SolarWinds NPM and Spiceworks compete in the network performance management category. SolarWinds NPM appears to have the upper hand due to its robust performance monitoring features and extensive SNMP monitoring capabilities.
Features: SolarWinds NPM is noted for its robust performance monitoring, including custom alerts and scalability. It offers modular pricing allowing it to adapt to various organizational needs. Its extensive SNMP monitoring and alerting capabilities strengthen its position in network performance management. Spiceworks is favored for inventory management and helpdesk capabilities, which are particularly appealing to SMBs. Its simplicity and zero-cost offering provide solid basic functionality for small to medium enterprises.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM is criticized for its complex licensing model and stability issues with multiple modules. Users often mention the need for a more intuitive interface and better integration with non-Cisco products. Spiceworks could improve in network scanning accuracy and performance, with a noted lack of multi-site support and a dated user interface. Customization options and better support for larger enterprises are also potential areas for improvement.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM primarily deploys on-premises with hybrid cloud options, requiring substantial setup and infrastructure knowledge. Users cite a steep learning curve. Spiceworks offers easy deployment due to its free and on-premises suitability but lacks scalability for enterprises. SolarWinds technical support is praised for knowledge but criticized for aggressive sales tactics, while Spiceworks relies more on community resources, offering limited direct support.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM is considered expensive with a complex licensing structure, often resulting in a higher total cost of ownership. Its extensive features justify the investment for large enterprises, with users reporting good ROI due to reduced downtime and improved network insights. Spiceworks delivers a free, open-source solution providing good value for small businesses, although it lacks the advanced features found in SolarWinds for detailed performance monitoring.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
The solution is considered expensive.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
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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