We performed a comparison between Cisco Prime 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."What I found most beneficial from Cisco Prime is that it gives you an insight into what your network does, even when you're not actively monitoring what's going on with your network."
"We use this solution to troubleshoot our wireless systems, specifically regarding signal strength."
"As a large organization, it is difficult to individually monitor every device. Instead, we use Cisco Prime to keep an eye on the network and services. We do not use it as a node tool, as we have other tools for network operation centers. When services go down, it can cause issues, we rely on Cisco Prime to monitor and notify us of any service disruptions. We mainly use Cisco Prime Infrastructure for configuration-level tasks."
"We use Cisco Prime for network mapping and surveys."
"It helps us manage and monitor analytics and fix issues."
"The solution's configuration management tool is amazing because it centralizes and pushes configurations which saves a lot of volume and effort."
"Has a good wireless heatmap and search management features."
"We use the solution to control the physical service station that is part of the SCADA network. We connect and control them remotely."
"The user interface is very easy to navigate."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiManager is the ease of manageability and policy-pushing functionality."
"Fortinet has the option of synchronization in the cloud, so you can manage everything if you have a cloud account."
"There is something called zero-touch provisioning, where you can add a new device without any configuration. You just add it to FortiManager and then forget about it."
"Fortinet FortiManager allows a full view of all the devices on the network from one location."
"The solution is very stable."
"FortiManager enables us to set unified firewall policies from one centralized dashboard, reducing human error. If you do not have a central dashboard, there's a chance you might set a policy on one firewall and forget to do it for another."
"FortiManager's ability to scale is good."
"The overall management capabilities of Prime need to be improved."
"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."
"I would love for Cisco Prime to show bandwidth usage and consumption, but I can't monitor bandwidth usage at a given time."
"Cisco Prime could improve the notifications in the system. Having more details about what is happening would be useful, such as traffic numbers or who is connected. We can see them through the firewall controller, but it would be better if you can see them from one place."
"There is room for improvement in the Access layer."
"It should be able to monitor Palo Alto, Juniper, and Check Point products - not just Cisco solutions."
"Cisco needs to improve Prime's monitoring tab. If any device goes down, there is a 15-second lapse before we know. It would be much better if we were alerted two or three minutes before a device is about to fail, so we can dispatch a field engineer and avoid network downtime. I would like to see a feature that allows you to access the devices directly from Prime's monitoring tab. That would make work easier for us."
"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 compatibility with legacy products should be better. It would also be nice if the software could manage other devices from Fortinet and third parties."
"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."
"There are a lot of bugs that need to be fixed, for example, the ZTP."
"Areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiManager are scalability and stability."
"The CLI could be enhanced."
"If you have more than one FortiMail device, you can't manage it then with FortiManager on FortiGate."
"The solution has some bugs."
"The interface could be improved. It is split up into different areas, which makes it more difficult to navigate and get the right section of the correct file. The solution is quite expensive, so it would not be suitable for small to medium sized organizations."
Cisco Prime is ranked 2nd in Network Management Applications with 35 reviews while Fortinet FortiManager is ranked 3rd in Network Management Applications with 61 reviews. Cisco Prime is rated 7.8, while Fortinet FortiManager is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Prime writes "Robust, cost-effective, and provides good visibility, but the scalability could improve". 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 Prime is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Aruba Airwave, Huawei eSight and ExtremeCloud IQ, whereas Fortinet FortiManager is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate Cloud, Fortinet FortiOS, Cisco DNA Center, Zabbix and SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper. See our Cisco Prime vs. Fortinet FortiManager report.
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