Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs Dynatrace comparison

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

Dynatrace and Accedian Skylight compete in the application performance management category. Dynatrace has the upper hand due to its advanced AI capabilities.

What features are offered by Dynatrace in comparison to Accedian Skylight?

Dynatrace offers AI-driven performance monitoring, detailed analytics, and automated root cause analysis. Accedian Skylight offers network performance insights, visibility into network health, and real-time monitoring.

What areas of improvement can be found in Dynatrace in comparison to Accedian Skylight?

Dynatrace could improve its integration options, customization capabilities, and user interface complexity. Accedian Skylight needs better documentation, an enhanced user experience, and more comprehensive reporting features.

How is the ease of deployment and customer service of Dynatrace in comparison to Accedian Skylight?

Dynatrace’s deployment is swift and straightforward, with solid customer support, though users sometimes find it complex. Accedian Skylight has smooth deployment but receives mixed feedback on support quality.

What setup costs and ROI can be seen with Dynatrace in comparison to Accedian Skylight?

Dynatrace users acknowledge higher setup costs but feel that the advanced features justify the expense through substantial ROI. Accedian Skylight users find its cost-effective pricing model appealing, but ROI feedback suggests varied experiences.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Dynatrace Report (Updated: November 2026).

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Dynatrace

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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 Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

42nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (46th)

Dynatrace

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

363

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (7th), Mobile APM (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (1st), AI Observability (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 4.9%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dynatrace	4.9%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance	1.0%
Other	94.1%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin

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…

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Manish Indupuri

senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration

We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas..."

"We have found this to be a very valuable toolset, and has paid for itself several times over."

"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."

"It has clearly saved us money."

"When a remote contact complains about a slow application, we can immediately pinpoint the cause of concern."

"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"We were able to decrease the number of production defects ever since we started using Dynatrace in our test environment."

"Dynatrace is stable."

"We are able to get insights into our systems, which previously took us weeks to be able to detect."

"From the monitoring perspective, the ability to triage quickly is important, and the ability to alert and tell people where the problem is."

"Technical support has always been quick to respond."

"Its AI can tell us when something is wrong, including the impacts and the root cause."

"Dynatrace was the perfect fit."

"PurePath: The automatic correlation of transactions between multiple layers and dependency identification is brilliant."

More Dynatrace pros

Cons

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"Support for more VoIP systems, Avaya, etc."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."

"The licensing of the virtual pollers is problematic because they are attached to the physical ESX on which they are installed."

"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."

"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."

"We have encountered problems with the license that is connected to the hypervisor on which the virtual appliance is deployed."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"It is quite expensive for startups."

"There's no download action for the reports, so if they could add something like that, it would add value for us. We cannot save data for more than seven to 10 days, so it would be better to add a feature for downloading. At least we could store the data and then we could compare for ourselves, where we are starting and where we are and where we are heading. I would have those metrics."

"We found it was quite challenging in terms of the learning curve."

"Pricing is still too expensive."

"I hope going forward it can provide more functionalities for application profiling."

"When you're making that transition from AppMon, which is very dashboard-oriented, over to Dynatrace, which is no dashboards, there needs to be something in between so that business buys in a little bit. I would transition my dashboards over so that we don't have to recreate them, because recreating them is very difficult in Dynatrace. It's really hard to say, "Oh, the dashboards that you had on the team that you were using, you're not going to get over here." Or, "You have to re-create them all over again." People are going to ask questions about cost, who is going to do that."

"We would like the AI to produce more scientific data with less configuration."

"Dashboards are too clumsy, so it is good to keep less on dashboards and be easier to find the sections."

More Dynatrace cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

"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 price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"Dynatrace is very good and it's provided a lot of information, it plays a positive role in making your application up to date in the market. If you want to monitor some applications only, it would be cheaper if you did cloud monitoring, but the price benefit depends on the use case."

"Pricing is based on the number of servers monitored, so for big applications, it is a bit expensive."

"Everything is great, but the licensing could always be cheaper. With the every growing tool set of Ops teams, we find it harder to budget for tooling while ensuring we still have the proper insight into our applications."

"It's more expensive than other solutions, but worth it. We use full APM monitoring on our primary systems, but only resource monitoring on lesser systems. We shift licenses around our environment when a deeper dive into lesser systems is required."

"The limitations I see are more to do - and maybe it's because of the nature of the job I have - but they have to do with pricing. It's a little bit pricey. It's a very good tool. It's worth the price, to a certain degree. But it's hard to justify when it's that costly."

"Licensing is very interesting, as you pay only for what is being monitored. A lot of things are given away for no additional cost. If you have a great IT consolidation, it will be pretty cheap. If you have a lot of servers, it will be heavier."

"We found a tool that can be utilized by testing, DevOps, marketing, software engineering, and monitoring. Before, we always had everybody doing their own thing. Now, everybody's utilizing one tool, which is huge. That is a huge savings."

"If there are no corporate requirements to run Dynatrace Managed (operating it yourself), I would definitely go for the size option. For small and medium-sized companies, the size option is probably the cheapest one. You don't need to look into operating it. You don't need to run hardware. It is pay as you go."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

14%

Construction Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	81
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	303

Questions from the Community

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?

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Any advice about APM solutions?

The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...

What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?

While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

DX SaaS vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

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Product Reports

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Dynatrace product report

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

No data available

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is known for its user-friendly approach to network analysis and performance monitoring. It excels in real-time diagnostics, helping organizations quickly resolve network issues and optimize performance effortlessly.

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance focuses on comprehensive network troubleshooting and performance monitoring, assisting in identifying bottlenecks and analyzing applications. Real-time data collection and evaluation ensure IT infrastructure efficiency. With active monitoring of latency, jitter, and throughput, users maintain smooth operations across multiple sites and applications. While highly effective, improvements in data handling, protocol support, and dashboard aesthetics are suggested to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance?

Flow Matrices: Advanced analysis of network paths and traffic distribution.
SQL and DNS Analysis: In-depth insights into database and domain queries for troubleshooting.
Bandwidth Assessment: Evaluation of network capacity and utilization for performance optimization.
Real-time TWAMP Monitoring: Tracks network performance using Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol.
Application Performance Modules: Monitors the performance of various applications and services.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized views for tracking critical network metrics and trends.
PCAP Capturing: Detailed packet analysis using tools like Wireshark for deeper insights.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Ease of Use: Intuitive design allowing users to swiftly diagnose network issues.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Enhanced visibility of network activity for better control.
Performance Efficiency: Optimization of throughput, reducing downtimes and improving service delivery.
Cost-Effectiveness: Balances features and functionality with competitive pricing for better ROI.

In industries such as telecommunications and finance, where network reliability is crucial, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers critical network performance insights. It supports high-demand environments by providing data-driven decisions, ensuring infrastructures handle increased loads efficiently.

Cisco

Dynatrace is advancing observability for today’s digital businesses, helping to transform the complexity of modern digital ecosystems into powerful business assets. By leveraging AI-powered insights, Dynatrace enables organizations to analyze, automate, and innovate faster to drive their business forward. To learn more about how Dynatrace can help your business, visit www.dynatrace.com, visit our blog and follow us on LinkedIn and X @dynatrace.

Sample Customers

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

TD Bank, Zurich North America, Accenture, Macquarie, United Airlines, Raymond James, BT, Vodafone, Air France-KLM, TELUS, American Airlines, Air Canada, ADT, Virgin Money

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Dynatrace