DX Spectrum Reviews

Network monitoring is the most valuable feature. I'd like to be able to leverage it more for capacity planning, which is my area. We use it primarily for network monitoring, alerting, and ticketing.

It allows us to manage alerts, schedule downtime and maintenance, as well as triage documentation for our support teams.

I'd like to have more dynamic weather map capabilities and network mapping tools. I'd like to be able to scale some of the applications within Spectrum and I'd like to be able to add some functionality. But overall I'm happy with it.

I haven't had many stability issues other than during upgrade and maintenance windows.

It scales very nicely to our environment, which is very, very large. I'm not sure that I'm very well-versed on how to make large-scale changes to it if we want to reorganize how we monitor an alert using Spectrum.

I haven't used technical support, but I don't own support for the application within our company. I'm more of an end user.

We've been using Spectrum as long as I've been with the company.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

We were already committed to Spectrum before I came along.

As a bank, we use CA Spectrum to manage about 400 ATMs and 300 self-service terminals. We monitor this equipment network for alarms and other events. With Spectrum, we can determine how well the equipment is working and what services are available. Many of the issues are related to printing or paper supply.

Spectrum has given us the agility to solve problems faster. We are able to search our infrastructure so that we can isolate the problem and solve it fast. The first thing customers see when they enter the bank lobby is the ATM, so it's important that they be working properly.

The greatest benefit from the most recent release has come from redesigned dashboards. They make it easier for our technicians to discover faults and configure alarms that describe the problem in a clear manner. This allows us to go deeper into the zone or the equipment and isolate the problem. That is a real benefit for us.

I would like to see Spectrum dashboards more oriented in users necessities with an UX point of view. Also, I would like to see a more proactive approach to help managers to predict issues. Today with Spectrum we work in a reactive way where we notice problems after they occur. I would like Spectrum allowing us to prevent problems before they affect our Infrastructure.

We have been using Spectrum for six years.

At first, Spectrum was really difficult to configure properly. Today we are in a mature stage and the stability is really good. I think that the last version was more stable.

Spectrum is able to scale really well. Whenever we add equipment, such as when we open new branches or we replace old equipment with newer technology, we have no problem with scalability.

We work with a CA parner in Argentina called Netnix that helps us with first level support. They help us with the application on a day-to-day basis.

For many years, we used Navios to monitoring our infrastructure. Then, when we started to work with Spectrum, we had some cultural difficulties trying to get used to a new tool and getting the technical people to use it. For a while, we were running Spectrum and Navios at the same time. Today, we only use Spectrum with the ATMs and self-service terminals. There is also a cultural transformation in relation to the digital transformation, so we are working on moving to UIM.

I was not involved in the initial setup. Six years ago, when we first implemented Spectrum, I was in another role. Now, I'm responsible for the IT budget.

Mainly, we work with IBM and CA. They are our two main vendors. The most important criteria in selecting a vendor is the level of integration between the different tools. We work with several CA tools, such as SOI, UIM and APM to give us a total view of our infrastructure.

I think that the applications are great. The most important factor is who is going to be the partner helping you to implement this solution. Choose a good, trustworthy partner. I think that CA Spectrum is a really good tool.

It is the perfect monitoring solution for customers' devices. Searching and locating of the reported device is very easy. The Discovery option is very great and fast solution to model a very huge network and also small networks.

It has improved our reaction time for incident management.

ITIL -

• Incident management
• Automation
• Connection between Spectrum and some standardized incident tools

Currently I have been working with this product for five years

Not really. Every tool has some strong and weak areas and they need to be tuned up from the beginning.For this we have the vendor support.

No, I don't think so. Every unstable state has been caused by an incorrect configuration, by overloading, or by hardware failure.

It is a network infrastructure management software for device monitoring. I didn't meet with issues regarding the scalability as everything could be set up or configured.

Customer Service:

8/10 as I am well informed about any changes with the software or training as I am a technician.

Technical Support:

7-8/10 but sometimes I think that technical support could be more flexible.

No, I didn't use a different solution. I just have some skills with other umbrella tools, where I was able to see a behaviour and processes which are needed for operation.

It's hard to say as every time it is a big challenge to implement any kind of the tool on our systems or improve them once in production. During the whole process we are faced with many more different situations. For this reason we have a testing environment. After the initial setup in the testing environment is complete, we are able to proceed onto the production process which is easier to do because because of the experience in the test environment.

Yes, the first time we have implemented it we used our vendors support, and I am rating the person as 10/10 as they performed an excellent job!

I see many advantages for using this software except if you need it as a home solution.

When I started many years ago with the Spectrum, we did an initial screen of the application with a picture of my ca, Means the customization is possible with many ways.

Without a doubt the most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability. This is what Spectrum is known for and it's delivered on this for us.

It's also flexible and is able to manage all device types.

It gives us insight in to our overall network communication, and it has joined groups together within our company to share information.

I'd like to see cross-landscape correlation. Right now, things are in individual nodes, and we'd like to be able to have them integrate or work together better.

After the complex setup, we've had no issues with deployment.

This solution is extremely stable, and it has proven this across years of use.

