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DX Spectrum vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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

DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Management Applications
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 3.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 2.7%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DX Spectrum3.2%
IBM Tivoli NetCool2.7%
Other94.1%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Balabrahmam_Chakka - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
Comprehensive device monitoring enhances operational efficiency
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches through SNMP without an agent, which is good, but it should also have event management. Its LDAP authentication is fine. However, event management is not available, which is a concern. Not much else. If they can add event management, it would help. The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow. If a previous ticket is open and the same alert is generated, there's no need to create another ticket; updating the work notes would suffice. It should help reduce noise in alerting.
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Offers a lot of functionality."
"Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
"The integration point."
"The most valuable feature is automatic discovery."
"All networks (or network equipment) are monitored through CA Spectrum."
"We can plan changes and replacement of end-of-life products in our environment very well because it's very accurate."
"Some of the most valuable features are it's highly scalable, the carrier is great, and if something has SNMP, it can monitor it. It's a great network fault management solution."
"What I like best is the configuration management functionality."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"It's very easy to use."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"It's very easy to use."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution. NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility. There are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite. Whenever an issue happens, rather than going to technical support, if you find the exact issue in Google, you can get tech notes for that particular issue."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
 

Cons

"It doesn't really allow for multi-tenancy. If you're an ISP or an MSP and you want to use this tool to provide these types of fault management services to your customers, you would need a separate SpectroSERVER for each customer..."
"I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement."
"Needs better integration with all the other products in the Agile suite of tools; anything they could do to make that less complex, would be great."
"The product should provide performance management features."
"I would like to see better scalability, and maybe, a more intuitive user interface. ​"
"Its visualization can be improved. It doesn't have a very advanced GUI. It is very basic and simple, but it does work."
"It's not a great performance management tool. Its reporting capabilities are not very good at all."
"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."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"The solution is too expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is very high."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"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 costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals.
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What do you like most about IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The tool had many built-in automation capabilities.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The main challenge is its licensing model, which is very complicated.
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.