DX Spectrum Reviews

With Spectrum, we are implementing a unified monitoring system. We have also purchased CA APM and Agile Central to complement Spectrum and have an ambitious plan to integrate these systems. This will increase the effectiveness of the IT department and will give us the comprehensive view we want to make better decisions that support our business needs.

Spectrum is very useful for us, because the product lets us monitor and control all the various components of our infrastructure that support our business from an IT perspective.

We are also beginning to implement SOI, in order to view our IT infrastructure from a business perspective. As the boundary between business and IT become more confusing, it becomes more valuable to our users that we in IT can easily and quickly understand the impact of IT services within the business. SOI and Spectrum allow us to achieve this. We can optimize the IT services we offer our users and get a quick view of the business impact. Then, we can adjust priorities and solve problems quicker.

From the users perspective the looks and feel of dashboards of Spectrum would be easier to use and for understanding as APM will be in 10.5 version which we saw in CA World.

Also, from our point of view, It´s necessary that CA people in charge of Spectrum tool, work more in order to better integration between Spectrum, with APM, SOI and UIM.

We had some stability issues at the first, but CA resources in Argentina assisted us in to solving these problems. They also helped to fine tune our configuration to support the solution. In the early stages, we implemented a simple configuration of Spectrum, so sometimes we faced up-time problems. But that was due, in part, to the design we implemented. So, now we have implemented a more robust design with more servers and more robust databases. The solution is now stable enough to support the challenges we want to monitor.

We have not experienced any scalability issues, because we used a step-by-step approach. First, we implemented Spectrum at a pilot with branches. We use a dashboard that allows us to monitor the components at our 110 branches to support our products. Next, we applied the same idea to our strategic and critical challenges in website and mobile applications, as well as in our retail and corporate business.

Customer Service:

Very Good, from CA and from Partners

Technical Support:

Technical support is very good. In Latin America, they have good technicians, particularly in Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Whenever we need support on a difficult to solve issue, CA brings in specialists to solve the problem quickly.

Before choosing Spectrum, we used an open-source solution called Nagios. We also used a monitoring tool from BMC called PEM, Patrol Enterprise Management. In 2009, our bank decided to implement the complete suite of tools for IT management and delivery from CA. It's a strategic decision that we took six or seven years ago and we're happy with the switch.

Initial setup was easy, but in the initial stages we need more support from CA and our CA partner in order to understand the capabilities of Spectrum and how to take advantage of all of this.

Yes, from IBM

When we evaluate vendors we look at technical skill and background. We want them to be able to understand our business objectives and our needs. This is the most important. We want them to be more service oriented than product oriented, because the main objective of the IT department in a bank is to maintain up-time regardless of the challenges we face. This is critical to our business.

It makes sure that the company network is doing what it's supposed to do.

The way our network is structured, CA Spectrum seems to be able to deal with problems that we have coming up in real time. There are parts of the product we are still not using yet because we are still kind of green, so I know there is more that it can do; but right now it's the fault management side of things.

I am not sure I can address areas with room for improvement because right now, it is doing everything we need.

See my tech support comments below.

It's pretty stable for a Windows product.

It scales pretty well especially with the new 10.1. We are actually going to be able to consolidate and shut down some of the servers just because they've increased capacity.

I used to do support for Spectrum, so I know it really well. Sometimes the front-line people need to push it up to the second-level quicker. But because I know people on the inside, I can usually get it moved up when I need to.

I don't believe they were using anything prior to this. I think it was on an "on-call, this-is-down" basis.

Definitely demo it. Have them PoC it for you. Once they show you what it can do, it can really make a person's decision a lot easier.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor is definitely supportability. Obviously, it needs to do what we need it to do. If it didn't, we wouldn't have picked them to begin with; but for me, it's supportability.

Functionality of the tool is awesome and it is easy for customers to use. It is a very good solution for monitoring network and servers of the organizations.

0% outage and I have a detailed view of root cause analysis for any unavailability of the servers/network/applications.

Code is very complex.

I have been using CA eHealth, Spectrum, SOI, EEM, Nimsoft, and ITCM, for six and a half years.

Yes sometimes we have issues, but with the help of CA E2 level engineers, we get fixes for bugs that are encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

The best, 10/10.

The best, 10/10.

We used to have Nagios, OpenNMS, etc. but they are not very efficient monitoring tools when compared with Spectrum and eHealth.

Not complex. CA technical guys were there to help if there were any issues and technical documentation at support.ca.com helps a lot.

We used a vendor whose expertise was 8/10.

I recommend CA tools for monitoring the entire infrastructure in an organization.

We are a service provider and we have a lot of different customers that share a large network. It is a huge environment.

The most valuable feature is automatic discovery.

The event correlation is a helpful feature.

We have a huge environment and we have the event correlation set up. Event correlation only works per Spectrum server, for a huge environment more Spectrum servers are needed and the events are not correlated between the Spectrum servers. Broadcom has the intention to change this.

I have been using DX Spectrum for between 10 and 15 years.

This product is very stable.

Its scalability is very good. It can be used in huge environments.

I have had contact with technical support and my experience has been positive.

The initial setup is of medium complexity. It is not very easy, yet not very difficult.

