Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Azure Monitor vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 1, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (5th)
Cisco Provider Connectivity...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
33rd
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (45th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 10.0%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.3%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

AP
Dec 12, 2022
Affordable, easy to configure and offers good integration capabilities
We have multiple customer internet-facing applications, so we require granular control of each of the data flows. That is something this product helps with The ease of use and direct integration with various products have been very useful aspects of the solution that our organization has taken…
Sylvain Germe - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 9, 2023
Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features
This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The feature that I found most valuable in Azure Monitor is its monitoring abilities. With Azure Monitor, you are able to monitor all of your cloud resources across multiple subscriptions in one dashboard and create solution-specific alerts that can trigger an email to the team responsible for that specific solution."
"Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment."
"Azure Monitor is really just a source for Dynatrace. It's just collecting data and monitoring the environment and the infrastructure. It is fairly good at that."
"The solution works well overall. It's easy to implement and simple to use."
"The solution very easily integrates with Azure services and in one click you can monitor your resource."
"Azure Monitor is very stable."
"The most valuable feature is that it ensures our servers are up."
"A product that is well-integrated for monitoring Microsoft Azure."
"This solution has helped to improve the interaction between our network, datacenter, and application teams. I have used other tools, but this tool can pinpoint the root cause of my application or network issue in the majority of the cases. So, it helps different divisions or groups in the IT department to troubleshoot together and get an issue resolved. This tool helps a lot in our day-to-day networking application and IT operations."
"If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas..."
"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."
"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."
"I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else."
"It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible."
"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."
"The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread."
 

Cons

"They can simplify the overall complexity since you have multiple data sources in the cloud for monitoring. It's quite simple, but there are so many portals. It takes time to work with it. If they could simplify the user configuration, that would be good."
"This solution has fewer features than some of its competitors, so adding more features to it would make it better."
"Automation related to gathering metrics from more applications could be improved."
"The solution's monitoring feature has limitations for analyzing multiple metrics."
"The biggest one is probably just the user interface. There could be more advanced logging at the database level. They can also improve their query builder to allow you to search for things better, but I last used it about a year ago. They might have already changed a ton of things in the newer versions."
"They need to work with other cloud providers - not just Azure."
"The solution needs better monitoring. It requires better log controls."
"The length of latency is terrible and needs to be improved."
"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."
"I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration."
"Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams."
"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."
"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."
"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."
"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."
"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."
"The tool is expensive."
"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."
"The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects."
"The solution is a pay-as-you-go consumption service and is the least expensive in the market."
"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."
"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."
"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."
"It provides value and the cost is not huge."
"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."
"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
801,634 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
40%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
It is not just Azure Monitor that my company deals with since we augment it with our own DXC Platform X, which DXC developed for the cloud. DXC Platform X has its own set of tools for the cloud. It...
What do you like most about Accedian Skylight?
The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Accedian Skylight?
The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It i...
What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?
There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you chang...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.
801,634 professionals have used our research since 2012.