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Cisco Prime [EOL] vs DX Spectrum comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Prime [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (6th), Network Monitoring Software (22nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (22nd), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

ZeeshanAli1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust, cost-effective, and provides good visibility, but the scalability could improve
We are extremely satisfied with the reliability and robustness of Cisco Prime Infrastructure, which we have been using for many years. Compared to newer products such as DNS centers or others, it has proven to be much more stable, which is important for large-scale operations. Stability is a primary concern for us, and we are glad that Cisco Prime Infrastructure meets our expectations in that regard. Furthermore, in regards to Legacy Plus new hardware, Cisco Prime has proven to be a reliable and adaptable solution thus far. Not only can it support older hardware, but it also has the capability to handle new features with the latest updates. If we consider new solutions such as DNS Center, we may have to sacrifice some legacy features that we still rely on. We may need to continue using these legacy features for a few more years due to various reasons such as budget constraints or the site not being a high priority. However, if we switch to a new product at this stage, we may lose a lot of the monitoring and other capabilities that we have with Cisco Prime. We have a close relationship with Cisco and understand that they are not prioritizing investments in Cisco Prime as they are encouraging customers to adopt the Cisco DNA Center. This means that we don't anticipate many new features to be added to the product in the future. While we know that we will eventually have to transition to a new solution, in the meantime, we plan to do a quick refresh of our legacy products.
DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies
The product helps to correlate events.  The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.  I have been using the product since 2005.  I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The hardware Cisco provides is excellent. It's a well-made product."
"Cisco Prime is helpful as it provides us with real-time monitoring. This allows us to be proactive in our environment."
"The technical support team is very good."
"The VLAN mapping function has been most impactful in simplifying our network management tasks."
"The most valuable is the assistance for network support."
"Enables oversight in order to tweak and tune."
"Cisco Prime has been around for a long time, and it keeps getting better and better."
"What I found most beneficial from Cisco Prime is that it gives you an insight into what your network does, even when you're not actively monitoring what's going on with your network."
"This product provides good visibility into applications at the backend."
"​Stability has been good. We really have not had any issues.​"
"​The stability of the product is key. It never breaks, really. The stability and reliability of the Spectrum product have been top-notch.​"
"It is very stable. We have not had any major issues in over 10 years."
"Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing."
"Some of the most valuable features are it's highly scalable, the carrier is great, and if something has SNMP, it can monitor it. It's a great network fault management solution."
"It does correlation so instead of producing 20 alarms if a site goes down, it only creates one."
"The tool is very mature, and its valuable features are monitoring and configuration management."
 

Cons

"Cisco Prime could improve the notifications in the system. Having more details about what is happening would be useful, such as traffic numbers or who is connected. We can see them through the firewall controller, but it would be better if you can see them from one place."
"Some improvements are needed, specifically in the form of more updates and enhancements."
"We would like to see the inclusion of detailed alerts."
"Cisco can only be used for Cisco environments and is not compatible with other vendors."
"The product needs to improve its stability."
"The reporting feature of Cisco Prime should be improved."
"There is room for improvement in the Access layer."
"I rate Cisco Prime seven out of 10 for affordability. All Cisco solutions are expensive."
"The Spectrum OneClick is a Java-based client, and that's aging. Really, before any new feature integration, I'd love to see a comprehensive rebuild of the UI."
"Needs better integration with all the other products in the Agile suite of tools; anything they could do to make that less complex, would be great."
"DX Spectrum is stable. However, now and then there are some issues, but overall it is good."
"I would like to see CA move Spectrum, Performance Manager, and some of their other tools moved to a SaaS based model. You see a lot of other manufacturers which are moving toward SaaS based models."
"Our consultant was four months on-site doing Spectrum setup and working through issues."
"The interface is not nice and needs to be improved."
"The product should provide performance management features."
"A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive compared to other vendors in the market."
"I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten."
"The solution is not inexpensive but is worth it for large-scale environments."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of Cisco Prime was reasonable because we purchased it as part of a Cisco One package. The package was a bundle of Cisco solutions together, such as Cisco ISE and CMX. The price is reasonable com compared to other solutions."
"The cost is quite high."
"You need to get special quotes from the company for each order."
"We update the license every five years."
"The price is very high."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Prime?
The most valuable features of Cisco Prime include its comprehensive functionality as a one-stop solution for basic SNMP port management.
What needs improvement with Cisco Prime?
The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive.
What is your primary use case for Cisco Prime?
We use Cisco Prime for centralized configuration management backups and monitoring.
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?
Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems. Challenges and Limitations The only other challenge is the price, which is the main...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Prime Infrastructure
CA Spectrum
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mohawk Industries, Universidad EAFIT, Halton Healthcare
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: December 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.