Some preparation and special knowledge are needed to deploy.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to first make a plan on how you are going to implement and use it. It is important to know before you configure it, how it is that you want to use it. For example, we have a lot of different customers and they may not want to see the older devices from other customers. As a service provider, it is important to make a good plan on how you want to implement it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Spectrum is the total alarm management utility. All event alarms are displayed in one place. We use it as a complete infrastructure management tool. All our third-party tools report into Spectrum. That's probably the most valuable part of this software that we use.

It consolidates all of the traps, alarms, and issues that arise from any device or network equipment, to a central location. This makes it really easy to find problems that arise, narrow down their source, and then escalate to the right people to fix them.

Everything being centrally located in one infrastructure management tool allows anyone anywhere, between the IT help desk, to Windows teams, Unix teams, or the network team to see exactly what devices are causing the issue, as well as the severity of those issues. They can then prioritize and work on those issues that need to be worked first, allowing them to manage their time in terms of what they're working on.

Integration with third-party vendors could be improved by adding more trap solutions for third-party devices. These are now supported somewhat and I know that they're working on it, but people have a wide variety of different devices, servers, and equipment. It'd be nice to see all of that included into the software.

I think it still has room for improvement as far as the application, but support could also be improved. Third-party integration and other features have been requested over the years. I feel their support staff could work on these a little bit more, but as far as the application goes, I'd give it an 8/10.

So far I've had no issues with stability. I've used it for about two years. Like any other software, it has a few hiccups here and there, but for the most part, it runs really efficiently.

Companies from our size to larger organizations use Spectrum, so the scalability is there. I have never seen an issue with performance or the need to add more servers or scale to a larger environment. That hasn't been an issue.

The technical support is not bad, but I find that I generally resolve the issues before technical support can. Generally, I don't use their support too often. It's not about their support. The higher up you go in their support structure, I feel that they're very confident. But, I'm just a self-thinker and I'll figure the issue out before they do most of the time.

When I started, we were already using the solution and, as far as I know, it has been with us for 5-10 years. We've used it for quite some time.

When looking for a vendor, the application is most important. That's what stays with you the longest period of time. Again, you may not have to call support and you may not have to deal with sales very often, but the application is the one thing that you're constantly involved with.

I was involved in reconfiguring the environment. I guess you could call it an initial setup. Everything was pretty straightforward. It's easy to install and easy to setup. I haven't had any management issues or issues from configuration.

For what you're getting with the product, I don't think price is a downside. I don't know if it would be possible in the future to have a lite version, but something that smaller companies could work with as well would be a benefit to them. At current prices, for small businesses it's a downside. For bigger companies, I don't think it's too much of an issue, because otherwise they wouldn't use the product.

There weren't really other options. I've looked at other vendors. This is what my company went with, what we've used for a while, and we know it works. So, don't fix what's not broken, basically.

I would recommend the product to anyone looking for an infrastructure management application. I do know that for smaller companies the cost seems a little high, so it may not be for everyone. But, if you're looking for a total package that’s easy to get started and get it working, and something reliable and scalable, I would recommend the product.

We have been using this solution to supervise all of the network's components, such as our Cisco switches, UPS units, the firewall, DNS, and all of the things that have links with the network.

Good vision of devices problems 

The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component. It will just supervise the links.

This solution is too complicated to use for us, especially if you have many components. It's too big for us, which is one of the reasons that we will no longer be using it.

It’s Cloud be difficult to upgrade from one version to the next.

We have been using CA Spectrum for five or six years and we are discontinuing its use in two or three months from now.

This is a stable solution and we have had no issues.

We have had no trouble with scalability.

We are moving from CA Spectrum because it is not a solution for us. We are moving to an open-source solution that is less expensive.

The initial setup and maintenance of Spectrum are complex. It is also difficult to upgrade to the more recent version. 

The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution.

This is a good solution and I would recommend it for a big company. However, for a small business like ours, we need something that is less complex and easier to use.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Fault Domain isolation is the primary use case for our teams with this tool.  Once configured, it centralizes alerting on conditions that would require an experienced NW engineer to investigate at the command prompt.

This tool provides excellent Fault Domain isolation when properly instrumented and configured, allowing quick action on links/routers/switches/etc.

Easy navigation from initial alerts to a full topology and detail on the Network infrastructure and it relationships is the most valuable feature

The configurations are still XML-based and require a good deal of coding to setup each object for monitoring.  Alerting is yet more coding, and relationships are more coding... In a drag-and-drop world, this tool is in need of a bit more than a make-over. 

In house

There are several features that are valuable:

1. Fault management of different devices from various vendors;
2. Integration with different application from other vendors is supported; and
3. Various features to configure/customize/scale as per business requirements.

1. It has a highly scalable architecture that is designed to ensure accommodation of the growing network setup for our client.
2. The improvised fault management reduces the time to detect faults and to get required teams to address issues by email or ticket.

The documentation of this product is not very easy to understand without any screenshots or application windows.

It's also expensive for the company.

I've used it for five years now.

If prerequisites are followed, there will not be major challenges during deployment.

In case there is/are any problems during deployment, CA has 24x7 support.

If database size is large and any corruption occurs, it takes a considerably large time to fix the issue.

We've had no issues with scalability.

I'd rate customer service 8/10.

I'd rate technical support 8/10.

We did not use a previous solution.

We implemented it through a vendor team. I'd rate them 9/10.

It's worth investing in if monitoring of critical assets is a priority for your organization.