Kentik vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Kentik and VMware are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Kentik is ranked #39 with an average rating of 9.0, while VMware is ranked #21 with an average rating of 9.0. Kentik holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to VMware’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 13 Kentik reviews

1,158 Views
826 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 45 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,673 Views
972 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Kentik

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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

39th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (21st)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

21st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (17th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Ahmad Mohd Fahmin

Consultant at Finther Tecnologica

Makes monitoring of operational efficiency an easy process

If there is any integration, it will apply back to the source of information that was creating the delay, for example, a legacy system or because the network's configuration is not correct. My company has not yet used any AI features of the product, but we do plan to use it in the future. I recommend the tool to others. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."

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

"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."

"The most valuable feature is being able to pull traffic patterns; to and from destinations. We're able to understand where our traffic is going, our top talkers from an AS set, as well as where our traffic's coming from."

"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."

"We're pretty happy with the API functionality. It's web, and it's very simple to set up queries. It has served us well and you don't need to be an expert on the API or the product to set these things up."

"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."

"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."

More Kentik pros

"We're a smaller company so it automates a lot of the tasks and lets us focus in on building out our own solution. It's quicker, there is less building of manual solutions, and less downtime. It allows our developers to quickly develop, get provisioning done, de-provisioning, etc; the stuff that you would expect to be able to make it streamlined."

"The most valuable features are the monitoring and tracking. It's also intuitive and user-friendly. The screen looks exactly the same as the other appliances for VMware, so it's easy to navigate."

"vRNI can trace the flow of each and every packet and it is easy for us to troubleshoot all the issues that we do have with the networking. We can trace down the packet to a point where it has been dropped."

"The solution helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."

"The most valuable feature is being able to easily see the path that the VM traffic is taking, what ports are in use."

"The graphical interface of this environment is so good with all the views, the graphics, and everything in them. It's really easy for me. It doesn't need an engineer to work on it. It's easy enough that anyone can get into the environment and look for issues or look at how communication is going on across the VMs. It's pretty much straightforward."

"It gives the visibility that was either broken or there in pieces only. This solution provides a unified view of the whole system, back and forth. It has helped to reduce time to value, increase performance, more easily manage networks, and provide deep visibility."

"It's very user-friendly in the sense that the querying is just regular language like you and I speak or write. You don't need to know any SQL-query type of language to be able to get what you want out of it."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."

"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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..."

More Kentik cons

"There could be some deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows. It could use some kind of machine learning to look at Layer 7 traffic for potential malware or corrupt packets."

"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."

"The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names."

"I would like to see more reporting features, more dashboards."

"I would like to see application identification. That would be cool."

"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."

"While it's not exactly a feature, what normally happens when we are trying to look at the VM flow portion is - although Network Insight does have options to integrate a few physical switches into it - we can't really get an end-to-end flow of the network. We might be using a few switches that are not supported by Network Insight. That is where they can improve, in the support for more physical switches and network devices."

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."

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

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

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 tool is cheaply priced.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kentik?

Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end. We have the L3 and L4 support, but we have to get expertise in a different time zone, which i...

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

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

December 2024

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

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Kentik

VMware

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.

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.

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

Free Report: Kentik vs. vRealize Network Insight

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