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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

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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 SD-WAN
Ranking in Network Management Applications
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (2nd)
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
15th
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 September 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is 2.3%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.7%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN2.3%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.7%
Other94.0%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Ashwani-Tyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager at Orange
Centralized control has simplified cloud access and has improved operational visibility
If they can have better firewall features as their competitors have, such as Fortinet and Versa, that would help to place this solution better so that we can address security related things. If they can have all the IPS, IDS, everything built on all the edge devices, whether physical or virtual, that could be one improvement. Actually, if customers are existing Cisco customers, if Cisco can be more flexible to leverage the existing investment, that could be another important aspect to save on cost and be more competitive from a pricing perspective. Overall, the pricing or the segment that Cisco deals with is a bit premium, which they charge a bit premium against the competition on the licensing, hardware, and services. The implementation is not straightforward. You need a specialized partner or specialized people who can implement this. It can be simplified a bit from that perspective as well. Mostly the way we implement the policies for a big environment requires a lot of things that we need to take care of. If that can somehow be improved, because they have different components, like they have vManage, they have vSmart, and vBond and all these components have to work with a certain flow that they need to follow.
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

"Customizing SD-WAN is very easy because you can define two colors. You can define two different operators. You can deploy a partial mesh, a full mesh, or hub-and-spoke totally differently. If you want to do this on a DMVPN solution, that's really hard."
"From a network perspective, it's a very good solution, but the security features could be better."
"The stability is really great; it's definitely reduced downtime, with no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"Application-aware routing offers flexibility in using different lines for traffic, depending on the policy implemented."
"The best feature of this technology that is available to us is the ability to do better load-balancing."
"I believe that Cisco is the best, overall."
"Installation is easy."
"The product helps to aggregate network links. The tool increases security and makes it possible for you to have remote workers."
"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"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."
"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."
"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 Netcool solution is great, and it's very easy to use."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"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."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
 

Cons

"We have had issues where the configuration or IP spoofing on the network was not so good."
"The main area for improvement in Cisco SD-WAN is the lack of documentation, which often lags behind the software releases."
"The deployment is complex, and Cisco makes everything complicated."
"Cisco is more expensive than FortiGate."
"The initial setup was challenging, especially for plug-and-play deployments, but improvements have been made in newer versions."
"Some competitors are much faster in providing out-of-the-box solutions, more innovative solutions. In terms of innovation, in many cases, they're lagging behind."
"The price was very high, and we moved away from Cisco because of the price."
"Cisco is not great for the SMB market. These are price-sensitive customers and they typically will not go ahead with Cisco, unless and until they are a global organization and they have their entire ecosystem deployed on Cisco."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"The solution is too expensive."
"It was a bit expensive to purchase but the benefits outweigh all the cons by far."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"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."
"IBM's technical support takes a long time to do root cause analysis, and we have to go through several levels of help before getting a solution."
"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."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for the Cisco Customer Care support, which is a couple of hundred dollars."
"The price of Cisco SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive. The cost of the solution is approximately 30 percent higher than competitors."
"You can get subscriptions for three or five years."
"In the Russian market where we operate, this solution is expensive."
"The cost of Cisco SD-WAN is high and has room for improvement compared to competitors such as Fortinet which has similar functionality."
"The price of the solution is the only negative factor, it is much more expensive compared with the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution."
"The Cisco SD-WAN licensing model needs to be simplified. There are currently three types of licenses: enterprise agreements, individual licenses, and DNA subscriptions. This can confuse customers, requiring a dedicated person to determine which type of license is right for their organization."
"The product's license is 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."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
Cisco offers premium enterprise capabilities, but its pricing, setup cost, and licensing models represent the most significant hurdles for IT organizations. Cisco hardware commands a premium price ...
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN can be improved in minimal ways, because they have updated it now, and the updated version is really good. The only concern is the cost; compared to others, the cost is higher...
What is your primary use case for Cisco SD-WAN?
We are a system integrator and a Cisco Select Partner, deploying all the Cisco portfolios like SD-WAN, switching, firewall, access point, and then Secure Access, our cybersecurity product. We have ...
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

Cisco SD-WAN
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
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 SD-WAN vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.