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Cisco Prime [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

Cisco Prime [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

ZeeshanAli1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust, cost-effective, and provides good visibility, but the scalability could improve
We are extremely satisfied with the reliability and robustness of Cisco Prime Infrastructure, which we have been using for many years. Compared to newer products such as DNS centers or others, it has proven to be much more stable, which is important for large-scale operations. Stability is a primary concern for us, and we are glad that Cisco Prime Infrastructure meets our expectations in that regard. Furthermore, in regards to Legacy Plus new hardware, Cisco Prime has proven to be a reliable and adaptable solution thus far. Not only can it support older hardware, but it also has the capability to handle new features with the latest updates. If we consider new solutions such as DNS Center, we may have to sacrifice some legacy features that we still rely on. We may need to continue using these legacy features for a few more years due to various reasons such as budget constraints or the site not being a high priority. However, if we switch to a new product at this stage, we may lose a lot of the monitoring and other capabilities that we have with Cisco Prime. We have a close relationship with Cisco and understand that they are not prioritizing investments in Cisco Prime as they are encouraging customers to adopt the Cisco DNA Center. This means that we don't anticipate many new features to be added to the product in the future. While we know that we will eventually have to transition to a new solution, in the meantime, we plan to do a quick refresh of our legacy products.
DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies
The product helps to correlate events.  The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.  I have been using the product since 2005.  I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboard is a valuable feature. It's very clear, and the metrics make it easy to see the current network situation."
"Cisco Prime is a good tool for inventory monitoring and wireless management."
"The VLAN mapping function has been most impactful in simplifying our network management tasks."
"The product's most valuable features are monitoring and configuration."
"We use the solution to control the physical service station that is part of the SCADA network. We connect and control them remotely."
"The installation is easy."
"Has a good wireless heatmap and search management features."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is the heat map."
"Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"The granular access control that it provided so that you could only see devices that were related to what you were working on was great. I couldn't see the entire inventory of devices. I could only see the ones that were related to my work. It has got a very granular access control component."
"It's a good tool. It's simple to do the configuration."
"The main thing is obviously notifications about alerts, getting ahead of the curve to make sure that we do not have system going down, or if it is down we get to know it earlier."
"The integration point."
"The most valuable features of DX Spectrum are the comprehensive alerts."
"Scalable and stable network monitoring tool with a simple setup."
 

Cons

"I would rate the scalability of Cisco Prime a six out of ten. To scale up from a hundred to a thousand devices, the platform needs to be rebuilt logically. This process might require a downtime window and may involve changing the hardware or upgrading to a larger appliance."
"If you look at some of the wireless site-survey tools that are available in the commercial space, Cisco should include similar solutions, which would help our on-plant engineers when they're doing a site survey."
"The user interface of Cisco Prime could be more user-friendly and increase its performance."
"Cisco can only be used for Cisco environments and is not compatible with other vendors."
"If you think about a centralized monitoring system, Cisco Prime is not good because it does not support third-party vendors like Palo Alto or FortiGate."
"The product needs to improve its interface and reporting."
"Cisco Prime could improve the graphical user interface."
"Cisco Prime needs to have lower prices and more customization options."
"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."
"If they could interact with the MIBs of vendors better, and have a lot more pre-loaded ones, that would be amazing for us right now."
"Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols."
"I would recommend AI capability built-in so it becomes more predictable and we jump ahead of the curve. This is the one really important feature I would really like to see in any product that provides alarms."
"For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts."
"DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features."
"Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems."
"Make it easier to certify devices."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Prime is an expensive solution."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors in the market."
"The cost is quite high."
"I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten."
"The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive."
"The solution is not inexpensive but is worth it for large-scale environments."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of Cisco Prime was reasonable because we purchased it as part of a Cisco One package. The package was a bundle of Cisco solutions together, such as Cisco ISE and CMX. The price is reasonable com compared to other solutions."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"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 price is very high."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Prime?
The most valuable features of Cisco Prime include its comprehensive functionality as a one-stop solution for basic SNMP port management.
What needs improvement with Cisco Prime?
The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive.
What is your primary use case for Cisco Prime?
We use Cisco Prime for centralized configuration management backups and monitoring.
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...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Prime Infrastructure
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mohawk Industries, Universidad EAFIT, Halton Healthcare
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.