DX Spectrum is a solid solution. There's always improve room for improvement with solutions. DX Spectrum does what we need to do so I think we're happy with it.

I rate DX Spectrum a nine out of ten.

I would definitely recommend it. With any tool, you want to do a proof of concept, but it's a great tool for fault management. Also, understand the caveats: that it's not the most scalable tool and it's not very multi-tenant friendly. Aside from that, it's rock-solid in terms of how it does fault management. That's something that you really can't beat.

In my mind, Spectrum DX was the number one fault management in the market for many years. Now, with everything moving back to the cloud, I don't know where it stands.

If you are looking for better performance management, then you should supplement DX spectrum with another tool like CA Unified Infrastructure Management.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I would absolutely recommend it, but it's not so easy to learn. It's not geared toward self-learning. It's a good idea to have a Spectrum partner.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

If they have a large environment to monitor, CA Spectrum is certainly the better option, being ideal for OPS rooms, highly scalable and with very high availability.

We have the DX Spectrum and DX NetOp for performance center management from Broadcom also. Actually, we have the full fledge from Broadcom and had it from Computer Associates before Broadcom started.

The distributed installation is on-premise, and we have one interface server and approximately six Spectrum servers.

I definitely recommend this product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I would say that Spectrum is a great network monitoring tool, and it has a lot of features that most people probably don't even use. They just use it kind of like an up-down tool, but there's a lot more to it than that. I would say, if it was something that they were thinking about implementing into their environment, they should get somebody that knows the product well to explain everything and make sure that it's implemented correctly the first time.

Take into account more than just features. Look at the way that the organization provides support, the way the vendor provides support, and also if they're willing to work with you for the long term on adaptation within your company.

Every once in a while, you will run into somebody who will surprise you by being innovative or by showing you that they have a vision for something, and that they are working or striving towards acting like a startup within this big monolithic steam train that is CA.

I would look at the capabilities that Spectrum has to integrate with other solutions and be part of a bigger solution. When you are doing something like this, you have to have a bigger vision of what you are going to have across the board, then understand that this plays part of that, and it fills an important role.

It is better than your average bear. It is a good tool. It is a very robust tool. It has a lot of capabilities. I can't give it a 10 just because there are times when I will be working with the tool, and I will run across something that I do not like, some kind of feature that doesn't work the way I expect it to work, and it is not intuitive, and I will talk to CA about it, and they will say something like, "Well, nobody has ever tried to think about it that way," or, "Nobody's ever asked us that question." I'm like, "This thing is 20 years old. How has nobody ever asked that question?" 

More than likely, what I tend to believe is that they were not listening when somebody asked that question, which is actually something that has changed recently. I think Mike Gregoire has done a good job of changing the attitude of a lot of the stuff, and they have got some new leadership that has really made it so that they are now listening. Whenever I bring up something like this, they say, "Yeah, we know. You've brought this up before. This other guy has brought that same thing up. We understand it." It does not help solve the problem. There are pieces of the software that are still not intuitive. However, the fact that they are listening makes a difference.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We do not actually select vendors. We select products. Really, I could care less whether or not the product comes from CA because we have other stuff with CA. In fact, we tend to frown on picking a product just because it comes from a vendor that we are already doing business with. It makes it so that we are not very agile. We have to really consider the solution very objectively. We only consider the vendor when it comes to their history of being able to perform, their history of being able to support and provide top-notch solutions. We frown on coupling the purchase of one tool, or the acquisition of a tool, just because we own another tool by that same vendor. So, we do not really select vendors.

DX Spectrum adapts to emerging technologies. It is an all-inclusive suite that includes performance. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

When selecting a vendor, the most important consideration is product; it has to be product and features.

I'd give it an eight out of 10 right now, because it does what we need it to do. It could go an extra 20 percent somewhere.

I have my own script to analyze the data and perform actions in the backend, like repairing a configuration. I rate DX Spectrum a nine out of ten. 

We hope that the speed of the improvement and product growth will soon again be at the same level as when this was a CA product.

I recommend the use of CA Spectrum mainly to monitor network infrastructure. Use this tool like a “manager of managers”. Event monitoring is a very powerful functionality.

If you want to monitor servers, apps, and databases, then use CA UIM probes.

If you like to sleep at night and not be disturbed on the weekends, get Spectrum. It's a really robust, mature product, but still with newer and newer features being added, and it's very, very stable.

For us, within that technology area, it is the standard for solutions that we can select. 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.

In the vendor selection process what is important to us are

• reputation
• reliability. 

It also helps if you have a current relationship, and we have a long-standing relationship with CA. That made it rather easy for us.

I give it a nine out of 10 so far but I have to qualify this answer. It's done everything that we need it to do. Again, until we do a deeper dive and explore it to its fullest potential, that could change.

