Opsgenie

Comments: We needed a more suitable monitoring alerting platform to help us grow and make use of systems outside of our infrastructure. Ultimately, Ops Genie has helped us do that. We can now plug services like AWS and Jira into our monitoring without having to force Nagios checks to do the work that has mostly already been done elsewhere. It's provided us more accurate and reliable alerting and reduced the effects of duplicate alerts coming through whilst an incident is being investigated. We hope to make further gains using additional features we haven;'t touched upon yet in the Ops Genie ecosystem

Pros: We had previously been using a Nagios + SMS provider solution, which had served us well as a small company. However as we have grown, we have found that SMS just wasn't a reliable enough solution. We looked around at various alerting providers, and found Ops Genie to be the closest match to what we were looking for. It's given us the ability to test out new notifications before enabling them for our on-call schedules, Re-arrange on call as we see fit without having to fiddle with Nagios configs, utilise integrations to alleviate the sometimes difficult task of adding checks into Nagios from other systems and gain a better insight into our alerts while reducing the all too common "alert fatigue". It gives the ability to create much more complex workflows and setups that previously weren't possible.

Cons: As is often the case with software that provides a wealth of options, getting started was quite complex, particularly around scheduling on call patterns. I think larger organisations may not have this problem, but we wanted to do some rather custom set ups. Fortunately, the support from Ops Genie is frankly brilliant, and they walked us through everything we needed to do. Should there still be difficulties, they can enact the changes you're looking for and guide you through what was done.

Comments: We need an application that works hand-in-hand with our SIEM, Splunk, and OpsGenie does just that. As events filter into Splunk's incident management platform, our analysts are alerted through OpsGenie (via a webhook integration). Analysts can then acknowledge and manage alerts. We also use OpsGenie as a tool for documentation, although this may be a somewhat unconventional use case. Analysts can search back through past incidents, using them as a reference. This is a highly valuable tool to us and we look forward to future improvements.

Pros: We love the scheduling feature, which keeps all of our security analysts on track with their shifts. The mobile application is also very useful, as it allows analysts to manage their schedules and keep track of alerts while on the go. There are a plethora of applications that OpsGenie integrates with, such as Slack and AWS. The ability to integrate other applications with OpsGenie is important to us, as our services to our clients depend on it.

Cons: Sometimes new features are slow to be implemented, even if they are minor. For example, we have requested some minor features such as a dark mode and the ability to expand the text entry box, but these features have yet to be seen. Sometimes the search function can be difficult to use, as it requires a specific syntax that doesn't always function as expected.

Comments: Reliable Alerts monitoring from our application and infrastructure. Without it, we'd either be staring at monitors all night, or waiting for customers to call us and complain. Critical critical app for us.

Pros: The scheduling, routing, and alerting of the alerts is spectacular. Really simple to use, really powerful.

Cons: The new ui for alerts. Yes, its more flexible and exposes more functionalilty that was previously possible. But for 99% of the time its too, too much UI flexibility. When the house is on fire, I want to grab the fire estinguisher and go. Your ui slows me down. It just needs to let me select open, unacked, and closed alerts, SUPER SUPER easily and SUPER SUPER FAST. Also, the Android app is often unusably slow. I can often boot up my laptop, login to our domain, unlock password manager, and login into the opsgenine website before the stupid app will actually display the alert. Terrible.

Pros: Software was easy to initially configure and get setup. Adding users was quick, both through the website and in the mobile app. Linking OpsGenie to our monitoring applications went smoothly. It allowed for multiple layers of logic to be incorporated. This helped implement escalations that were consistent in their performance. After using it for a month or so, we were able to go in and tweak that logic to make them even better. From an on-call technicians perspective, the software is easy to use. They know when they are on-call and are able to set their own notifications and escalations. Also, they can work with other techs to cover for each other and the app will let them set the time for the switch so the system notifies appropriately.

Cons: The rule creation can sometimes be complex and requires a more advanced user to accomplish.

Comments: Customer services and our account manager have been excellent. I put in a recommendation for a feature and it had been implemented within a month. I also received personal communication to let me know that my feature was being implemented! For me, that's amazing customer engagement!

Pros: I like the user-friendly interface and how easy it is to integrate with other applications. The search functionality in the Alerts section is super flexible and easy to use. I have found it very easy to manage and schedule my 8-person team to work 24/7 on complex shift patterns and have call forwarding setup to call desk, work mobile and then personal mobile phones. Ive been very impressed with the capabilities of the Incident Command Center for major incident orchestration. The mobile app is also easy to use and well thought out.

Cons: I haven't anything so far that I dislike.