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DX Spectrum vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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

DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Management Applications
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (22nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (22nd), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 2.1%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

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…
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"It has a high-quality graphical interface."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the event correlation mechanism."
"The most valuable features of DX Spectrum are the comprehensive alerts."
"The fault management is perfect."
"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."
"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"NetCool has a huge database that can collect and process about one million alarms a day."
"It's very easy to use."
"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution. NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility. There are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite. Whenever an issue happens, rather than going to technical support, if you find the exact issue in Google, you can get tech notes for that particular issue."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
 

Cons

"DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features."
"There should be a facility to integrate with other monitoring applications that are currently running in the environment."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"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."
"We have had some issues with the spec server and the high availability replication of data. It fails over well, but it does not come back very well. We get duplicated events."
"We have had one support issue that's been open for a couple of months, and it is currently open."
"It was somewhat complex to implement."
"From the users perspective the looks and feel of dashboards of Spectrum would be easier to use and for understanding as APM will be in 10.5 version which we saw in CA World."
"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"Customization and integration that you need to do to make the product fit your needs is very complex. It is not a product that somebody could easily pick up without any prior training or experience."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spectrum is expensive."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"The price is very high."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"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 price of the product is too expensive."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
We are a customer of Broadcom, we use a group license that covers various CA products, including DX Spectrum. The company purchases the licenses they need from this group license, and we do not hav...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems. Challenges and Limitations The only other challenge is the price, which is the main...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What do you like most about IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The tool had many built-in automation capabilities.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The main challenge is its licensing model, which is very complicated.
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Tivoli NetCool
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.