Kentik vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Kentik and VMware are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Kentik is ranked #36 with an average rating of 9.0, while VMware is ranked #20 with an average rating of 9.0. Kentik holds a 0.8% mindshare in NMS, compared to VMware’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 14 Kentik reviews

1,118 Views
794 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 45 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,569 Views
903 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Kentik

vRealize Network Insight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and Kentik compete in network performance management, focusing on visualization and analysis of network data. vRealize appears to have the upper hand in comprehensive network flow visualization and integration with VMware NSX, while Kentik stands out in real-time traffic analysis and DDoS alert handling capabilities.

Features: vRealize Network Insight excels in comprehensive visualization of network flows, assisting with microsegmentation, and integrates seamlessly with NSX. It is also praised for its intuitive design and natural language queries. Conversely, Kentik is recognized for robust NetFlow visualization and traffic analysis, effective DDoS alert handling, and real-time visibility across network infrastructures, along with API integration that enhances traffic pattern insights.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight users suggest improved integration with more third-party services and enhanced user-friendliness due to complex interfaces and pricing structures. Kentik could offer more actionable insights for traffic anomalies and deeper application performance integration. Both products are noted for high costs, with suggestions for more flexible and cost-effective pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight is typically deployed on-premises with strong technical support attributed to VMware's backing. Kentik offers deployment flexibility in private clouds, receiving favorable feedback for reliable support, although its interface could be more user-friendly. Both benefit from strong assistance, with Kentik users reporting lower support engagement needs.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is perceived as expensive yet valuable for reducing operational time and costs, improving labor efficiency through network management. Kentik's pricing is steep, especially for larger deployments, but offers scalability with flexible licensing based on device volume. Both tools provide high ROI by simplifying network management, though users suggest potential cost improvements.

To learn more, read our detailed Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight

January 2025

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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

Kentik

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

36th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (19th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

20th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup

The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.

Read full review

NiteshKumar1

Principle consultant at Infosys

The tool's configuration is easy and artifacts are easily accessible through professional services and the web

The product is highly regarded, and many customers have been using it along with other VMware products like vSphere and VMware vCloud Usage Insight. However, recently, there's been a trend among customers, especially those using VMware for a considerable period, to explore the potential of migrating to the public cloud. The common concern among these customers is how the VMware products will perform in the public cloud environment. Migrating instances from VMware to different platforms is not easy, especially when dealing with many instances across multiple customers. Customers are keen to maintain the functionality of their existing VMware products but prefer to run them on the public cloud instead of on-premise servers. Our clients for vRealize Network Insight are enterprise businesses. I rate it a nine out of ten.

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 most valuable features have been anything around traffic engineering: being able to determine the source or destination of a surge of traffic, whether it's DDoS-related, or a customer just happened to have a sudden uptick in traffic. Being able to tell where that's coming from or where it's going to enables us to do things based on that."

"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."

"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."

"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."

"The most important feature is cybersecurity."

"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."

"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."

"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."

More Kentik pros

"The most valuable features are the packet trace flow and that the view of the whole environment is deep."

"We haven't had any complaints about the stability of the solution or heard of any issues. None of our clients have mentioned running into bugs or glitches. There haven't been crashes."

"It allows us to go from virtual through NSX, up to the core, and see all of that in one pane of glass, it's pretty easy."

"With this product, we can precisely identify communication patterns between virtual machines within our data center, whether it's east-east or east-west communication."

"It is user-friendly. It's pretty simple to deploy and to run. It gives you pretty easy-to-understand reports, very graphically intense, so you can visualize what's going on in your network."

"Also, the ability to troubleshoot all the way across the NSX part of it to the physical and actually watch the packets go through and then see where the bottleneck is or where the interruption is. We run queries on the network flows within the application to find where they are in it and it graphically tells us how the packets are actually going through the system."

"I like being able to see the flows coming in and out of the product. In terms of monitoring network flows, we use it to verify whether or not different servers/applications should be communicating with each other."

"By doing dependency mapping, it makes migrations more efficient. There are less outages that require engineers to spend additional hours troubleshooting the migration failures."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."

"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."

"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."

"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."

"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."

More Kentik cons

"The IT infrastructure industry is expected to evolve towards a hybrid cloud model in the next five to ten years. In this model, most of the customer's resources reside on-premise within a private cloud setup, such as VMware. Another segment operates within public cloud environments like Azure and AWS, and a portion remains in traditional data centers. There should be seamless interoperability between public and private clouds. AWS and VMware need to work together to make it possible. Whether users interact with on-premise infrastructure or configure resources in the public cloud, the user experience must be seamless."

"The solution can be improved by making it more compatible with other brands, allowing for better integration."

"I want to see more in terms of microsegmentation. As of now, I can see the rules, but they are not in a readable format that I can convert to microsegmentation and can fit into NSX Manager."

"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."

"It needs to be a little easier to use and to understand the information it's putting out. That would make it more helpful. If you're not a network person you need to understand things like network policies and concepts. If you gave it to a regular admin, it would be nice if it were easier for them to pick up what is going on, understand the flows and whether or not stuff should be talking to each other, as opposed to just port groups and IP addresses."

"There is room for improvement when it comes to pricing because we pay here in Brazil, and all the costs are based on the dollar."

"If it had some kind of plugins with vSphere, more effective plugins with Horizon View or other VMWare products, if it had interconnectivity, I think it would be more effective than it is today."

"After you use it for a little while you become accustomed to it but the layout doesn't feel very intuitive. You have to dig around and find the exact place where you can find the information, where you can actually see your east-west traffic, etc. I would like them to bring that information more to the forefront, instead of having to find it."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheaply priced."

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."

"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."

"The solution has helped us to reduce time, increase performance, reduce costs, and even easily manage networks. We are probably seeing 10 to 20 percent labor savings because we are able to be very specific and focused on what we want to do. It ends up saving the customer money and makes us be more efficient on our cost deliveries."

"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

"It reduces costs. It takes something that may be challenging and makes it more usable and visual by being able to bring in tools, seeing what their impact is, such as microsegmentation and application rationalization, and seeing it quickly."

"The solution has reduced the time that we spend on other products. For example, with NSX, we were able to quickly find things that we would normally spend days trying to figure out."

"It's a little expensive, but for what you're getting out of the product, you often see the trade-off. It depends on the type of licensing you have. It might be a little too pricey for some."

"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kentik?

It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kentik?

The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect.

See all answers

What do you like most about vRealize Network Insight?

The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?

The sales team often complains about the cost whenever we need to quote vRealize Network.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined. They can show a little bit more information because vRealize Network Insight is virtu...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

February 2025

Download Kentik product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

February 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Kentik

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

VMware

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight

January 2025

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