Cisco DNA Center vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) comparison

Cisco and IBM are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.0. Cisco holds a 1.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to IBM’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Cisco DNA Center

Read 41 Cisco DNA Center reviews

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1,023 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Read 53 IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) reviews

1,958 Views
1,111 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Cisco DNA Center

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

IBM SevOne NPM and Cisco DNA Center compete in the network performance management category. Cisco DNA Center may have the upper hand due to its advanced automation capabilities and secure integrations.

Features: IBM SevOne NPM offers comprehensive infrastructure visibility, real-time accurate data reporting, and scalability, making it advantageous for managing a wide range of devices. Cisco DNA Center presents centralized management, seamless device integration, and excellent automation capabilities, particularly beneficial for Cisco infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: IBM SevOne NPM needs better data migration during upgrades, enhanced reporting features, and more intuitive configuration management. Cisco DNA Center could enhance its pricing, UI, and reduce upgrade times, alongside better support for non-Cisco devices.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SevOne NPM supports on-premises, hybrid, and private cloud deployments, providing flexibility for diverse needs, while customer service is praised for its knowledgeable support. Cisco DNA Center supports on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments. Customers note its high complexity but technical expertise and responsive service are appreciated.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SevOne NPM's pay-as-you-grow model and scalable licensing offer flexible cost management, although prices can escalate quickly. Its ROI is seen in operational efficiencies and cost savings. Cisco DNA Center's pricing is high, potentially weighing more on smaller enterprises, but offers significant ROI through network management enhancements.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco DNA Center vs. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

March 2025

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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

Cisco DNA Center

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

40th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (19th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (45th), Log Management (48th), Cloud Monitoring Software (28th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

AvrahamSonenthal

Senior Network Engineer at Inside Global

Efficiently manages our wireless network and provides valuable monitoring features

The platform's biggest benefit has been in managing our wireless network. Having a single pane of glass to control all wireless controllers and access points and to monitor activity has been a significant advantage. We're a small federal agency with around 300 network devices, so automation is a minor focus. It's more relevant for larger networks. The main benefits we've seen are in inventory management and the potential for configuration automation. However, I recommend using the DNA Centre only for larger networks with over a thousand devices; otherwise, it may not be cost-effective. Before proceeding, ensure that your devices are compatible with DNA Center, as not all Cisco devices are supported. Also, investing in proper training is different from plug-and-play. I rate it an eight.

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Grzegorz Nowak

Solution Architect at Wingu

Improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic

We use SevOne to collect and report on network flows SevOne improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic. We can look at bandwidth for specific endpoints on the customer's network and analyze traffic to identify issues. For example, maybe some connectors are unavailable.…

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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

"We can monitor all devices and get the required information using the product."

"It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices."

"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."

"The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility."

"What's most valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the ability to manage any Cisco infrastructure and device through it. Setup was straightforward."

"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."

"I like the visibility, instant build, network, policies, and the ability to control access. I also like that you can visualize your whole network."

"The automation features are significant, reducing configuration time. This means outstanding functionality. By deploying the controller automatically, the rest becomes automated"

More Cisco DNA Center pros

"The network data collection has been very flexible for us. It's been thorough in areas that were lacking. They have a team that I've worked with to add other pieces to it. So if it's missing something out of the box, they work with me to add it. I was able to collect that data. It's not perfect, but it's pretty thorough."

"The SMP and the xStats, which is for flat file integration, are both useful for integrating the various metrics that the device provides to monitor the performance of those systems."

"It's a great solution for highlighting and discovering useful information regarding our network's elements."

"One of the solution's biggest strengths is its capacity management performance, with out-of-the-box reports through NMS, as well as its ability to collect NetFlow-related data from devices. The collection of network performance and flow data is important because we have many critical business applications."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is the scale-up and scale-down. The scale-up is an operation where the CPU boosts-up and then the memory will boost-up. That works awesomely."

"The automation feature is good because if your CMDB is OK and it is already in sync, then the automation part is good to go."