Whoever you have do your deployment and implementation, make sure they know what they're doing.

The CA Infrastructure tools on offer from CA work well with each other and are being more and more closely integrated every release. They use the Agile development methodology, so updates are frequent enough to keep up to date with new trends in technology. If you are not inclined to update too often, it is OK, as they do have a good support period. (I think it's 2-3 years or more in general, so you don't have to upgrade every time a new version is released.)

Invest in time and resources to utilise the REST APIs for their products; it will save a lot of time if you are an MSP or provider of any kind. Also, utilise your CA representative; they have a lot of experience with different industries (and technologies) and are valuable, fair and friendly.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

This is a very good, refined product that, in the fault-tolerant configuration, approaches being bulletproof. Allow extra time for installation, setup and familiarization. This is not due to installation and setup complexities but more due to the richness and extensive capability of this product.

Define what you need and talk to the various vendors. You don't need multiple platforms. The ideal situation is where you have a single platform and a single company that provides me with all the features and functions that I need. You need to have a very clear idea of what you are doing before getting into it.

I would advise others to design the correct architecture up front and that shall save you time in the future.

The logs are difficult to set up and we would like it in the HTML5 since Java is a very buggy product.

We have a good solution but it is not the complete solution for all the issues.

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are quality and cost. We are happy from both perspectives.

I would advise others to be prepared to do some fine-tuning and scripting to support the product. With any tool of this nature, there are going to be some customizations to monitor certain devices. You should also make sure that you get your containers organized correctly. If you organize the containers correctly with different groups assigned, it will make your life a lot easier to be able to organize your data. Have a solid structure for that and a good plan.

I would rate DX Spectrum an eight out of ten. It was a really solid platform. They did a really great job. The coordination of alerting was probably the biggest issue we had, just because of the scale of the network we were dealing with.

I would recommend this solution.

The event management that the tool provides is extremely powerful, but with that comes a bit of complexity. For beginner type users, the event management might be a little overwhelming, but as you work with it over time, you can really see what the solution provides for you. With a little bit of time spent, you can get a lot of value out of the product, but it takes a bit of time and understanding.

I recommend you use CA Spectrum mainly to monitor network infrastructure. Use this tool as a manager of managers. Event monitoring is a very powerful functionality. If you want to monitor servers, app and databases, use CA UIM probes instead of the CA SystemEDGE agent.

Start small and include as much of your IT infrastructure as possible, so that at the end you have a picture of the “big” total.

The solution releases new updates every quarter. It is easy to implement. It is the number one product in the market for complex and difficult-to-manage networks. It covers all our needs. The solution’s capabilities are far better than its competitors. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

It is good, but there is a lot of growth opportunity in the space. I think CA and a lot of other companies are moving in the direction of orchestrating cross-platforms. Right now, the way we are using Spectrum is really only covering infrastructure and infrastructures out of the house. I think the future with APM and other tools, being able to see more holistically what's happening, is very critical. 

The most important thing is implementation, how it is implemented to enable the operations. In my current role, the operation's visibility and usability are the most important thing. So, making sure it is implemented in a way that it meets the requirement of the operation space. 

My rating reflects its scalability and reliability. There are some minor issues, but that can be resolved.

Definitely consider Spectrum. It's one of the top solutions for its market space. It's not very hard to set up. It does a good job.

When selecting a vendor, we want something that’s been around awhile. It should be a mature stable product.

It is a really good product, though it is very complicated. You need to make sure that you have the staffing, because of the complexity of the product. You will need staff to be able to use it to its fullest extent. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

The biggest criteria are:

• Functions
• Features
• Cost
• The reputation of the vendor.

There are a lot of little vendors out there that are in a lot of these spaces, but you have never heard of them. Therefore, it is good to have a large company that you know and you trust. We have a good account team and good pre-sales people. They have really help us out a lot.

Definitely demo it. Have them PoC it for you. Once they show you what it can do, it can really make a person's decision a lot easier.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor is definitely supportability. Obviously, it needs to do what we need it to do. If it didn't, we wouldn't have picked them to begin with; but for me, it's supportability.

I don't think you're going to go wrong with Spectrum. It's going to provide all of your needs and if you have to customize something in Spectrum, it's a customizable SMI, so it's very straight forward. You bring in all your events and you can integrate it with various other solutions.

DX Spectrum's graphical interface is high quality and easy to use. I rate it an eight out of ten.

You need to make sure the product runs in your environment because it might not be compatible with some people's setup. 

For now, I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

I know CA might not like this but I would suggest looking at other vendors in the market and really see what the completion has to offer. CA has got a large footprint and that's fine, but as an engineer, you should always be looking for what's best for the company regardless of the vendor.

