SolarWinds NPM and Cisco Secure Network Analytics compete in the network monitoring and security category. SolarWinds NPM has the upper hand in flexibility and deployment options, while Cisco Secure Network Analytics stands out in security and analytic capabilities.
Features: SolarWinds NPM provides comprehensive customization options, SNMP monitoring, and real-time network performance visibility. It offers robust alert features and a modular pricing structure allowing selective capability purchases. Cisco Secure Network Analytics focuses on providing detailed network visibility and strong analytic features, along with integration capabilities beneficial for threat detection and analysis.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM users indicate heavy resource usage and complexity in feature integration, accompanied by a need for better scalability and more flexible alert customization. The modular pricing approach causes cost concerns. Cisco Secure Network Analytics could improve ease of integration, modernize its user interface, and enhance reporting capabilities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM is deployable across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, offering various customer support options. Customer feedback varies on response times. Cisco Secure Network Analytics primarily supports on-premises deployment, with customer service praised for technical skill, although response times for non-critical issues can be slow.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM is perceived as expensive due to its modular pricing but is justified by its features and ROI from effective network monitoring. Cisco Secure Network Analytics presents licensing complexity, especially with network flow calculations, but provides security value. SolarWinds offers more flexible pricing, while Cisco demands careful licensing considerations.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
There is a lack of adequate local support from the Indian side.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
Cisco products are incredibly stable, boasting a 200% stability.
The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the application and OS layers.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Cisco solutions are considered to be very expensive.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
The most valuable features include encrypted traffic analytics and the ability to fulfill requirements at the network level.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a highly effective network traffic analysis (NTA) solution that enables users to find threats in their network traffic even if those threats are encrypted. It turns an organization’s network telemetry into a tool that creates a complete field of vision for the organization’s administrators. Users can find threats that may have infiltrated their systems and stop them before they can do irreparable harm.
Cisco Secure Network Analytics Benefits
A few ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Cisco Secure Network Analytics include:
Cisco Secure Network Analytics Features
Some of the many features that Cisco Secure Network Analytics offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a solution that stands out even when compared to many other comparable products. Two major advantages that it offers are the way that it enables users to define the threshold at which the solution will issue a warning to administrators and the predefined alerts that it offers straight out of the box.
Gerald J., the information technology operations supervisor at Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc., writes, “StealthWatch lets me see the ports running in and out and the country. It has excellent reporting, telemetry, and artificial intelligence features. With the telemetry, I can set thresholds to detect sudden changes and the alarms go through the PLC parts. I can see all the ports running on that trunk.”
A senior security engineer at a tech services company, says, “Cisco Stealthwatch has predefined alerts for different types of security issues that might happen in the network. Whether it's PCs or servers that are used for botnets or Bitcoin mining we receive the alerts automatically. This functionality is what we receive from the solution out of the box.”
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
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