"I like the tool’s scalability and real-time reports. Earlier, we struggled to give real-time reports to clients. I also like the tool’s deployment model where we can deploy it either on-premises or in-house. We don’t have to carry the data all over the globe. Also, I am impressed with the tool's flow reporting and Wi-Fi."

"Data Insight reporting tool is the most valuable feature. They came up with it a couple of years ago. The most pleasing factor is the dark theme. You don't have a white background. It has templates that you can create for all kinds of reports that you can hit on the fly. It's much better printing of the reports. If you want to send PDFs to people, the reports are actually decent. Whereas for years, the old architecture of the PDFs was rubbish and even our customers said, "We have to manipulate your PDFs because they all have bad margin breaks. SevOne fixed that a couple of years ago with the new Data Insight. It's fantastic."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pros

Cons

"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."

"It seems to be a little bit more centered toward wireless than wired. You've got more options you can do wirelessly than you can with the wired switches, but it works for what we need it to do. We would like to see a little bit more about the traffic, and we're looking at what's out there to see about that. We are looking at something that might give us a bit more insight into the actual traffic. If they had the full functionality on the wired side, as they do on the wireless side in terms of being able to view traffic and everything, it would be good."

"The network, data center, and SD-WAN are all being treated as different services, but I would like to have only one solution to manage all of them."

"They can improve the network visibility. Licensing and its maintenance are also needed."

"What I want to see in Cisco DNA Center in the future is more support for other platforms so that you can manage third-party products, such as Fortinet."

"Cisco DNA Center was a new technology for us, at the beginning, it was not easy to do, but Cisco did a lot of training with us to a level we could handle everything. The team is managing itself now without the assistance of Cisco."

"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."

"An area for improvement in Cisco DNA Center is the latency in data correlation. For example, sometimes, when an issue happens, and I check the logs, I can't find the corresponding log. There's a delay in log replication, so this is what needs improvement in Cisco DNA Center. Reporting in Cisco DNA Center could also be improved because it only has a few templates, and you can't customize it based on your requirements. There aren't many options available in Cisco DNA Center regarding reporting, versus Cisco Prime, which has excellent features for different levels of detailed reports. I'd like to see real-time data replication in the next release of Cisco DNA Center, similar to what's done in Meraki. Data in Meraki is real-time with no delay, so data is immediately replicated in the cloud. Currently, there's a lag in Cisco DNA Center, and addressing that lag is the enhancement I'd like to see in Cisco DNA Center. The solution also needs to be more user-friendly."

More Cisco DNA Center cons

"When I started using it, I tried adding one of the BroadWorks application servers into SevOne... it created thousands and thousands of objects from that one application server and we immediately ran out of license... It would help, when new objects are discovered, if there were a way to categorize those objects and to pick the part of the object you need..."

"The tool needs improvement in non-Cisco SD-WAN."

"Telemetry is hot these days, and IBM can improve SevOne's support for telemetry correction. Reporting is another feature that could be better. It provides the bare minimum functionality, which is good enough for most engineers, but the management isn't advanced. The new portal provides a much lighter view and better visualization, but the management is not so good."

"High-frequency polling is data-intensive because you're pulling more. If SevOne could figure out a way to manage the impact of high-frequency polling on the system, that would be very popular."

"The method of searching for SIP and the way to create the groups."

"You need to plan integrations. That has been the biggest bug with SevOne so far. For the things that SevOne pulls directly, those are easy to understand, modify, and put into the database. For things that need to use the Universal Collector or xStats, you need to plan that stuff well in advance."

"NMS has several areas for improvement. It should be more user-friendly inside of NMS for some of the functionality in there. It's been getting better the last version or two, but the there have been bugs in there whenever I've gone to new versions."

"In terms of having a complete view of our network performance, I would rate it a nine out of 10. The reason for not giving it a 10 is that there is no packet capture associated with SevOne, but we do have other tools in place to do that."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive. The hardware is licensed on the device, but the hardware on the server is expensive."

"The price could be better. It's a very expensive tool."

"The solution is expensive."

"Our licensing agreement is for three years."

"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."