Customer Service:

Customer service has been outstanding. They are always there when we need them and we appreciate them.

Technical Support:

Technical service has been outstanding. They are always there when we need them and we appreciate them.

There were three companies we looked at. Spectrum was chosen for its flexibility, for its ability to manage all device types, and ease of growth for our environment. Nothing scales like Spectrum.

It’s complex, we had consulting on site for several years.

We also looked at IBM.

We are very pleased with it. Plan, learn your environment, and plan the implementation. This is essential for success. Also, get CA support to help you document your environment before you start.

Overall network topology views. Device connection status. Alerting on multiple provider devices.

CA Spectrum enables us to have an overall view of the state of our network. We are able to view device health and be notified of issues prior to the user reporting a fault.

There appears to be no intelligence within Spectrum itself, for example if we were to move a network device to a different switch port, it will see the neighbor as being available, but the link / switch port as down. Configuration of new events and alerts is overly complex.

4-5 years

I did not deploy this product.

We have a memory leak on one of our landscapes.

No

Customer Service: GoodTechnical Support: Average

The primary use case of this solution is for Network Monitoring.

The most valuable feature is the availability to put health checks in place not only for the infrastructure but for some of the services that are on top of the infrastructure. This allows us to identify the performance of the infrastructure.

Integration with some other tools, and integration with some Network Packet Broker, need some improvement.

We have been using DX Spectrum for approximately nine months.

This solution is stable. We have not experienced any outages.

It's a cloud solution, so it's scalable.

We have not contacted technical support yet.

We are also using Microsoft Network Node Manager.

The main difference is the availability to do the health-check on not only the devices but also some application services. These are in addition to the infrastructure, and with Network Node Manager, it's more based on infrastructure.

Also, the Drill down feature that DX Spectrum provides is something the Network Node Manager typically cannot do, as well as to drill down on a specific case or on a specific device.

That's also a really good feature of DX Spectrum.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

The price is very high.

It makes it very difficult with respect to the business because, with any other product, we have to look at a lower-cost licensing model. It would have to be much lower than this one.

It would make sense to have some kind of corporate license with some additional flexibility.

We evaluated SolarWinds and Azure.

We are still looking at other solutions to increase the capacity of the devices that are being monitored with DX Spectrum.

We have a small set of devices being monitored and we are running a project to try to duplicate the monitoring on those devices.

DX Spectrum has been great for us. It's the strongest available, the main problem is the pricing, but it's in accordance with the features.

I can recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. 

I would rate DX Spectrum an eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

There are a number of features that make this product to standout from other competing products:

• Easy implementation with scalable architecture
• Seamless HA capabilities with no issues
• Integrations with other products including both north/south bound capabilities
• NCM - Network Configuration Manager for Device level configurations
• Expert CA support for the product.

In our environment, I have implemented CA Spectrum in HA. There is also Spectrum SOI integration for alert forwarding. We have created global collections to group the infrastructure with policies applied as per requirement. Also the SANM (Spectrum Alarm Notification Manager) has proven to be very useful for managing critical devices and immediate action to be taken with email notification etc.

The only area which I found that can be improved is that sometimes issues come up with alert clearing i.e. alerts don't clear when triggered and clear events occur too fast. CA should come up with ways where the alert is not valid, Spectrum should be able to re-verify and take action accordingly.

I have been using CA Spectrum for more than four years now. These four years include:

• Implementation of the solution in production environments
• Setting up of failover (High Availability)
• Integrations with other CA products like CA BOXI (for reporting), CA Service Desk (for ticketing), and CA SOI integration through connectors

No issues with deployment.

Never faced any issues with scalability. As the network infrastructure grows, to add new Spectrum servers is very straight forward with almost zero defects in existing architecture.

Customer Service:

With expert CA Support, issues with the product can have a quick resolution so 4.5/5.

Technical Support:

CA Spectrum is one of the products from CA which has great technical expertise to support it.

I have been working on Spectrum from day one but I have experience with other similar products. I found Spectrum as being a complete network management solution with a great user friendly GUI.

The best feature of this product is the simplicity of its architecture, which, once understood, makes the implementation very easy. I have never ever faced any issues with the initial setup.

I have implemented the complete initial setup myself. I have also done implementation with failover (High Availability) and integrations with other EMS products.

There are other similar products from IT majors IBM, and HP but we found Spectrum to be the most suitable for all of the major requirements of my organisation.

I would definitely recommend going ahead with the product. It will able to answer most of the network management related requirements of any organisation.

I use the solution for network discovery, performance monitoring, and integration with service desk platforms.

The benefit of Spectrum is its advanced connection capabilities and user-friendly interface, which engineers find easy to navigate.

The solution's most valuable feature is its web interface.

The solution's pricing could be better. Also, the customization of its web interface needs enhancement.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

The solution's stability needs improvement.

We have 30 solution users in our organization.

The solution's initial setup process is easy for Windows. However, it is complicated to deploy it for Linux. The process involves two modes, including standalone and distributed. It takes around two hours and requires one engineer for execution.

The solution's cost needs improvement.

I rate the solution a ten out of ten.