DX Spectrum vs Scout APM vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

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Broadcom Logo
132 views|98 comparisons
89% willing to recommend
Scout Logo
674 views|583 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
SolarWinds Logo
15,547 views|8,557 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"What I like best is the configuration management functionality.""We can monitor MPLS network VPN, network configuration, and backups. It's highly scalable for network configuration management.""The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.""Some of the most valuable features are it's highly scalable, the carrier is great, and if something has SNMP, it can monitor it. It's a great network fault management solution.""It's a good tool. It's simple to do the configuration.""Offers a lot of functionality.""The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us.""The tool is very mature, and its valuable features are monitoring and configuration management."

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"The product can scale."

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"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes.""Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support.""SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong.""It is scalable.""The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes.""SolarWinds dashboard is very fast. Also, their interface is very good, it looks very user-friendly. The product allows me to see a summary of the network being monitored at a glance.""We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future.""The solution is stable and reliable."

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Cons
"It was somewhat complex to implement.""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.""We have had some issues with the spec server and the high availability replication of data. It fails over well, but it does not come back very well. We get duplicated events.""For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts.""Needs better integration with all the other products in the Agile suite of tools; anything they could do to make that less complex, would be great.""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...""If nobody else has said the documentation needs improvement, let's go there. I understand, you can either write about it or you can do it. And most of us would rather they do it, but now that they've done it, those of us that didn't do it, we need to go and find: "Where did they write about this to tell us how to do it?" That's always lacking.""A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."

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"I can't recall coming across any missing features."

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"Technical support can be slow to respond.""Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable.""The console could be more user-friendly. It would be better if SolarWinds updated the user interface.""If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful.""The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation.""The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support.""The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible.""The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product."

More SolarWinds NPM Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
  • "It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
  • "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."
  • "In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
  • "The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
  • "The price is very high."
  • "The price of the solution is reasonable."
  • "Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
  • More DX Spectrum Pricing and Cost Advice →

    Information Not Available
  • "I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
  • "Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
  • "I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
  • "The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
  • "The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
  • "I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
  • "You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
  • "The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
  • More SolarWinds NPM Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want using these, but they require quite some expertise before you can use them. Then there are the ones that are not open source, the enterprise softwares and cost you some money, but on the other hand, they are extremely easy to set-up and learn. You can have them up and running in a matter of minutes. And then there are those which are completely cloud based. They can be free of cost or charge some money depending on the software. The good thing about these is that you don’t have to install any extra software, and it can be managed completely online but then again these have limited features and you cannot exploit them to the full extent as you can do with the open-source and to some extent the enterprise software, so I won’t suggest you to use these, because these are generally not the complete solutions and require other support software to achieve the same. Below I have listed the outstanding pros and cons of the various Network analyzers that you can look into Nagios Pros: Nagios offers an extensive set of collector plug-ins that allows users to gather performance and availability data from a broad range of operating systems, including  Windows and Netware Nagios… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
    Top Answer:DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable.
    Top Answer:DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.
    Top Answer:The product can scale.
    Top Answer:Users pay for licensing on a yearly basis. In general, the pricing is great. It's very reasonable.
    Top Answer:I can't recall coming across any missing features. Its capabilities are pretty broad.
    Top Answer:It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are… more »
    Top Answer:From my point of view, SolarWind is the best tool.
    Top Answer:We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of… more »
    Ranking
    1st
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    8.7
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    10.0
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    Rating
    8.2
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    CA Spectrum
    Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
    Learn More
    Scout
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    Overview

    DX Spectrum is a complete event and fault management system for network operations teams. The tool provides powerful capabilities for managing your dynamic, complex IT infrastructure, which includes physical, virtual, and cloud environments.The technology allows you to manage and optimize the infrastructure and the professional services that operate on top of it. DX Spectrum is a unified platform that helps your company enhance network service levels while lowering monitoring costs.

    DX Spectrum has intelligent event correlation and root-cause analysis capabilities. It can pinpoint the precise components that are causing issues with availability and network settings. Reports and dashboards can be customized with role-based views. Change management solutions can also be used by teams to govern, track, and remediate changes across network devices.

    DX Spectrum can identify multi-technology and multi-vendor stacks, as well as new software-defined networks (SDNs). It supports Multicast, MPLS, VPN, and VRF, among other routing protocols and technologies.

    DX Spectrum Features

    DX Spectrum has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Service management: DX Spectrum assists personnel in discovering, modeling, visualizing, monitoring, and managing the links between infrastructure and the business services it supports.
    • Fault detection: DX Spectrum offers unique solutions that automate device discovery and root cause analysis, allowing for faster issue detection and resolution.
    • Change management capabilities: DX Spectrum gives administrators the visibility and control they need to prevent erroneous modifications from causing network performance problems and outages.
    • Comprehensive visibility: With DX Spectrum, managers can receive comprehensive insight across physical, virtualized, and cloud environments, as well as a variety of technologies, platforms, and suppliers.
    • Customization: DX Spectrum provides administrators, users, and customers with pre-packaged, easily configurable dashboards and reports that may be adjusted to their individual needs. For maximum performance and visibility, it is intimately connected with other solutions within the DX Service Assurance and DX Service Management systems.

