Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs Datadog comparison

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Datadog and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance compete in the monitoring and analytics tools category. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance appears to have an upper hand in specific aspects, despite users appreciating Datadog’s overall value.

Features: Datadog users value its monitoring and analytics capabilities, particularly for cloud applications. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance users highlight its robust network monitoring features, valued highly for on-premise environments. Cisco's feature set is more comprehensive for network-specific needs.

Room for Improvement: Datadog users point to the need for improvement in alert configuration and pricing transparency. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance users suggest simplifying initial setup and documentation. Cisco faces criticism for setup complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Datadog is praised for its straightforward deployment and efficient customer service. Conversely, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance users encounter a steeper learning curve and mixed customer service reviews. Datadog offers a smoother deployment experience and superior support.

Pricing and ROI: Datadog users report mixed feelings about its pricing, with some finding it high relative to ROI. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance users believe it provides good ROI despite higher initial costs. Cisco is seen as offering better long-term value, whereas Datadog is scrutinized for pricing concerns.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Datadog Report (Updated: December 2024).

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Datadog

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Helped 824,067 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

32nd

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

37th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Datadog

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

1st

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

186

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 10.1%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe

Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features

This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

Read full review

Kevin Palmer

DevOps/Security Principal at Raken

Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation

Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."

"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."

"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."

"It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible."

"I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else."

"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"The platform appeals to companies spanning many industries on a global scale."

"The solution has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc."

"Real user monitoring gives us invaluable insights into actual user experiences, helping us prioritize improvements where they matter most."

"I find the greatest feature is being able to search across logs from various microservices."

"We have hundreds of microservices, and knowing how top-level requests weave throughout all of them is invaluable."

"It has empowered all our platform engineers with a very powerful and easy to use monitoring system."

"The ease with which we can filter, use metrics, and give accounts to customers, then let the customer filter, set up metrics, and alerts. This has been a big win for us."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the APM."

More Datadog pros

Cons

"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."

"Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams."

"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."

"There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely."

"I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"In terms of UI, everything is very small, which makes it quite difficult to navigate at times."

"The documentation leaves a lot to be desired for new users."

"Datadog does not have the feature where you can monitor external websites or check the SSL secure for websites."

"Datadog has a lot of documentation, but a lot of that documentation assumes you know how the service works, which can lead to confusion."

"The product could be improved by providing remote control to agents, enabling them to execute automation and collections without requiring another automation tool or integration."

"Datadog lacks a deeper application-level insight. Their competitors had eclipsed them in offering ET functionality that was important to us. That's why we stopped using it and switched to New Relic. Datadog's price is also high."

"One key improvement we would like to see in a future Datadog release is the inclusion of certain metrics that are currently unavailable. Specifically, the ability to monitor CPU and memory utilization of AWS-managed Airflow workers, schedulers, and web servers would be highly beneficial for our organization."

"The wide range of products Datadog now offers can be a bit intimidating to developers."

More Datadog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."

"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

"It provides value and the cost is not huge."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."

"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."

"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."

"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."

"They prefer monthly subscriptions."

"Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."

"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."

"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."

More Datadog pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

39%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

38%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Accedian Skylight?

The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Accedian Skylight?

The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It i...

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?

There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you chang...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?

With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...

Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Comparisons

Compared 48% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 17% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 9% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 6% of the time

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Dynatrace vs Datadog

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Datadog

Compared 14% of the time

New Relic vs Datadog

Compared 6% of the time

AWS X-Ray vs Datadog

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Datadog

Compared 4% of the time

More Datadog Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

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Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

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Cisco

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time application and network performance monitoring, VPN management, and network diagnostics across multiple sites.

Organizations use Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance for active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and troubleshooting performance issues. Deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, it supports IT infrastructure, security, and analytics with end-to-end performance measurement across cloud data centers. The modern, intuitive interface features TWAMP for real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reports, along with insightful dashboards for circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput monitoring.

What are the most important features?

TWAMP: Provides real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reporting.
Insightful Dashboards: Monitor circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput.
Security Integration: Compatible with tools like Splunk for enhanced security.
Application Support: Facilitates comprehensive network performance analysis.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Quick Corrective Actions: Immediate response capabilities for performance issues.
Easy Navigation: User-friendly layouts simplify monitoring and troubleshooting.
Comprehensive Analytics: Advanced tools for in-depth network performance insights.
Cloud and On-Premise Options: Flexible deployment to meet different needs.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance ensures robust performance monitoring and quick diagnostics for VPNs and internet lines. It aids in maintaining the integrity and security of data transference, facilitating active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and performance troubleshooting across geographically dispersed locations, ensuring seamless operation and compliance with industry standards.

Datadog is a comprehensive cloud monitoring platform designed to track performance, availability, and log aggregation for cloud resources like AWS, ECS, and Kubernetes. It offers robust tools for creating dashboards, observing user behavior, alerting, telemetry, security monitoring, and synthetic testing.

Datadog supports full observability across cloud providers and environments, enabling troubleshooting, error detection, and performance analysis to maintain system reliability. It offers detailed visualization of servers, integrates seamlessly with cloud providers like AWS, and provides powerful out-of-the-box dashboards and log analytics. Despite its strengths, users often note the need for better integration with other solutions and improved application-level insights. Common challenges include a complex pricing model, setup difficulties, and navigation issues. Users frequently mention the need for clearer documentation, faster loading times, enhanced error traceability, and better log management.

What are the key features of Datadog?

Graphs and Dashboards: Visualizes servers and infrastructure with customizable views.
Metrics: Offers deep insights into system performance and user behavior.
Log Management: Provides powerful analytics for logs and seamless log aggregation.
Unified Tagging: Facilitates organization and retrieval of metrics and logs.
APM and RUM: Enables application performance monitoring and real user monitoring for comprehensive insights.
Synthetic Testing: Allows the simulation of user interactions to test application performance.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

System Reliability: Helps ensure uptime and performance across cloud environments.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Assists in identifying and resolving issues before they impact users.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring and log management tasks.
Flexible Integrations: Adapts to various cloud services and infrastructure setups.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides timely notifications to address problems swiftly.

Datadog is implemented across different industries, from tech companies monitoring cloud applications to finance sectors ensuring transactional systems' performance. E-commerce platforms use Datadog to track and visualize user behavior and system health, while healthcare organizations utilize it for maintaining secure, compliant environments. Every implementation assists teams in customizing monitoring solutions specific to their industry's requirements.

Sample Customers

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Datadog