"Cisco DNA Center is expensive."

"It is an expensive solution."

"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."

More Cisco DNA Center pricing and cost advice

"For the value that you get from SevOne, it's worth the price. There are a lot of cheaper alternatives on the market, and even free options. But they require more staff, more resources, and engineers with more advanced knowledge of monitoring. That's what makes SevOne worth the price."

"There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible."

"Prices per license are not huge, but they exist."

"There are cheaper solutions available."

"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."

"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."

"Although I don't have exact details in terms of cost, my experience has been that SevOne is willing to make a deal with the customer."

"Many tools price things based on the number of KPIs that you're collecting around a device. In many cases, there could be hundreds of metrics that you need to collect. SevOne provides device-level pricing. That gives us the flexibility to turn on, and expand on, the metrics that we're collecting around those devices, without taking a financial hit."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Legal Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco DNA Center?

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?

The cost is very high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?

The system is working fine for me currently.

See all answers

What do you like most about SevOne Network Data Platform?

I like the tool’s scalability and real-time reports. Earlier, we struggled to give real-time reports to clients. I also like the tool’s deployment model where we can deploy it either on-premises or...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SevOne Network Data Platform?

The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SevOne Network Data Platform?

SevOne could improve its flexibility because it isn't fully customizable and its out-of-the-box configuration doesn't cover all use cases.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Catalyst Center vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 8% of the time

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 8% of the time

Meraki Dashboard vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 7% of the time

Fortinet FortiManager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco DNA Center Competitors

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 14% of the time

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 10% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 10% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center

March 2025

Download Cisco DNA Center product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

February 2025

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) report

Download IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) product report

Also Known As

DNA Center

SevOne

Overview

Cisco DNA Center offers a comprehensive platform for network automation and management, providing detailed analytics, enhanced security, and streamlined operations for both wired and wireless networks.

Cisco DNA Center integrates with Cisco infrastructure to deliver efficient network automation and management, helping organizations improve network visibility, security, and control. It supports AI-driven analytics and automated workflows to enhance operational efficiency and reduce errors. Challenges include compatibility with third-party systems, steep learning curve, and complex deployment. Its interface facilitates centralized control, vital for troubleshooting, policy management, and configuration management, with support for zero-touch provisioning and SD-Access.

What are the key features of Cisco DNA Center?

Robust Analytics: Provides detailed insights into network health with AI-driven analytics.
Centralized Security: Integrates with ISE for comprehensive security management.
Automated Device Management: Simplifies device provisioning and configuration transfers.
Wi-Fi Analytics: Offers deep insights into wireless network performance.
Zero-Touch Provisioning: Streamlines new device deployments with minimal human intervention.
Scalable Segmentation: Efficiently segments network traffic ensuring security and performance.

What benefits should users consider?

Operational Efficiency: Automation reduces potential errors and streamlines workflow.
Enhanced Security: Integration with Cisco ISE bolsters security capabilities.
Network Visibility: Comprehensive dashboards and analysis tools enhance monitoring.
Troubleshooting: Real-time monitoring aids in identifying and resolving issues swiftly.

In sectors such as healthcare, finance, and retail, Cisco DNA Center is utilized for its ability to enhance security and compliance, manage large-scale networks, and provide detailed analytics for better operational decision-making. Its support for location tracking and policy automation ensures efficient network management across diverse environments.

Cisco

The IBM® SevOne Network Performance Management (IBM SevOne NPM) solution helps you spot, address, and prevent network performance issues early with machine learning-powered analytics from a single source. Boost network performance and improve your user application experience by proactively monitoring your multivendor end-to-end network across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider networks.

Transform raw network performance data into intelligent and actionable insights. The IBM SevOne NPM solution goes beyond detection, combining industry-leading expertise and advanced technology to help your IT team plan and optimize your network and act on what matters: improving network performance to provide an exceptional customer experience.

For further information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud/sevo...

IBM

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

ATOS, Devereux, Spark New Zealand, Access4, Rogers Communication, Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink)

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

March 2025

Free Report: Cisco DNA Center vs. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

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