We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and Fortinet FortiManager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Management Applications solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I think that their LAN automation is a very good feature."
"The most valuable features of the solution are all of its security features...It is a highly scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration."
"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."
"It is very versatile in terms of analytics."
"The best feature of Cisco DNA Center is the visibility page, where you can see everything on the dashboard, and you don't have to be a technical person to view the issues."
"We can monitor all devices and get the required information using the product."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiManager is the ease of manageability and policy-pushing functionality."
"This solution enables you to centralize the rules and the configuration of all the equipment."
"It can scale well."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"It makes management very easy."
"It's very easy to install, and it's easy to discover and communicate with your device."
"FortiManager offers a full zero-touch provisioning feature that allows us to create a template of our devices and onboard them remotely without visiting the site."
"FortiManager's ability to scale is good."
"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."
"There should be an option for automation of template deployment by using the stored data. It is not easy to save configuration information for lots of devices without using other tools. There should be a tighter, better repository of information that can be merged with the templates."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"The solution’s security side could be improved."
"What I want to see in Cisco DNA Center in the future is more support for other platforms so that you can manage third-party products, such as Fortinet."
"An area for improvement in Cisco DNA Center is the latency in data correlation. For example, sometimes, when an issue happens, and I check the logs, I can't find the corresponding log. There's a delay in log replication, so this is what needs improvement in Cisco DNA Center. Reporting in Cisco DNA Center could also be improved because it only has a few templates, and you can't customize it based on your requirements. There aren't many options available in Cisco DNA Center regarding reporting, versus Cisco Prime, which has excellent features for different levels of detailed reports. I'd like to see real-time data replication in the next release of Cisco DNA Center, similar to what's done in Meraki. Data in Meraki is real-time with no delay, so data is immediately replicated in the cloud. Currently, there's a lag in Cisco DNA Center, and addressing that lag is the enhancement I'd like to see in Cisco DNA Center. The solution also needs to be more user-friendly."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"DNA Center has been on the market for a few years and they need to update it."
"The documentation could be better."
"I would like to be able to manage other products such as Endpoint and FortiAnalyzer through FortiManager. That is, the integration with other solutions needs to be improved."
"There is a degradation of performance if we activate logs on FortiManager."
"The GUI is not ideal."
"The solution has some bugs."
"The CLI could be enhanced."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions other than Fortinet."
"Performance issues should be improved. We have problems when we have more mobile connections than local devices. Most of us have two to three devices."
Cisco DNA Center is ranked 1st in Network Management Applications with 37 reviews while Fortinet FortiManager is ranked 3rd in Network Management Applications with 61 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while Fortinet FortiManager is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco DNA Center writes "Practical implementation of VXLAN is good and provides centralized control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiManager writes "Easy to set up with good integration capabilities but we've had troubles when moving devices". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Huawei eSight and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, whereas Fortinet FortiManager is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate Cloud, Fortinet FortiOS, Zabbix, AlgoSec and Fortinet FortiWeb. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. Fortinet FortiManager report.
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