BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) vs Datadog comparison

BlueCat Infrastructure Assu...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Datadog and BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance compete in infrastructure monitoring and management. Datadog often leads with sophisticated data analytics and user satisfaction with pricing and support, while BCIA's strong infrastructure insights and feature set justify its higher investment for some users.

Features: Datadog emphasizes robust monitoring with advanced data analytics, seamless integration across platforms, and sophisticated alerting systems. It provides extensive logging and real-time insights, appealing to organizations seeking comprehensive IT monitoring. BCIA offers detailed network infrastructure insights with enhanced control and security, focusing on network analysis depth.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Datadog features a cloud-based deployment, simplifying setup and offering responsive customer service for troubleshooting. BCIA requires more extensive initial configuration, particularly within networking environments, but its specialized support handles complex infrastructure queries efficiently.

Pricing and ROI: Datadog offers a flexible pricing model with potentially lower starting costs, delivering strong ROI through extensive IT functionality. BCIA may involve higher initial costs but promises substantial ROI where network assurance and control are priorities, appealing based on specific infrastructure needs.

To learn more, read our detailed BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) vs. Datadog Report (Updated: April 2025).

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) vs. Datadog

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

BlueCat Infrastructure Assu...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

41st

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Datadog

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

188

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (3rd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 5.9%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Bob Stiles

Cyber Security Architect Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Offers proactive issue detection through customized alerts enhances troubleshooting

We saw the benefits of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance immediately after we deployed it. The enhanced analytics dashboard helps us prioritize troubleshooting. BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance detects potential issues and anomalies before they occur, provided we have set our thresholds. Without defined thresholds, the system may still identify problems, but we will only be alerted after the event. This proactive approach helps prevent issues rather than simply reacting to them. It provides diagnostic information to help with remediation. BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance significantly enhances our company's network stability by preventing outages. With over a hundred firewalls integrated into the system, it provides comprehensive monitoring and control, effectively minimizing potential downtime. BlueCat's solution has been instrumental in maintaining a highly reliable network environment, and its value in preventing disruptions is immeasurable.

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Kevin Palmer

DevOps/Security Principal at Raken

Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation

Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance provides excellent analytic capabilities for early problem detection, offering beneficial diagnostic information and actionable remediation steps."

"BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance's most valuable feature is its ability to analyze integrity and perform interrogations, providing alerts based on configurable thresholds."

"Thanks to BlueCat, we have not experienced any downtime in the past two years."

"The most valuable aspects of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance are remote commands, a core functionality for us, and automated remediation options."

"BlueCat's solution has been instrumental in maintaining a highly reliable network environment, and its value in preventing disruptions is immeasurable."

"Several critical dashboards were created years ago and are still in use today."

"Datadog agents act as an integration to different services, providing easy access and management."

"When I reflect on the ways we used to track down issues, I can't imagine how we ever managed before Datadog."

"The feature I have found most valuable is when I can reuse existing monitors and alerts for new dashboards."

"Datadog dashboards are pretty great."

"The flexibility to create notebooks and dashboards and fully customize them gives us a lot of power to track the exact services and endpoints we are working on."

"Datadog has so far been a breeze to use and set up."

"We have been impressed with the uptime and clean and light resource usage of the agents."

More Datadog pros

Cons

"Considering that some of our junior engineers have limited coding expertise, incorporating features that assist in query construction or provide clear textual translations of code would be valuable."

"BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance does not support all network security devices."

"We would greatly benefit from expanded BlueCat integrations, particularly through a robust API ingestion system that allows for custom integrations with other systems. Ideally, this would include a user-friendly message queue system that facilitates communication between BlueCat and any external system via APIs."

"BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance does not support all network security devices."

"The on-premise version is very difficult to upgrade."

"The cost does add up quickly, so it can be some effort to justify the necessary outlay to those paying the bills."

"Logging is not a great experience."

"The documentation leaves a lot to be desired for new users."

"Network device and performance monitoring could be improved, as we've faced some limitations in this area."

"We'd like to see more advanced incident management capabilities integrated directly into the platform."

"Lately, chat support has a longer waiting time."

"One thing to improve would be making it easier to see common patterns across traces."

More Datadog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance meets our budget requirements."

"The pricing for BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance is fairly comparable."

"BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance is reasonably priced."

"This solution is budget friendly."

"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."

"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."

"The tool is open-source."

"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."

"Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."

"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."

"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."

More Datadog pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA)?

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance is reasonably priced.

What needs improvement with BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA)?

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance does not support all network security devices. We currently use BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance on-premises, but it lacks the AI capabilities that are becoming inc...

What is your primary use case for BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA)?

My organization comprises a financial institution and a technology company. BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance, an internal service, helps accurately pinpoint issues within our systems.

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?

With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...

Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...

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Product Reports

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA)

Download BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) product report

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) report

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Also Known As

Indeni

No data available

Overview

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) is a proactive monitoring and automation solution. Think of it as a virtual DDI expert, on duty 24/7. Infrastructure Assurance provides deep visibility into BlueCat Integrity enterprise environments, including its key BlueCat Address Manager and BlueCat DNS/DHCP Server (BDDS) components. It proactively interrogates your systems to ensure they are healthy. Should it find an issue, the platform flags it, generates an alert, and provides a list of recommended remediation steps that admins can take.

BlueCat

Datadog is a comprehensive cloud monitoring platform designed to track performance, availability, and log aggregation for cloud resources like AWS, ECS, and Kubernetes. It offers robust tools for creating dashboards, observing user behavior, alerting, telemetry, security monitoring, and synthetic testing.

Datadog supports full observability across cloud providers and environments, enabling troubleshooting, error detection, and performance analysis to maintain system reliability. It offers detailed visualization of servers, integrates seamlessly with cloud providers like AWS, and provides powerful out-of-the-box dashboards and log analytics. Despite its strengths, users often note the need for better integration with other solutions and improved application-level insights. Common challenges include a complex pricing model, setup difficulties, and navigation issues. Users frequently mention the need for clearer documentation, faster loading times, enhanced error traceability, and better log management.

What are the key features of Datadog?

Graphs and Dashboards: Visualizes servers and infrastructure with customizable views.
Metrics: Offers deep insights into system performance and user behavior.
Log Management: Provides powerful analytics for logs and seamless log aggregation.
Unified Tagging: Facilitates organization and retrieval of metrics and logs.
APM and RUM: Enables application performance monitoring and real user monitoring for comprehensive insights.
Synthetic Testing: Allows the simulation of user interactions to test application performance.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

System Reliability: Helps ensure uptime and performance across cloud environments.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Assists in identifying and resolving issues before they impact users.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring and log management tasks.
Flexible Integrations: Adapts to various cloud services and infrastructure setups.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides timely notifications to address problems swiftly.

Datadog is implemented across different industries, from tech companies monitoring cloud applications to finance sectors ensuring transactional systems' performance. E-commerce platforms use Datadog to track and visualize user behavior and system health, while healthcare organizations utilize it for maintaining secure, compliant environments. Every implementation assists teams in customizing monitoring solutions specific to their industry's requirements.

Sample Customers

MasterCard, Bloomberg, Comcast, Office Depot, O'Reilly Auto Parts, Prudential, Wyndham Worldwide, iRobot, Leumi, Pelephone, Sheetz, Travelex

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance (BCIA) vs. Datadog