IT professionals rely on network monitoring software for all-inclusive, in-depth monitoring of bandwidth, interface, configuration, etc. That being said, the systems vary widely in many respects and the selection must be matched to the organization's needs. So how do you find your best fit?
In this review face-off, IT Central station’s user community of enterprise tech professionals compares their favorite network monitoring tools of Q2 2017: CA Spectrum vs. SolarWinds NPM.
CA Spectrum -- Valuable Features
User: Frank Tonjes
Industry: Telefónica UK / O2 -- OSS Manager
“The best thing about Spectrum is the way it has been designed 'under the hood’. The concept of models with relationships to other models and each model having attributes. This makes a lot of information available that can be obtained very fast, instead of having to try do everything via VNM shell or GUI.”
User: Mark Parkin
Industry: Aerospace/Defense Firm -- Enterprise Systems Management (ESM) Engineer
“This product automates much of what is involved in monitoring. For instance, device discovery can be performed in any of a number of ways with minimal manual intervention.
The model catalog in Spectrum (digital models for various physical or virtual devices) is very extensive so, in most cases, monitoring uses device models that precisely match the actual device. This provides excellent tailored monitoring ability.”
SolarWindsNPM -- Valuable Features
User: Richard Harpham
Industry: Tech Vendor -- Sr. IT Infrastructure Specialist
“At the time, we did not have a central repository for network mapping. This product helps us with this and allowed us to drill down on the elements in the maps to get more detailed information.”
User: Brian Vinson
Industry: Communications Service Provider -- Systems Engineer
“In my opinion, one of the most valuable features of this product is the level of customization. From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization.”
CA Spectrum -- Improvements to My Organization
User: Paul Snehashis
Industry: Tech Services Company -- TEM Engineer
“CA Spectrum allowed our client, a Tier 1 TELCO, to manage their E2E network infrastructure. The distributed architecture and eHealth integrations enabled a powerful solution for providing Hosted Managed Services to an Enterprise customer. It proactively monitored Enterprise: GMPLS, IPVPN, ISDN, LTE and Leased Line services against set SLAs and maintained a top quality of service.”
Username: telecomm564828
Industry: Tech Services Company -- Telecommunications Engineer
“From a customer perspective, it (CA Spectrum) assures you about your network health and availability. The configuration management feature relieves you the burden of manually saving all your devices' configurations. It allows you to massively upload standard configurations to a group or to all your network devices.
The service manager feature allows you to look at your network devices as a collection of assets that plays a role on a service instead of looking at them as individual network assets.”
SolarWinds NPM -- Improvements to My Organization
User: Abiodun Adebajo
Industry: Financial Services Firm -- Head of Networks & Communications
“With reporting, we are able to spool ISP WAN links availability for the month and make necessary deductions based on the service level agreement we signed with the service providers.
Alerts have also helped us to improve network performance, keeping everyone on their toes in resolving downtime before it is escalated.
User: Brian Vinson
Industry: Communications Service Provider -- Systems Engineer
“It has helped to provide a user-friendly interface for support to drill down and see where the issue lies and remediate issues quickly.”
CA Spectrum -- Room for Improvement
User: Lee Mullican
Industry: New York Presbyterian Hospital -- IT Manager
“The web-based client that Spectrum has needs to be able to use multiple landscapes and multiple alarm filters. Right now, if you choose a landscape and then choose an alarm filter, you can have one or the other, but you can't pair them, which is a major problem because we have more than one landscape. That's one example.”
SolarWinds NPM -- Room for Improvement
User: Ronald Jansen
Industry: Consultancy -- Project Manager and Consultant Enterprise IT Tooling
“Scalability: In general, the scalability for most organizations is OK.
The product is also used by larger companies and TELCOs. They encounter scalability and stability issues. You need a dedicated person or team to keep everything under control.”
Read more Q2 2017 network monitoring software reviews by IT Central Station users.
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