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 (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st), 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

"Cisco Prime allows us to manage all the wireless controllers and access points."
"The technical support team is very good."
"We use this solution to troubleshoot our wireless systems, specifically regarding signal strength."
"Cisco Prime is helpful as it provides us with real-time monitoring. This allows us to be proactive in our environment."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is its excellent audio and video conferencing with clear quality and no interruptions."
"Cisco Prime can help customers fix their Wi-Fi issues with scientific and digital data."
"We use the solution to control the physical service station that is part of the SCADA network. We connect and control them remotely."
"As a large organization, it is difficult to individually monitor every device. Instead, we use Cisco Prime to keep an eye on the network and services. We do not use it as a node tool, as we have other tools for network operation centers. When services go down, it can cause issues, we rely on Cisco Prime to monitor and notify us of any service disruptions. We mainly use Cisco Prime Infrastructure for configuration-level tasks."
"​It covers a lot of different types of hardware. It can do a lot and saves us time.​"
"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."
"The most valuable feature is automatic discovery."
"Generally, I would recommend DX Spectrum because, despite its pricing issue, it is a valuable solution."
"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."
"As the kind of enterprise that straddles the line between telco size and enterprise size, it scales for us, because we're not all the way at telco yet."
"The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
 

Cons

"The product needs to improve its interface and reporting."
"Cisco needs to improve Prime's monitoring tab. If any device goes down, there is a 15-second lapse before we know. It would be much better if we were alerted two or three minutes before a device is about to fail, so we can dispatch a field engineer and avoid network downtime. I would like to see a feature that allows you to access the devices directly from Prime's monitoring tab. That would make work easier for us."
"The product's pricing can be cheaper."
"It should be able to monitor Palo Alto, Juniper, and Check Point products - not just Cisco solutions."
"The reporting feature of Cisco Prime should be improved."
"Cisco Prime's initial setup is complex."
"Some improvements are needed, specifically in the form of more updates and enhancements."
"Maybe it could be a little cheaper."
"Event correlation only works on one server, rather than on all of the servers in the same cluster environment."
"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."
"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."
"The upgrade process could be smoother. More of the steps around upgrading could be automated."
"Integration with some other tools, and integration with some Network Packet Broker, need some improvement."
"A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."
"​I would like to see them eliminate the Java console. The user interface for this is a Java applet that runs on your desktop, and it is very problematic for us."
"The interface is not nice and needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive compared to other vendors in the market."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive."
"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."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The cost is quite high."
"If we have a license for Cisco DNA, we can use the same license for Cisco Prime."
"I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"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."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"The price is very high."
"Spectrum is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Management Applications solutions are best for your needs.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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: August 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.