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The application performance management (APM) industry is evolving rapidly in response to two intertwined trends: Businesses are placing a greater emphasis on application performance, and IT Operations teams need a holistic view across the data center in real time.
At ExtraHop Networks, we're doing our part to speed the development of the industry both in terms of functionality and pricing. This month, we announced subscription-based pricing for the EH1000v, the fastest virtual appliance for network-based APM, capable of handling up to 1Gbps of traffic. The subscription-based pricing starts at $8,148 for the base system with Premium Support in North America, which supports to 50 hosts or virtual machines (VMs) for one year. Adding a Microsoft SQL Server database module and NAS module brings the total price to $13,644 for complete visibility across the network, web, database, and storage tiers of the application environment.
For comparison, consider that contemporary agent-based APM tools often charge $2,000 per Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for a two-year license. Amortized over two years, the annual cost of that agent-based deployment for 50 hosts or VMs would come to $50,000—or $100,000 paid in the first year. And that's for a product that offers limited visibility into critical network services like DNS and LDAP, and no visibility into networked storage performance! Read a more detailed APM cost comparison.
Low Cost of Entry for APM
Subscription-based pricing significantly lowers the cost of entry for enterprise-grade APM capabilities. IT organizations spend dramatically less upfront—as little as $7,428 for 50 servers or VMs. This lowers the risk for companies that are exploring application performance monitoring. Additionally, the monthly cost per host or VM comes to roughly $13, making it one of the most cost-effective ways to continuously monitor cross-tier application performance in real time.Easy to Add Capacity
A subscription-based pricing model also makes it easy for IT organizations to scale their APM deployment as needed. Expanding coverage to another 50 devices simply requires teams to download another virtual appliance and spin up a new VM. The EH1000v connects to the vSwitch in a VMware cluster and does not require any agents, probes, or other invasive host-based instrumentation.Industry-Leading Functionality and Benefits
While subscription-based pricing makes the ExtraHop system easier to deploy, it has always been one of the best APM solutions in the industry based on the effectiveness of dollars spent.- Comprehensive visibility across tiers. No other APM solution offers the same real-time, L2-L7 visibility as the ExtraHop system. Having correlated visibility across the network, web, VDI, database, and storage tiers is crucial in identifying the root cause of problems quickly no matter where they occur in the application delivery chain.
- Non-intrusive deployment. Unlike other legacy APM tools that rely on agents, probes, and other invasive instrumentation, the ExtraHop system does not add any system overhead and will never perturb applications.
- Sustained 10Gbps throughput. In our discussions with prospective customers, we've encountered healthy skepticism about technical capabilities. "If you can do half of what you claim, then I'm interested" is what one IT director said. This skepticism is brought on by false and excessive vendor claims. In particular, competitors make scalability claims that may have been true in the pristine lab environment, but just don't hold up in deployment. The ExtraHop system truly scales to 10Gbps analysis at sustained rates, not just in bursts. Read more about how the ExtraHop system accommodates real-world traffic patterns and packet loss.
- Customized metrics. Agent-based APM tools can be configured to do interesting things, but these adjustments often require special expertise and can be difficult to maintain as the application changes. In contrast, Application Inspection Triggers enable IT teams to define and implement custom metrics within minutes. How IT teams use this technology is limited only by imagination, but one favorite use is for "spot and trace" transaction analysis across tiers where the ExtraHop system passively tracks unique identifiers such as session IDs across the application delivery chain.
- Automatic discovery and classification. The status quo in the APM industry is long and complicated deployments requiring outside consultants to set things up. In contrast, the ExtraHop system is truly plug-and-play and begins analyzing traffic immediately upon installation to discover and classify devices and applications within minutes.
