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DX Performance Management vs DX Spectrum comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

DX Performance Management
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
43rd
Ranking in DX NetOps
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (1st)
DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
18th
Ranking in DX NetOps
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the DX NetOps category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 25.1%, down from 35.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Spectrum is 25.5%, down from 35.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
DX NetOps Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
DX Spectrum25.5%
DX Performance Management25.1%
Other49.4%
DX NetOps
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1810893 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Operations Specialist at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Flexibility and detailed performance stats enable effective network monitoring
Spectrum is very good at monitoring all network faults and configurations. It enables me to take action based on network issues. The Performance Management provides detailed network performance stats, including CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth. Additionally, Spectrum is flexible and allows me to organize and treat devices uniquely without impacting other devices.
PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"​The ability to quickly do drag and drop customized reports for dashboards.​"
"The network teams have transitioned to becoming proactive in responding to network performance issues, rather than being just reactive to outages."
"It has improved efficiency because now there is the one-stop shop where you can view all your data, instead of needing to click around in four different tools."
"The integration with NetFlow, the NFA solution, so that we can have our flow forensics paired with the SNMP polling performance metrics on the same page."
"It gave us one location, one place to do all of group administration, and to build dashboards, and device administration, inventory counts... it really reduced our overall administrative overhead."
"Since the implementation of the tool, it has cut down on probably 60% of our outages and letting us know what is going on."
"Mainly as an MSP configuration, the multi-tenant model helps us to segment the customer and users, as well as providing our operation the capability to oversee all tenants."
"The ability to very quickly and graphically navigate around, being able to zoom in to a timeframe, apply it to all the other panels - things of that nature - are all very intuitive."
"We were able to monitor their entire network infrastructure and receive valuable alerting in a timely fashion so that we could react to any instances when there were down devices."
"Technical support is the best in class."
"This is a very stable product and helps us to be proactive and prevents the company from losing money and business by monitoring the entire network (data and voice) of the company (head office and branches) in real time, showing exactly where errors occur."
"From the business perspective, they have improved MTTR significantly, creating an elevated ROI ratio."
"If you like to sleep at night and not be disturbed on the weekends, get Spectrum."
"We use Spectrum for network analysis, failure detection, and sending information to our service management tool."
"Everything being centrally located in one infrastructure management tool allows anyone anywhere, between the IT help desk, to Windows teams, Unix teams, or the network team to see exactly what devices are causing the issue, as well as the severity of those issues."
"I can use it to detect whenever things go wrong on my network."
 

Cons

"CA PM Business Hours Filtering: I understand that all monitoring systems have defects. The Business Hours Filtering does not always function properly. Sometimes, when applying business hours to CA PM reports that are 30 or more days in duration, the report generation times out and does not display results. We have other CA PM reports that, when we apply Business Hours Filtering, the report results displayed are the same as without the filter. We are not sure if this is a defect in CA PM or if it is a result of our complex configuration (folder structure) and application of business hours."
"The dashboard features are very function rich, but the reporting feature is probably not as rich as we'd like it to be."
"One of the greatest challenges we have encountered are the polling cycles."
"Some of the individual report views, the way some of the columns sort, there's room for improvement in giving us more flexibility in being able to sort reports based, for example, on what columns the metrics fall under."
"It would be helpful if CA provided online training for its customers."
"It seems like we escalate more than I would like to. If anything, they should look at how the tier support goes in place."
"The solution could improve the database model. It is also not very good because they have a lot of interconnections with other data sources, such as NFA and VNA."
"I think it would be helpful having a more comprehensive set of certifications so that I could natively deploy devices to my environment and the tool would immediately recognize and immediately be able to provide relevant performance information without a lot of tuning on my part."
"I would like to see improvement in the ability of the user to configure the maintenance mode more efficiently."
"The Spectrum OneClick is a Java-based client, and that's aging. Really, before any new feature integration, I'd love to see a comprehensive rebuild of the UI."
"I'd like to see cross-landscape correlation."
"CA Spectrum provides value, but it can be very expensive."
"The EventDisp logic (code) is too complex."
"Stability could be improved. I find on a regular basis that those of us on-call tend to usually have to go in and restart or reboot a Spectrum server because the landscape's gone down."
"The price is high, as compared to other solutions."
"HTML5. Right now, it is a very Java driven application. We have lots of issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We were looking at other vendors in the marketplace for NetFlow, and CA just beat everybody else in price, cost, and the size to implement. ​"
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"We purchase a license to use the solution every three years and we have multiple contracts. They have been increasing the price annually. We have a baseline for three years and then we need to pay the difference from the baseline, and we are in the process of negotiating a new price for all the licenses we need. The price overall is affordable."
"Do your homework and know how many devices you will be managing out of the gate. Be sure to project what your growth will be each year."
"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Performance Management?
Spectrum's topology view sometimes does not rebuild automatically when a device is shut down and reconnected. It requires manual discovery and rebuilding of the topology, which I hope can be improved.
What is your primary use case for DX Performance Management?
I have used Spectrum for monitoring all network faults, configurations, and troubleshooting network issues. It provides network performance stats, such as CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth detai...
What advice do you have for others considering DX Performance Management?
I would recommend this solution based on its functionality, flexibility, customizability, and ease of use. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I am just a customer and not a par...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
 

Also Known As

CA Performance Management
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Jack Henry & Assoc, Target, CenturyLink, Bell Canada, BrightHouse Networks, Telus, Unisys, Verizon, Southern California Edison, GEICO, Fidelity Investments, Wells Fargo, American Family Insurance Group, Deutsche Telekom AG 
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Performance Management vs. DX Spectrum and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.