    DX Spectrum Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing DX Spectrum. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Reduce symptomatic alarms and hasten resolution with DX Spectrum’s root-cause analysis and robust event correlation. Automatically map the relationships between your network infrastructure to find the source of service issues for faster resolution. Whether it's a network configuration or availability issue, our network fault management system pinpoints the exact component responsible for the issue.
    • DX Spectrum supports network access from wireless wearables, mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. Provide network operators with the tools they need to manage their wireless networks, decrease outages, and make them as stable as their wired networks. For wired and wireless networks, DX Spectrum offers a unified view.
    • Fault and event management can be integrated across the Agile Ops, Network Operations, and Analytics portfolios. Fault, inventory, and topology knowledge are combined with performance, application, and log monitoring and a unified view across a full-stack NetOps solution. Additional connections include business service and service desk management.

    Reviews from Real Users

    DX Spectrum stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its robust root cause analysis and its event correlation tool. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Umair A., Enterprise Solutions & Services Head at Duroob Technologies, writes of the product, “It covers networks very well. It has all the capabilities that you're looking for when it comes to monitoring. Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing. If you have a CA Service Desk, then it can be integrated so that if you have open tickets they can be closed automatically.”

    Itarchit, an IT Architect at a comms service provider, notes, “The most valuable feature is the event correlation mechanism. I also like the product's multi-customer approach.” He adds, “We haven't seen a better product. Overall, I am happy with this solution. Based on the current market, I would rate DX Spectrum a nine out of ten.”

    Scout APM is an application performance monitoring solution that simplifies the troubleshooting process by enabling developers to discover and repair performance problems before clients ever notice them. Scout APM uses a developer-based UI with real-time alerting and intuitive tracing logic to identify bottlenecks precisely to the source code. This helps to greatly reduce time and effort needed to debug code and results in greater productivity and improved outcomes.

    Scout APM facilitates the ability of developers to break down, discover, and prioritize performance issues such as N+1 queries, latent database queries, memory bloat, and more, and accomplishes these results at a fraction of the cost. Scout APM monitors Elixir, Node.js, PHP, Python and Ruby.

    Scout APM is built by developers, for developers.

    Scout APM Features

    • 24/7 monitoring: Continuous, consistent monitoring proactively keeps users apprised of any performance deviations. Intuitive dashboards allow users to deep-dive into specific requests, paths, users, and endpoints attached to any performance slowdowns or bloating.

    • Quick and easy analysis: Should a slowdown occur or an increased response time be discovered, users have an easy to use drag-and-drop option to simply and quickly analyze every endpoint and dissect any anomalies. Scout APM will pinpoint the precise user or endpoint(s) responsible for the problem.

    • Intuitive trace logic: Users are able to quickly deep-dive and discover slow requests based on average responses or any/all requests.

    • Crossfilter powerhouse: Crossfilter is a Scout APM feature that allows users to quickly discover similarities with any/all slow requests back to the user or endpoint.

    • Easily discover bottlenecks: With Scout APM, users can easily pinpoint bottlenecks to the exact source code without any additional custom instrumentation. The solution uses a production-safe profiler to fully examine users' custom codes.

    • Developer tracing: Scout APM uses backtraces that are embedded with git blame output so developers of the code can be quickly identified and contacted to resolve issues and concerns immediately.

    • Cost-effective: Scout APM is an open-source solution and offers many flexible pricing options to meet any size business, from small to enterprise level, including custom options. The cost per transaction decreases based on usage and works very efficiently with applications with very high throughput. Scout APM also offers a free trial period and encourages its usage so users can best understand and gauge the level of service needed and determine the best pricing plan to meet organizational needs. Scout APM is considered to be significantly cheaper than many other APM solutions in the marketplace today.

    Reviews from Real Users

    “The solution is stable. It's pretty easy to set up, especially if you have the knowledge base and/or you have a partner assist you. The product can scale. The processes are great. It helps with services and microservices. The product is great for many different industries, including energy, government, finance, and more. It's allowed our company to be more forward-thinking and to consider the future a bit more. ” - Antonio B., Regional Manager LatAm at Splunk

    SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.

    SolarWinds NPM Features

    SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Increased scalability
    • Fault, performance, and availability monitoring
    • Dynamic network discovery and mapping
    • Cross-stack network data correlation
    • Customizable topology
    • Dependency-aware intelligent alerts
    • Intelligent maps
    • Automated capacity forecasting, alerting, and reporting
    • Logical and physical network monitoring
    • Monitor Azure vNet gateway visibility

    SolarWinds NPM Benefits

    There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Comprehensive monitoring for advanced network devices: With SolarWinds NPM, you can gain insight into the health and performance of your load balancers, Cisco ASA and Palo Alto Networks, firewalls, and Cisco Nexus switches.
    • Hardware health monitoring: SolarWinds NPM makes it easy for you to monitor, alert, and report on key device metrics, including power supply, fan speed, and temperature.
    • Customizable performance and availability reports: With this feature, you can choose from more than 100 templates to schedule and also generate custom network performance reports.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.

    PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."

    Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”

    A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”

    Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”


    Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”

    Sample Customers
    National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
    Chargify, Synctree, Aptuitiv, Barnes and Noble, Journey, Geosnapshot, Kongregate, PaperTrail, Adobe, SendGrid, Sentry
    Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Insurance Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Retailer16%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company12%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization50%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Government5%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise66%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise73%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise55%
    Large Enterprise33%