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Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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

Broadcom DX Application Per...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (8th)
Cisco Provider Connectivity...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
45th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (43rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Broadcom DX Application Performance Management is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

aush.111 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides efficiency in migration and DAW but requires a high level of administrator knowledge for configuration
This solution still relies on inbuilt configuration. For example, I'm pretty much impressed with Dynatrace POC, where we deploy the agent with a simple click, click, click, and then that's it. And we did not build any alerts or anything. We just started getting the alerts, warnings, and everything on its own system, understood what the benchmark is and what is the threshold, and it started giving you the warnings and the caution alerts, the danger alerts. So we expect something like that should be there in Broadcom at the level. But, instead, it expects us to configure. So that is what is missing there. Even if the server CPU usage is 95%t, it doesn't harm you. It doesn't send you any alerts. We think the system is normal. So it's not normal. So this is what they should think and send you AI/ML-related alarms on their own. In future releases, I would like to see more AI and ML capabilities, which are kind of missing. Another area of improvement is its infrastructure monitoring perspective. For example, they are still using UIM, which is a good tool. But for APM, they have come to DXP. However, in terms of UIM, the unified infrastructure management, there is no DXP version or AIML version of it. So they should try to find an updated version of it so that it is not competing with the rest of the solution.
Sylvain Germe - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Helps the development team to fine-tune and proactively manage the application."
"Crash analytics goes down to the level of code you need to check."
"We did the setup for a new datacenter, and that was pretty straightforward."
"Some of its valuable features include transaction traces, dashboards, and metric grouping to see combined data."
"Proactive snapshots of transactions and all details of a transaction are saved in case of an error."
"We receive good transactions from it with good graphs, as well, documenting the activities of total visitors on the site. We can pull the reports and provide them to the client, as required."
"The ability to accomplish the identification of the root cause of problems with applications in drill-down level by integrating the suite with tools for managing and monitoring."
"Stability is one of the strongest attributes of CA APM. It is very stable on all platforms."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."
"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."
"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."
"I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."
"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."
 

Cons

"We need more capabilities to analyze the information that tools collects; for example, using artificial intelligence, or something like that."
"User interface - CA is moving towards HTML5, but still a lot is Java, old fashioned, non-customizable and not user friendly. It’s look and feel is still too technical."
"I would like them provide more guidance on specific tuning of monitoring options to avoid unacceptable overhead."
"The reports are a key part of APM in my vision because it is through them that we manage to generate the evidence to direct the development team and operational support to address. However, we can not extract the information of the tool through reports. We have needed several times to use screen print screen, CTRL + C and CTRL + V."
"The technical support is very poor."
"There is no auto flow diagram, and the alert mechanism is not as good when compared to other tools."
"Improve the targeting interface is to make it more user-friendly and current."
"You can sell licenses and install the full tool on service, you can show customers how to install, but how to use it and solve issues cannot be done without the experience."
"Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable... It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better."
"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."
"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."
"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

"The licensing costs are expensive."
"It is definitely expensive for what we get, but there isn't an alternate option at the moment."
"All discounts are case by case to accommodate the client's budgets."
"Setup costs are quite competitive relative to other solutions, and simpler."
"I'm unable to give information on Broadcom DX Application Performance Management licensing costs, but all Application Performance Management products have expensive pricing. This means that it's not only Broadcom that's expensive, and it would be an advantage if the cost would be a little bit cheaper."
"Broadcom is a better and cheaper option from the financial perspective. It also depends on the DLP plug."
"On pricing, CA is very competitive. I think that's going to help in the long run."
"There is some research needed to determine licensing costs, based on the number of DataPower instances for the Nastel agent, for example."
"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 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."
"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 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 is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
39%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...there is a very easy way to deal with it by adding more servers to the application.
What needs improvement with Broadcom DX Application Performance Management?
The main areas for improvement include making dashboards and interfaces easier to understand. Our version might be a bit old, and we may need to upgrade it. It is also difficult to access the right...
What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?
Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.
What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?
I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and ...
 

Also Known As

DX APM, CA APM, CA NetQoS Performance Center, Wily Introscope, CA Wily APM, CA App Experience Analytics, CA AXA
Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark, Intermountain Healthcare, National Australia Bank, BBVA Compass Bank, Innovapost, Dansk Supermarked Group, U.S. Cellular, Orange, Cetip
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 Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.