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Cisco DNA Center vs IBM Tivoli NetCool 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco DNA Center
Ranking in Network Management Applications
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (20th), Network Automation (2nd)
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 10.6%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center10.6%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.1%
Other86.3%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Mahir Öztürk - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
Client history has helped resolve past network issues more efficiently
I mostly use the client history feature of Cisco DNA Center. I didn't use the real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center because I primarily used it for client history regarding issues and problems. I don't use it for real-time monitoring. If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco DNA Center is easier to use than Fortinet FortiManager."
"Cisco DNA Center is something that I recommend."
"It is a stable solution."
"One of the advantages is Cisco support."
"The advice I would give to other people who want to use Cisco DNA Center is to go for it, particularly if they have Cisco infrastructure, though these days integration could be an issue."
"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"Cisco VXLAN is a protocol that has been around for some time, but the practical implementation and operational capability of Cisco DNA Center bring it to life."
"The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility."
"The solution is a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"The solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
"Full featured - event/fault management, performance management, topology map, discovery, RCA, event enrichment, Proviso will chart data from almost any source with a variety of aggregation options."
"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
 

Cons

"The tool's IoT integration should be better."
"Cisco DNA Center should improve its configuration management. It is better to have a dev version before pushing it."
"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
"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."
"In my opinion, the client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"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 pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco DNA Center are expensive."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"I think the UI should be updated and made more presentable and eye-catching. Compared to NCE in Huawei, NSN in Nokia, the UiPath and Ubiquiti, it feels very old legacy."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"It was a bit expensive to purchase but the benefits outweigh all the cons by far."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a three-year license with them."
"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"The price could be better. It's a very expensive tool."
"The solution is a little bit expensive but depends a lot on the customer's usage. If you use it in the right place, you can easily pay for it."
"Cisco DNA Center is too expensive."
"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."
"The tool is medium-priced."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?
After evaluating other solutions, we will provide feedback.
What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?
In my opinion, the client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days. I am using it in a huge factory in Turkey, and sometimes I need to see what occ...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The main challenge is its licensing model, which is very complicated.
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool?
NetCool is the manager of managers in the stack. It basically combines the devices of the whole network. We are the mobile network operator, so we use it to assist us in cross-domain correlations a...
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,906 professionals have used our research since 2012.