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

Cisco Catalyst Center vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

Cisco Catalyst Center
Ranking in Network Management Applications
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 November 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco Catalyst Center is 3.8%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Catalyst Center3.8%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.9%
Other92.3%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

AadishBahati - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Solution Architect at EchoStor
Unified automation has transformed network operations and simplifies multi‑site management
The learning curve is better with Cisco compared to other products. Everyone has a learning curve because everyone is bringing new technologies, new interfaces, and new ways of doing things. The other products have a steeper learning curve. When comparing Cisco with VMware, I am not comparing Cisco with Arista, Juniper, or HP because those are companies which are doing a very basic level of automation. Cisco is doing way more advanced things. In terms of advanced handling and the advanced orchestration and advanced management plane control that Cisco is delivering, the only competitiveness in advancement is VMware NSX. However, it is really complex. Cisco's platforms are much easier to understand and learn compared to VMware.The only disadvantage with Cisco would be their services and licensing, which is a bit complex and a bit too expensive. Because their services are so expensive, companies end up buying Cisco, but they end up not buying Cisco services to do it. When they turn to external partners, not many people outside know the technology as well as Cisco does. People deploy it, but they do not get the right resources to deploy it.
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

"Cisco Catalyst Center was flexible in terms of scalability, offering advanced security features and reliable performance."
"The solution primarily focuses on visibility into Cisco products and day zero, day one, and day two operations, enabling plug-and-play features, device onboarding, hierarchy definition, and telemetry data collection to offer a comprehensive 360-degree view with basic automation and visibility assurance at its core."
"Operational efficiency is definitely better because everything is managed from one single plane, the visibility and monitoring is top-notch, and the smart fault handling and event handling are so nice that all of the guessing work has finished and Day 2 operation is definitely way better."
"The best feature Cisco Catalyst Center offers is the centralized network health and device visibility, which I could use to get device inventory, device health, network health, site health, and issues through the consistent APIs and bring all of that into our own FloodGaurd dashboard."
"I find Cisco Catalyst Center to be a great solution because their hardware is strong, and the platform is reliable."
"Cisco Catalyst Center has significantly reduced travel time for our organization, which has approximately 60 locations across our state."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Catalyst Center is automation."
"There is a lot of documentation for the platform, which is an advantage."
"The solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"Full featured - event/fault management, performance management, topology map, discovery, RCA, event enrichment, Proviso will chart data from almost any source with a variety of aggregation options."
"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."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
"The Netcool solution is great, and it's very easy to use."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"The solution is a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
 

Cons

"The only limitation is when integrating with other products due to Cisco's proprietary protocols."
"There are areas for improvement with Cisco Catalyst Center, and I can discuss what could be improved."
"I must be honest: there is nothing to particularly like about Cisco Catalyst Center. Every vendor can do what Cisco does today."
"It is a little more expensive."
"To improve Cisco Catalyst Center, I think the dashboard and UI experience is inferior to what I used previously with Ubiquiti equipment."
"Advanced hardware replacement services have seen a degradation in quality, with delays in replacement parts."
"The main drawback of Cisco Catalyst Center is that it can only manage and monitor Cisco devices with a DNA license, specifically the Catalyst 9000 series."
"Cisco Catalyst Center could improve its graphical user interface. Currently, it is CLI-based, which makes it challenging for those without Cisco training."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"Customization and integration that you need to do to make the product fit your needs is very complex. It is not a product that somebody could easily pick up without any prior training or experience."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"The solution is too expensive."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"I think the UI should be updated and made more presentable and eye-catching. Compared to NCE in Huawei, NSN in Nokia, the UiPath and Ubiquiti, it feels very old legacy."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Management Applications solutions are best for your needs.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Catalyst Center?
We did not purchase Cisco Catalyst Center through the AWS Marketplace as we used the Cisco DevNet always-on sandbox which gave us temporary access to a hosted Catalyst Center environment for testin...
What needs improvement with Cisco Catalyst Center?
I think Cisco Catalyst Center can be improved overall by making the sandbox setups and documentation more straightforward, as it was a little confusing because the DevNet page documentation, contro...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Catalyst Center?
My main use case for Cisco Catalyst Center in the sandbox is to test APIs and integrate network data into the FloodGaurd project, where I tested device inventory, device health, network health, sit...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Catalyst Center vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.