The tool helps to monitor performance management. We can also see the topology and understand how our network connects different zones. This tool lets you easily access comprehensive information from a single console. It integrates easily with third-party applications. I rate it a nine out of ten. 

You must have the training that Broadcom provides as it allows you to make better use of the functionality of this tool. The solution is geared towards larger corporations and global companies and I rate it nine out of 10. 

I have already been working with DX Spectrum a lot. It's one of the tools I'm using the most, e.g. for my customers, as I'm both an implementer and reseller. It's not only me who's working with it, as some of my team members also deal with this solution.

This tool is now called DX NetOps Spectrum, and the latest release I've used is 21.2. We deploy it for our customers on-premises. We've never implemented it in SaaS.

DX Spectrum is a very good solution. It's the best network monitoring tool in the market.

How long the deployment for this solution takes will depend on the size of the customer, on the size of the environment. The minimum for a small customer would be five to ten days. For huge customers, deployment can take up to six months. Sometimes, when you are depending on use cases, we have to implement.

My advice to people who are planning to implement DX Spectrum is for them to spend some time in designing what they want from the solution, because it's very scalable. You have a lot of options inside the solution, so your take time building strong specifications, then ensure that everything's being implemented smoothly.

My rating for DX Spectrum is eight out of ten. The reason why I'm not putting a higher mark is because you can no longer sell it as a standalone product.

I'm also a reseller, and it's impossible now to sell this solution in its form. You need to sell it as part of the NetOps, or suite of net tools inside the Broadcom portfolio, which is something feasible for big customers, but not for customers in small to medium-sized businesses. They would be interested in DX Spectrum, but not in the full suite of the network monitoring tool.

I rate DX Spectrum a nine out of ten. 

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to first make a plan on how you are going to implement and use it. It is important to know before you configure it, how it is that you want to use it. For example, we have a lot of different customers and they may not want to see the older devices from other customers. As a service provider, it is important to make a good plan on how you want to implement it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I would recommend Spectrum.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

1. The product needs to meet our needs. 
2. It has to pass Enterprise Architectures conditions and be secure. The product should not have a lot of holes, because if you're going to buy a product, you are going to look at the product first, then the vendor. 
3. From a vendor perspective, it is always associated with what the licensing terms are, and obviously, money matters. Also, looking at the contracts, how flexible they are in terms of working with us on working towards a contract. Whether it be subscription or it is a SaaS product. How we license that product is what I am mainly looking at.

We going more for a solidified network so we need some improvement there, based on the current level of support for our network. And a more detailed integration with NetFlow data is important for us as well. I also feel that the CIS lock-based correlation needs to be developed as well. So on a scale from one to 10, I will rate CA Spectrum an eight.

I think you have to be aware of what steps you follow when you shut it down and bring it back up. You have to make sure you check that you are getting current alerts when it comes back on. Make sure that you did not lose any functionality, because there are a few pieces of it that are running simultaneously. You have to make sure all those pieces are running, operationally. There have been a few times where I started it back up and the alarms weren't coming in and I had to go check that. You just have to be careful to check the pieces.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor include:

• the cost of solution can be prohibitive, of course
• the functionality 
• how long the company has been around is a factor, obviously.

I give Spectrum an eight out of 10, just because of the issues with technical support.

I would make sure you grapple with the amount of time that it would take to use the solution and invest in the solution, to get what you need out of it. It's a powerful solution. It does take a skill set and time to set it up properly. It can do what you need it to do. You just have to spend the time to configure it. It's very customizable, which means you have to have a person that has the time to spend to customize it and get the data, get the reporting, events, alarms out of it.

There are some products that have all the intelligence built in but they're not as customizable. Some companies may like that. Spectrum, I would say, is not like that. Spectrum has all the functions there, but it takes a team of people to get that value out of it. CA does Professional Services engagements and they have guys that are subject matter experts that can go in and create all that value from the tools.

I think you have to make sure you understand, for the long-term, the skills of the team and what training may be necessary to get them up to speed. 

If you have a tool set like Spectrum that already is similar in the complexity, you may not have as much ramp-up time to get value out of it. If you have a tool like CiscoWorks, it does a lot automatically for you. That's not the same case with the CA. It takes some investment and setup and configuration to get those nice reports you're looking for. It's powerful because you can customize any type of report but it takes some skill and time to do that.

Be patient. In its current state, I would have a representative from whoever your partner is help you with it. From what I can see, when we implemented UI, it took 2 weeks of on-site representation from our partner to help get it up and running. I think it's something that it would be less painful if you did have somebody that knew what they were doing, one of your partners or something, come and help you install it and get it installed. Then after that, start running with it. Do not do it by yourself.

