No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

CA Application Delivery Analysis [EOL] vs DX Spectrum comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

CA Application Delivery Ana...
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), Network Monitoring Software (18th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1237194 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Director, DevOps at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Good monitoring functionality, but technical support and integration with other products need to be improved
My biggest complaint about ADA is that you have to rely on dedicated appliances. For CA Spectrum, the integration of this product is something that needs to be improved. Even some of their point products to not integrate very well, and ADA is one of them. The user interface needs to be improved. Technical support needs to be improved.
PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is excellent."
"Once it is setup and seeing traffic, it is an impressive tool to show potential problems long before the general users are complaining."
"The most valuable feature is the fault management monitoring."
"The pricing is relatively low compared to other solutions in this area, and I'd go so far as to say it's even significantly less than the competition."
"It's a good tool; it's simple to do the configuration and has good discovery and integration."
"Thanks to Spectrum, we are able to monitor (and send out alarms for) our whole IT infrastructure 7/24 without having more than a minimal number of technical persons."
"Without a doubt the most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."
"CA Spectrum helps our organization improve network service levels, and with Spectrum’s integrated automated fault management and fault isolation features, it helped us reduce MTTR by 50% and costs as well."
"An organization using DX Spectrum is more easily able to understand the root cause when something happens in its environment."
"Spectrum allows us to have a holistic view of our network architecture."
"​The stability of the product is key. It never breaks, really. The stability and reliability of the Spectrum product have been top-notch.​"
"Its scalability is very good, as it can be used in huge environments."
 

Cons

"The user interface needs improvement."
"Hard to setup right, hard to get the conversations right."
"Upgrades can be quite complex."
"My biggest complaint about ADA is that you have to rely on dedicated appliances."
"It is not the best product on the market, but it is better than the competition if you were comparing prices."
"It doesn’t give you performance metrics: You need CA eHealth for this."
"This solution is too complicated to use for us, especially if you have many components."
"Reporting and network bandwidth monitoring features need to be improved."
"It's very difficult to use and customize. In order to maintain the software, we need specialized help."
"I would like to see a better, more simple web interface."
"There were some issues with deployment."
"Only if the server that hosts the application is restarted without bringing down Spectrum. If this occurs it corrupts the database and has to be restored from the backup."
"I would say integration between performance monitoring and CA Spectrum, as well as improved graphing capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an expensive solution and there is a single price to pay for licensing, with no options."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Management Applications solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
 

Also Known As

CA ADA, Application Delivery Analysis, NetQoS SuperAgent
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ERGO
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Skyline Communications and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: July 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.