a representative set of services, including a high-volume workload and a difficult runtime, and instrument it with the candidate’s preferred approach.
- Test a real incident workflow from detection through trace or profile analysis, ownership handoff, and recovery. Include a user-facing symptom if DEM matters.
- Measure the resulting ingest, retention, query behavior, and estimated production bill under normal and peak traffic.
- Review data export formats, retention and deletion behavior, agent removal, and the effort required to move dashboards, alerts, and instrumentation if you switch vendors.
- Use proof-of-concept results, reference calls, support escalation checks, and a data-residency review alongside any Gartner category placement.
What the old list can—and cannot—tell a buyer
The 2020 list is useful for understanding how Gartner and CRN described the APM market at that point in time: four Leaders, one Challenger, two Visionaries, and eight Niche Players. It cannot establish which product is best in 2026, what any vendor currently charges, or whether historical branding and packaging remain available. Gartner’s 2025 observability and DEM categories are closer to current market framing, but neither replaces a workload-specific evaluation.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
