Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (20th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (6th), 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

"Enables oversight in order to tweak and tune."
"The product's most valuable features are monitoring and configuration."
"It helps us manage and monitor analytics and fix issues."
"Cisco Prime, from a management perspective, has good reporting."
"The endpoint information Cisco Prime generates helps us troubleshoot, and it's also useful for compliance reporting and endpoint identification."
"We use this solution to troubleshoot our wireless systems, specifically regarding signal strength."
"Cisco Prime can help customers fix their Wi-Fi issues with scientific and digital data."
"It gives you the ability to upgrade switches remotely, schedule the upgrade time, perform backups, and monitor the health of all networks."
"DX Spectrum uses an SNMP Trap to accept all the details, especially for device monitoring of faulty devices, allowing me to use Spectrum effectively."
"Offers a lot of functionality."
"The Global Collections are what I found to be most valuable. With the Global Collections, you're able to organize and categorize devices into "folders," or functional groups and categories, so that it doesn't matter which SpectroSERVER those devices are on."
"The main thing is obviously notifications about alerts, getting ahead of the curve to make sure that we do not have system going down, or if it is down we get to know it earlier."
"Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing."
"The fault management is perfect."
"The capability of handling and monitoring with SNMP and working with the SNMP traps is much better than other products."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component."
 

Cons

"Some improvements are needed, specifically in the form of more updates and enhancements."
"The product needs to improve its stability."
"The onboarding process could be improved and developed to enhance compatibility for non-Cisco devices."
"It should be able to monitor Palo Alto, Juniper, and Check Point products - not just Cisco solutions."
"The overall management capabilities of Prime need to be improved."
"This solution could be improved if it could monitor configuration changes."
"The solution is not easy to configure."
"I want the tool to improve data visibility."
"It needs better integration with other CA products."
"For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts."
"Event correlation only works on one server, rather than on all of the servers in the same cluster environment."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow."
"If the integration is simplified or improved, it will be a unique selling point in comparison to the competition on the market."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management."
"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."
"Make it easier to certify devices."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Prime is an expensive solution."
"You need to get special quotes from the company for each order."
"The cost is quite high."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive."
"If we have a license for Cisco DNA, we can use the same license for Cisco Prime."
"We update the license every five years."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price is very high."
"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."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Management Applications solutions are best for your needs.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise88
 

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?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals.
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Prime Infrastructure
CA Spectrum
 

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: October 2025.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.