DX Spectrum Reviews

It's easy to implement. I've used it for 15 years so I may be biased, but that's also a testament to how easy it is to use.

It's also very configurable. You can add features as you'd like. For example, you can easily add new alerts and watch lists. We can easily certify new devices and watch the behavior of these new devices out of the box.

You can add scripting and export results to an external database. It makes it easy to use and sort the information in a way that can be helpful to you. I could go on for a week about it.

Currently I'm happy they went to 64 bit, which has just finished. I haven't thought about other improvements; maybe better reporting. Currently, it's using BOXI/CABI, which is terrible as it’s unclear and I don’t like this.

I've used it for 15 years. We use Spectrum on the network infrastructure for five to six clients. We also sell it as an integrator to other clients as well.

It’s very, very stable which is the core benefit, and it’s also very easy to maintain. It doesn’t need much maintenance once it's set up. The strongest point of the product is it's stability.

Last year they didn't do a lot of development, and when they did it, it wasn’t secure enough. Each version took a long time to be stable, but it's gotten much better. Now it's totally stable, but 9 wasn't stable. 9.4.0 wasn’t stable, but 9.4.1 is. Overall, version 9 has been great.

It's quite scalable. You can easily set up a distributed environment with more than one central server. We currently have it scaled up to 5000 devices on one central server (high for Belgium), and once they release v10.1 it'll be even higher, I've heard.

We're very happy with the technical support. Once, I wasn't that happy, but now I've taken technical sessions with them and they've been helpful. Many technical engineers who are assigned to me actually know me to some degree, but this is for their product. Performance management wasn’t as good, and their service for this is superior.

Before we were using the HP solution, but then CA bought them. We like this vendor becuase of the strong network management system. So, what’s important to me is particularly the product more than the vendor. Vendors that integrate would be a nice plus. That’s the main reason we initially actually stayed with CA because the products can talk to each other, which has a good flow.

This is my job – to start form nothing and then help others set up. I also help others use it as well, so I scale it up for myself and others, and CA has been helpful.

Get an overall perspective. CA is helpful and you should be willing to talk to them.

The one-click console.

We use this as part of our infrastructure monitoring and it's done through a console. With the timely alerts that our MTTR reduced, we could determine the impact of the outage as well as the root cause of the issue.

It took a while to understand the product, but once we went hands on, it's great to work with. I have previously used Tivoli Enterprise console which doesn’t need any expertise and is easy to learn.

I've used it for two years.

I have never seen an outage of the tool.

My organization is rapidly growing with servers being added to the data center and we have never faced any issues.

I have never used customer service.

Using the tool comes as part of my job because my company uses CA Spectrum for their infrastructure monitoring. Previously, I have used Tivoli Console.

Setup was very straightforward.

It was done in-house.

I have used the product to monitor our company’s infrastructure.

I would strongly recommend it.

• IT Infrastructure Monitoring
• Fault Management
• Topology Views

• Clear picture of all network and server pictures
• Centralized console to manage network and systems
• All backup for router configurations

• Network
• Servers

For eight years.

No issues encountered.

Just minor but CA provided support to resolve the issues.

No issues encountered.

10/10.

10/10.

We didn't use a previous solution.

It's straightforward.

We used both an in-house team and a vendor.

10/10.

Just day to day operations.

Yes, we also looked at HP OpenView, SolarWinds, and ManageEngine.

This product is for all network and systems monitoring.

These features are core requirements for infrastructure management:

• Topology Discovery
• Configuration Management
• Best network root-cause analysis
• Service management
• Integration with CA SOI and CA SDM

• Reduces system fails
• Reduces time to resolve issues
• Gives a clear picture about device usage: Not in terms of performance, but in terms of roles

Sometimes customers use network equipment which does not solve any business tasks and can be simply switched off.

It's a mature product for a classic network.

New areas (NFV, SDN, APM) are covered by new technologies. As such, products should have tight integration with modern data science platforms.

We have been using the solution for over ten years.

It's the most reliable product I have used.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. However, we don't have a large number of devices. We only have 10-15,000 devices for a distributed arch, which is normal.

4

The technical support is professional.

I work as a System Integrator and we sell all known NFMs. Spectrum is the best.

The setup was straightforward.

Implementation fully ourself

I don't have any specific advice regarding this.

We also evaluated Comarch, EMC, HPE, IBM, WANDL and TEOCO.

Don't freeze your selection. This product is mature and is the best. Start your project and move forward to solve business issues

Root-cause analysis and modelling pinpoint the exact cause of problems, which makes life easier.

It was implemented for a customer and it helped reduce turnaround time.

I have used it for 3+ years.

It was very easy to deploy and configure.

I rate technical support 6/10.

Straightforward installation and setup.

An in-house team implemented it. A complete implementation requires a certain level of hands-on training.

CA Spectrum provides value, but it can be very expensive.

I played around with SolarWinds and some others, but CA Spectrum gave me a more detailed analysis for fault identification.

The newer versions are easier to deploy and they have more features.

Availability and outages reporting is valuable.

It gives an depth report of availability and outages, and by using it you can further analyze and find exactly where the bottlenecks lie.

A lot. Decommissioned servers availability and outages keep showing and that is annoying because it's ultimately contributing to the final availability (actual) which it should not.

I've used it for two and a half years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

I've never had to use it.

I've never had to use it.

I didn't use a previous solution.

It's a bit complex.

55%-75%.

No other options were evaluated.

It's not the best product for availability and outages reporting.

• Reliability
• Stability

These are valuable because of the integration with CA Service Desk and the application of incident and event management in our environment.

Reports and alerts give us the correct KPIs.

I have used it for five years.

It has a limitation in that it needed an old version of Java.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

7/10.

7/10.

Yes and I switched to this product as its visualization is better.

Utilizing all the needed features for our environment made our initial configuration complex.

We used a vendor team who were OK.

It is a good percentage.

Yes we also looked at Microsoft SCOM.

Try to utilize it well.