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Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 Provider Connectivity...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
41st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (47th)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (14th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.3%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance0.9%
Other97.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.
Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support
I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…
AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"APM analysis is much faster than traditional root cause analysis of application problems."
"We have found this to be a very valuable toolset, and has paid for itself several times over."
"Thanks to Skylight we have a tool for this kind of investigation and it has reduced our mean time to respond by at least 50 percent."
"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."
"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."
"Ease of use; can literally diagnose an issue in about four clicks."
"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 solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."
"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."
"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"We haven't had any issues with stability."
 

Cons

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."
"So scalability, at the moment, is pretty bad for us now, because our modus operandi have totally shifted."
"We have encountered problems with the license that is connected to the hypervisor on which the virtual appliance is deployed."
"Embed a warning system to a mailbox when it exceeds the threshold for use of bandwidth over a given period of time."
"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."
"The licensing of the virtual pollers is problematic because they are attached to the physical ESX on which they are installed."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"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."
"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."
"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."
"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 price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"It provides value and the cost is not huge."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?
Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.
What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?
I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

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
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
912,006 professionals have used our research since 2012.