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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 (17th), Network Automation (2nd)
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
11th
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 May 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 9.4%, down from 25.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center9.4%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.5%
Other87.1%
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 provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"Automation is another key highlight. With automation, you can automate everything through a single port."
"Scalability in Cisco DNA Center is good; we are using it for Software-Defined Access solution, and we haven't reached our device limit yet— from my experience, we can easily manage numerous devices."
"The best feature of Cisco DNA Center is the visibility page, where you can see everything on the dashboard, and you don't have to be a technical person to view the issues."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"My advice to others is if you are a large enough company to have the Cisco DNA Center technology, you must try it because for a large enterprise or multi-site organization it's impressive and it saves a lot of money and time."
"The solution helps in user microsegmentation."
"I like the visibility, instant build, network, policies, and the ability to control access; I also like that you can visualize your whole network."
"It's very easy to use."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution; NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility, and there are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center."
"The cost is very high."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco DNA Center are expensive."
"What could be improved is the licensing cost of Cisco DNA Center. It's a little bit expensive."
"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."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"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."
"It was a bit expensive to purchase but the benefits outweigh all the cons by far."
"The solution is too expensive."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."
"The solution is expensive."
"The tool is medium-priced."
"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."
"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."
"Cisco DNA Center is a licensed product with multiple levels of licensing available such as basic, advanced, and essential. I don't have the exact figure, but Cisco DNA Center is costly. For example, the box has information about the essential license and costs a considerable amount of money. You need to pay extra to use advanced features in Cisco DNA Center. My company sees Cisco DNA Center as a solution that's worth the money, which is why it invested in the solution. If you want centralized management for your network, especially when upgrading it, Cisco DNA Center is perfect, but it's more suitable for a large-scale rather than a small-scale network."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"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."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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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
9%
Educational Organization
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?
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant. The deployment ...
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.
894,998 professionals have used our research since 2012.