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CA Unified Communications Monitor vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 Unified Communications M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
88th
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Unified Communications Monitoring (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (61st)
Cisco Provider Connectivity...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
47th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (41st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of CA Unified Communications Monitor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance0.8%
CA Unified Communications Monitor0.5%
Other98.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1605927 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr.Solutions Engineer | Project Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Meets the needs of the customer but all of the features need improvement
I do not choose the solution. The client does. I am an implementer. We are systems integrators. It is worth mentioning that the solution should be easy to install and offer the user exhibition capabilities. Also, a data sheet should be used to gather information about the product, to facilitate easy and simple implementation. I rate CA Unified Communications Monitor as a five out of ten.
Pifu Lin - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.
Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support
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 quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the solution to meet the needs of the customer."
"Good end-to-end monitoring"
"For us, it's very key to know the voice quality of the total solution, which is based on many components across many domains."
"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good; the sensors are low cost, their licensing model lets clients start small and grow as they need without being forced into expensive appliances or subscription models, and that is one of the things that we really like about offering it to our clients because they are not left out getting the right sort of information straightaway."
"It has clearly saved us money."
"It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible."
"When a remote contact complains about a slow application, we can immediately pinpoint the cause of concern."
"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."
"Thanks to Skylight we have a tool for this kind of investigation and it has reduced our mean time to respond by at least 50 percent."
"I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution should have automatic baseline detection."
"All the features and functions of the solution can be improved, specifically the user experience."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."
"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."
"The licensing of the virtual pollers is problematic because they are attached to the physical ESX on which they are installed."
"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."
"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."
"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."
"Support for more VoIP systems, Avaya, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."
"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."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"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."
"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."
"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
24%
Comms Service Provider
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

CA UC Monitor
Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BBVA Compass
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
Find out what your peers are saying about CA Unified Communications Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.