Azure Monitor vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance comparison

Microsoft and Cisco are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8, while Cisco is ranked #46 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 7.1% mindshare in APM, compared to Cisco’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 54 Azure Monitor reviews

13,842 Views
12,446 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

776 Views
497 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Accedian Skylight and Azure Monitor are leading contenders in network performance monitoring. Azure Monitor is preferred for its comprehensive feature set, making it a worthwhile investment.

Features: Accedian Skylight is praised for its deep packet inspection, real-time analytics, and ability to quickly identify and resolve network issues. Azure Monitor is known for its extensive integration capabilities, scalability, and broad feature set that often overshadows Accedian Skylight's specialized functions.

Room for Improvement: Accedian Skylight users suggest enhancements in reporting capabilities, better documentation, and more intuitive navigation. Azure Monitor requires improvements in alerts, data aggregation latency, and user interface complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Accedian Skylight's deployment is noted as straightforward, with strong customer support aiding users through setup processes. Azure Monitor offers flexible deployment models and extensive online resources, though users sometimes struggle with its complexity. Accedian Skylight's customer service gets high marks, yet Azure Monitor's extensive documentation and community support are significant advantages.

Pricing and ROI: Accedian Skylight is regarded as cost-effective, delivering good ROI through efficient troubleshooting capabilities and proactive monitoring. Azure Monitor has a higher initial setup cost, but users find it beneficial due to its comprehensive monitoring suite, justifying the expenditure with broader capabilities. Pricing strategies differ, with each product appealing to different budgetary requirements and ROI expectations.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

April 2025

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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

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (5th)

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

46th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (40th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 7.1%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.3%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect at LogicEra

Monthly and weekly resource monitoring has improved efficiency

Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs. I can get the runtime logs alone, yet if Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at least to log storage, I can fix the logs without syncing with Log Analytics Workspace and Sentinel. If they do that, and if they can integrate a little pricing adjustment, it will be profitable for the Microsoft tool.

Read full review

Sylvain Germe

Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features

This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can scale the product."

"The solution works well overall. It's easy to implement and simple to use."

"Recently, they have improved their integration with other resources, so we get even more robust data."

"Good load and metrics gathering and very good analysis."

"The most valuable feature is that it ensures our servers are up."

"We like this searchability and availability of the data."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the alert system, which can be set according to our metrics. The integration is smooth."

"One of the most useful aspects of this solution is the out-of-the-box functionality on all areas, especially on Application Insights, zero instrumentation, and artificial intelligence for event correlation."

More Azure Monitor pros

"I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."

"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."

"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"For us, the most valuable feature is something called TWAMP that allows for real-time traffic in a way that is 10 times lighter than things like SolarWinds. It's in the sub-milliseconds of accuracy, and you can divide tasks so that you can literally see things like the tagging for Quality of Service. That had been incorrect with the carrier, but there was no way on this planet you'd be able to tell a carrier that they're wrong. I have dozens of scenarios where we found "No, that's not right," and got it resolved instantly."

"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."

"The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

Cons

"The process of implementation needs to be easier."

"The monitoring of Kubernetes clusters needs improvement to be on par with competitors."

"have used multiple products like Webex and PRTG. Some features could be added. Azure Monitor should add SMS and APIs. We have very limited access to Azure Monitor. I usually get alerts on my phone when they are integrated with Slack. I am not always available, but my team is. Sometimes, I am traveling and don't have access to my email, but I have Slack and other third-party projects that send me instant messages if a sensor goes down."

"The length of latency is terrible and needs to be improved."

"The solution's monitoring feature has limitations for analyzing multiple metrics."

"The troubleshooting logs need improvement. There should be some improvement there. I have a hard time finding the right logs at the right times whenever there is an issue occurring."

"I need connectivity with cost management."

"Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs."

More Azure Monitor cons

"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."

"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."

"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."

"I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration."

"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

"There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."

"The solution is a pay-as-you-go consumption service and is the least expensive in the market."

"Azure Monitor is a competitively priced solution."

"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."

"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."

"It's a costly solution"

"Its cost depends on the ingestion of the logs. It could go anywhere. For an out-of-the-box platform such as FrameFlow, you pay pretty much a fixed price and you get what you get, whereas, with something like Azure Monitor, you pay by the ingestion charge, so you can have one client who pays hardly anything for the same alerts, and another client pays loads and loads."

"The tool is expensive."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."

"It provides value and the cost is not huge."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

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851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

39%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

See all answers

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?

Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?

I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs Azure Monitor

Compared 22% of the time

Sentry vs Azure Monitor

Compared 15% of the time

Dynatrace vs Azure Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

New Relic vs Azure Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

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ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 43% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 15% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 11% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 10% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

May 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

May 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Also Known As

No data available

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time application and network performance monitoring, VPN management, and network diagnostics across multiple sites.

Organizations use Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance for active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and troubleshooting performance issues. Deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, it supports IT infrastructure, security, and analytics with end-to-end performance measurement across cloud data centers. The modern, intuitive interface features TWAMP for real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reports, along with insightful dashboards for circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput monitoring.

What are the most important features?

TWAMP: Provides real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reporting.
Insightful Dashboards: Monitor circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput.
Security Integration: Compatible with tools like Splunk for enhanced security.
Application Support: Facilitates comprehensive network performance analysis.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Quick Corrective Actions: Immediate response capabilities for performance issues.
Easy Navigation: User-friendly layouts simplify monitoring and troubleshooting.
Comprehensive Analytics: Advanced tools for in-depth network performance insights.
Cloud and On-Premise Options: Flexible deployment to meet different needs.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance ensures robust performance monitoring and quick diagnostics for VPNs and internet lines. It aids in maintaining the integrity and security of data transference, facilitating active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and performance troubleshooting across geographically dispersed locations, ensuring seamless operation and compliance with industry standards.

Cisco

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

April 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

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