We performed a comparison between DX Spectrum, IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus, and OPS/MVS Automation Intelligence based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom and others in DX NetOps."It helps our NetOps group actually handle alarms in a way that lets them see the bigger picture of those alarms, and how they might affect our services. It helps us communicate information about the network state better to services that might be impacted by a specific network condition."
"The most valuable features of DX Spectrum are the comprehensive alerts."
"It's a good tool. It's simple to do the configuration."
"The Global Collections are what I found to be most valuable. With the Global Collections, you're able to organize and categorize devices into "folders," or functional groups and categories, so that it doesn't matter which SpectroSERVER those devices are on."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component."
"It is easy to understand and determine when and/or where the network is failing."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to put health checks in place not only for the infrastructure but for some of the services that are on top of the infrastructure."
"It is an easy-to-use solution."
"Probes are the best feature because they are well written which rarely requires you to write additional rules. These probes monitor activity within your environment."
"It is customer-centric. Customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event. There is no need to go and connect to any other server and run events to have a view of all the events happening in the environment. We get a good response from customers about this feature and the main architecture of NetCool. Its processing is very good. Deduplication and correlation functionalities are good in this solution as compared to other solutions. A big advantage of NetCool is that it also supports multi-layered protocols. We can receive multiple events from different protocols like UDP, HTTP, and those events can be captured in NetCool."
"The most valuable feature is the event management capability."
"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"It is an easy product to use and it is stable."
"The follow-up surprised me. Making sure that I am happy with what I have gone to them on. They will call after I have made changes and verify that I am happy with the changes that I did have to make. If it did not fix the complete problem, they go back over it until I am satisfied."
"With the automation pieces we can bring this region up or take this region down, and it allows us to always meet our time critical requirements."
"Their technical support is incredible, immediately responsive, and even if it is not updated to Level 2 support sometimes, they chip in providing more detailed answers and options to fix the problem."
"It alerts the operators when it is time to repair the communications and the IPLs."
"The service has been wonderful. I like the people that I have had to deal with. The process is very straightforward. I call or use the website."
"Because we can define complex commands, the training of new operators is quicker. We can also put checks in place, that will prevent user errors."
"It's very secure, because it's a legacy application."
"There should be better integration with other Broadcom products, like network performance manager. Currently, for every part of a product, you need a separate server environment. You have something for Spectrum, you have something for network performance, and you have something for NetFlow. There are a lot of islands and server farms with different technologies. They should be redeveloped to get one platform for all."
"It doesn't really allow for multi-tenancy. If you're an ISP or an MSP and you want to use this tool to provide these types of fault management services to your customers, you would need a separate SpectroSERVER for each customer..."
"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."
"It doesn’t give you performance metrics: You need CA eHealth for this."
"The product should provide performance management features."
"The upgrade process could be smoother. More of the steps around upgrading could be automated."
"The interface is not nice and needs to be improved."
"From the users perspective the looks and feel of dashboards of Spectrum would be easier to use and for understanding as APM will be in 10.5 version which we saw in CA World."
"I would like for the next release to be more user-friendly and out of date. The next release should focus on the cloud, AI, and ML technologies."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"Its integration could be better. They should provide an easier integration for all the monitoring stuff, and it will make things easier for us. Currently, there is a complexity in integrating it with a vendor application, and we have to use another tool to integrate it with a vendor application. To integrate some applications with NetCool, I need to install an IBM tool on top of it. It would be good if they can provide an API or any kind of interface that we can leverage while developing a new protocol interface or application. We should be able to use an API or interface with NetCool. Its GUI can also be better. As compared to other tools, it is not user friendly, and it is not easy to do stuff through GUI. Whenever we do anything on the GUI, it takes time. They need to focus on the GUI part, especially the dashboard. They should focus on how users can effectively drill down from one box to another. The visual appeal of the dashboard is as important as the data and functionality."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"Performing a stop/restart of OPS/MVS could be a little smoother. Without special coding, some undesired tasks will be started and some necessary tasks will be stopped if we have to bounce OPS/MVS during the day."
"Some of the command sequences are too long."
"The reason sometimes it is not stable, we do not have the expertise to write the script."
"It’s a complex product. The initial installation is easy, but implementing various functions is a constant process."
"The further expansion of the mainframe teamcenter interface. Also, the web services support is something that I am looking into."
"It definitely needs more web-based interface, to be more mobile-open. More APIs, more open source to it."
"Because of its age, it's a little bit difficult to modernize some of the integrations and some of the functions."
"One thing that comes to mind is the MQ interface. The last time we tried to use it, it seemed a little clunky."
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