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Pico Corvil Analytics vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

Pico Corvil Analytics
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
45th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pico Corvil Analytics is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ted Hruzd - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful support agents, beneficial issue detection, and high availability
The creation of charts and real-time windows was somewhat cumbersome. The vendor's website had an application called App Agent that required improvement. This API was designed to track message rates between microservers ingested into a microservice memory map. It allowed users to monitor the number of transactions that occurred at specific points within the application, and it was quite impressive. However, it had some limitations, and it mainly served as a tool for basic tracking. The protocols it employed could reveal the type of server-to-server communication and the specific order types, but it was not able to provide a more in-depth analysis of the application. The vendor has the potential to integrate application metrics more extensively into their product suite. The product suite could benefit from more out-of-the-box predictive analytics capabilities, such as projecting market or symbol movements. However, it is unclear whether the vendor currently provides this functionality. Users may need to adjust their software to perform such analysis independently.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As part of my role in monitoring multiple client connections, I would use Pico Corvil Analytics to set up alerts for performance issues, such as TCP resends and dropped packets. These alerts would trigger when the volume was low and performance was poor, allowing me to work with our trading partners to find a resolution. I would present them with the statistics I had and together, we would identify the source of the issue. This collaboration resulted in the client often reconfiguring their systems. For example, we may find that a network connection needed to be made. Overall, this proactive approach helped to maintain strong connections with our clients and minimize disruptions to trading revenue."
"It has all the decoders so it's capturing every network packet and it's decoding in real-time and it's giving us latency information in real-time... It's the real-time decoding and getting the latency information statistics that we find the most useful."
"What is most valuable is the ability to troubleshoot when a client complains of spikes in latencies. It gives us the ability to go granular, all the way down to looking at the network packets and analyze them."
"We like the dashboards because they essentially organize all the sessions into one viewpoint."
"With the Corvil Stored Data Analyzer module, we can use it for test data or a set of production data to set up the configuration for latency setup, so we can use the fields to correlate messages."
"The analytics features of Corvil are really good... As long as you know what the field is in the message, you can build your metrics based on that field... It means you can do the analytics that you actually care for. You can customize it..."
"It allows us to trace the flow. The logic is built sufficiently for us to be able to break down clients' orders, underlying child orders, and execution. Thus, it's a good way for us to trace client flow through a myriad of different internal systems."
"We use the data to analyze how much time we spend within the applications. Then, based on that, we are doing multiple analyses and types of investigations to work on reducing the amount of time spent on the latency, which helps our applications."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades."
"I love the GUI. Almost everything is accessible through the web interface. It is very user-friendly. It is easy to drag and drop resources wherever you want them."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
"The product is scalable."
"There are a lot of valuable features with SolarWinds NPM. We can receive a lot of detailed data from the monitoring that can use useful for investigations, especially when you are troubleshooting. It is very helpful. Overall it was a very good experience."
"The biggest thing for me is that it provided enough information for me to monitor. It alerts and provides you with the information you need."
 

Cons

"Before I got the Corvil training... one thing that was not very efficient was that every time you had to create a new stream or a new session from within Corvil... you had to tell it what protocol the message is going to come through and how to correlate messages, etc... After I went for the training, they had already added these nice features in the 9.4 version where it could do auto-discovery... Based on the traffic that it has already seen, it could create sessions on the fly."
"For FIX protocol, maybe we could have built-in configurations for signatures and decoders. Also, for certain protocols, which are newer, we would like to just add the signatures within the decoders itself."
"Overall, the Corvil device needs a little bit of training for people to handle it. If that could be reduced and made more user-friendly, more intuitive, it would be better."
"Alerting isn't great... you can only put in one email address in. And that's for all kinds of alerting on the box."
"The creation of charts and real-time windows was somewhat cumbersome. The vendor's website had an application called App Agent that required improvement. This API was designed to track message rates between microservers ingested into a microservice memory map. It allowed users to monitor the number of transactions that occurred at specific points within the application, and it was quite impressive. However, it had some limitations, and it mainly served as a tool for basic tracking. The protocols it employed could reveal the type of server-to-server communication and the specific order types, but it was not able to provide a more in-depth analysis of the application. The vendor has the potential to integrate application metrics more extensively into their product suite."
"There is definitely room for improvement in the reporting. We've tried to use the reporting in Corvil but, to me, it feels like a bolt-on, like not a lot of thought has gone into it. The whole interface where you build reports and schedule them is very clunky."
"In terms of performance analysis, if you really want to dig down into the minutiae and get statistics on the important things... that would be the only piece lacking because, in our environment, we have thousands and thousands of symbols. With the architecture that Corvil is built on, it's cumbersome."
"While the product is scalable, it's not easy to scale. It needs investment hardware and network bandwidth consideration. It's not something you can just do overnight."
"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."
"I think Solar Winds NPM needs to create a profile with documentation responsibility."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features."
"The integration with video apps could be better."
"The price could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Corvil has reduced the time it takes us to isolate root causes."
"As I am working more with Corvil, it looks like it is improving diagnostic times."
"I like the way they've decoupled the hardware now... Everything's based on the licensing side now. The way they do the packs is fair. It's very flexible in that we're not charged per decoder, we're charged for a certain pack. Whether we use one decoder or 20 decoders, as long as they're in the same pack, there's no extra charge. Expensive but fair is how I'd summarize it."
"It is pricey versus its competitors."
"The pricing is very expensive. Corvil could work on the pricing."
"Pico Corvil Analytics is expensive. There are several competitors in the market. Selling this solution to a trading firm might be challenging as there are several other solutions available that can perform basic similar operations, such as using Wireshark and Python scripts to obtain the required values. However, that does not nearly approach the comprehensive end-2-end automated depth of metrics and their correlations that Pico Corvil Analytics provides."
"We bought a box from Corvil and it was $200,000 for one big CNE. Then there are obviously the recurring maintenance fees. The licensing is perpetual but the maintenance fees are not."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
53%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Non Profit
4%
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pico Corvil Analytics?
As part of my role in monitoring multiple client connections, I would use Pico Corvil Analytics to set up alerts for performance issues, such as TCP resends and dropped packets. These alerts would ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pico Corvil Analytics?
Pico Corvil Analytics is expensive. There are several competitors in the market. Selling this solution to a trading firm might be challenging as there are several other solutions available that can...
What needs improvement with Pico Corvil Analytics?
The creation of charts and real-time windows was somewhat cumbersome. The vendor's website had an application called App Agent that required improvement. This API was designed to track message rate...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

Corvil
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASDAQ, Commerzbank, Pico Quantitative Trading, CME Group, Interactive Data, Tokyo Stock Exchange Inc.
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Pico Corvil Analytics vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.