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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs DX Spectrum comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN reduces WAN expenses, improves efficiency, and enhances reliability, with ROI in three years for most users.
Sentiment score
7.1
DX Spectrum users see 100% ROI with automation enhancing data accuracy, reducing labor costs, and improving infrastructure monitoring.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN support is highly rated for expertise and responsiveness, despite occasional delays and redirection challenges.
Sentiment score
7.0
DX Spectrum's customer service is highly rated, but technical support experiences vary, with delays post-Broadcom acquisition.
Cisco's ongoing reorganizations have affected the quality of technical support, which varies depending on the engineer handling cases.
Broadcom technical support is very good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is praised for its scalability, suitable for diverse industries and enterprises, despite some technical expansion limits.
Sentiment score
8.1
DX Spectrum is praised for its scalability, integrating easily into large infrastructures with minimal adjustments needed for expansion.
Cisco SD-WAN is highly scalable and can be expanded to more than 10,000 sites.
The ease of configuration and features like zero-touch provisioning enhance the scalability of Cisco SD-WAN, especially in disaster recovery situations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is stable and reliable, but complex setups and new deployments may face minor issues and bugs.
Sentiment score
7.3
DX Spectrum is praised for stability, with minor issues often due to configurations, effectively supported for solutions.
While some software-related issues and bugs were encountered, they did not cause the whole environment to crash.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN needs cost efficiency, better interface, enhanced security, simplified licensing, and improved support and scalability.
DX Spectrum users seek HTML5 transition, better integration, improved event management, and simpler deployment, citing cost concerns versus competitors.
Including more features like integrating with Splunk for monitoring vulnerabilities would help eliminate the need for other SOC solutions.
The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is costly compared to competitors, with complex licensing but offers comprehensive solutions and performance benefits.
DX Spectrum is costly for small-to-medium businesses, though flexible and negotiable for enterprises; Broadcom's acquisition increased complexity.
Its pricing is justifiable due to the comprehensive solution it offers.
It is also relatively cost-effective for smaller businesses when using the Meraki version.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN offers centralized management, security, scalability, cloud integration, and enhances network performance and cost savings.
DX Spectrum provides comprehensive network management with topology views, automation, and multi-vendor support, enhanced by a user-friendly interface.
Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations.
Integration with Cisco ISE, Cisco Firewalls, and other Cisco solutions is beneficial.
The DX Net apps include all kinds of dashboards and integrate with event management tools, network tools, and all these tools from Broadcom.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
Ranking in Network Management Applications
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (2nd), WAN Edge (2nd)
DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Management Applications
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Van Den Ouden - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables secure and flexible branch connectivity with application-aware routing
The valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN include its security policies and zone-based firewall that are applied to every site, as well as application-aware routing. Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations. Application-aware routing offers flexibility in using different lines for traffic, depending on the policy implemented.
Umair (Abu Mohaymin) Akhlaque - PeerSpot reviewer
Good for monitoring, covers networks well
If you are looking for the right monitoring tool, Spectrum is one of the best solutions. It covers networks very well. It has all the capabilities that you're looking for when it comes to monitoring. Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing. If you have a CA Service Desk, then it can be integrated so that if you have open tickets they can be closed automatically. The configuration manager is great as well.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco SD-WAN?
When considering the most valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN, the decoupling of self-monitoring stands out significantly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
The pricing for Cisco SD-WAN is rated eight out of ten, with some variability depending on the reseller discounts and the size of the enterprise. It is also relatively cost-effective for smaller bu...
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
The main area for improvement in Cisco SD-WAN is the lack of documentation, which often lags behind the software releases. This is especially notable since Cisco acquired the solution and is still ...
What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
We are a customer of Broadcom, we use a group license that covers various CA products, including DX Spectrum. The company purchases the licenses they need from this group license, and we do not hav...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches t...
 

Also Known As

Cisco SD-WAN
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs. DX Spectrum and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.