I choose a vendor based on their knowledge of the product. I need them to be able to tell me what I need to know and where I can go to get information. Don't try to sell me something and then tell me you don't know how to use it. I've had that happen with some stuff. For example, by saying something like, "I'm new at this". I need the knowledge. That's what I want from you to help me to succeed, because we pay good money for this stuff. We have MSOs and everything we pay for yearly, and I really do use it. I don't have time to sit there and always research something and read something, so if I call you with an issue, I really hope you know what I'm talking about and you can help me fix it.

This is a good solution and I would recommend it for a big company. However, for a small business like ours, we need something that is less complex and easier to use.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• knowledgeable tech support
• reasonable forums
• documentation.

I give it an eight out of 10 because it's not perfect, but it's better than a lot of what's out there. There is still a lot of work you need to do on it. Even though it's a vendor product there is still a lot of support you have to have to get certain things. 

Again, we have a very diverse environment; Cisco stuff, air conditioners. To get all that to work to it's full potential with this product, monitoring-wise, is work. So if there was more interconnectivity already in it that would help. For instance, we had devices that were added six months ago that weren't operating to their full potential. Then we would realize, "Oh, this one needs to be done." So we have to run these end processes. Again, the are a lot of devices. Not all of them are doing this, but enough that we have to sift through them, manually, and get this one working and that one working. So that's why it's not a 10.

In terms of advice, I would tell people to load all the MIBs before you add the devices. Literally.

Try to learn, at least, the following:

Event Configuration

Device Certification

Watches

Alarm Notification Manager

Services

SLA

I would recommend the product to anyone looking for an infrastructure management application. I do know that for smaller companies the cost seems a little high, so it may not be for everyone. But, if you're looking for a total package that’s easy to get started and get it working, and something reliable and scalable, I would recommend the product.

CA Spectrum is a powerful product for monitoring network ICs; if you master the EventDisp logic and the Southbound Gateway Toolkit everything, becomes easier.

It is important to remember that with the size of product, some caution should be taken.

As I’ve written, not only for Spectrum, but for any monitoring tool, you need to know what is critical in your environment and think how exactly you should monitor and treat it. If you have done that, everything will work just fine.

Go for it. Try the best you can to start out fully within specifications and that kind of thing. We're going back and fixing all that now, which we might not have had to.

You look around and see there are a lot of home-grown things, and multiple different solutions from different vendors that just don't work together, or they can't work together for whatever reason.

One thing I like about the one-stop shop with CA is we don't have to have staff to be experts in 84 different things. If I need these two things to work together, if nothing else, I can call support and say, "I tried this and it's not working. Why is this not working?" And they'll get on the phone and WebEx and look and eventually you will get it working.

When it comes to my most important criteria for selecting a vendor, ease of use is always one of the top ones: How many people in wagons and trucks, and servers, how many things do I have to have to run this tool, this product? That is the key factor in my evaluation.

Of course, price, obviously, that goes without saying. 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 product is not terrible, but not great.

When we evaluate vendors we look at technical skill and background. We want them to be able to understand our business objectives and our needs. This is the most important. We want them to be more service oriented than product oriented, because the main objective of the IT department in a bank is to maintain up-time regardless of the challenges we face. This is critical to our business.

I would definitely recommend this product to others.

The most important criteria whilst selecting a vendor is reliability.

In terms of choosing a network management applicationsvendor, look for stability and ease of use. I've seen that with the other applications. We have issues happening all the time, although I haven't seen it with CA. I would suggest getting your hands on a product in a lab and play around with it.

It is a great product. It is easy to setup if technically strong resources are available. It reduces the cost of underlying hardware due to the higher monitoring capability per server. Always stick to a distributed approach as it helps in fault tolerance due to the unavailability of HA/DR.

1. NCM – Network Configuration Manager – It is very helpful in maintaining the configuration backups of network devices in a multi-vendor ecosystem involving large number of devices. Device configuration changes can be identified on real time and helps administrators to identify unapproved changes and recover from faulty changes leading to device downtime quickly. Reference configurations are helpful in setting a device configuration and naming convention benchmarks and enables admin teams to work without dependency on resources, as the proper and standardized configurations can always be referred to during making changes to devices.

2. Discovery – CA Spectrum’s discovery utility allows IT/NOC teams to find and model the network and view the topology in the Universe and Global Collections views. Bulk discovery is possible to be run using seed files providing the device IP address and using pre-configured policies containing the list of SNMP community strings. This way large networks can be discovered and modelled in one go. It allows us the flexibility to choose the elements to be modelled and how to model them. The inventory data can be exported in desired file format for further review and distribution to key stakeholders. Device changes can be re-discovered into CA Spectrum using the scheduled discovery feature, ensuring that device changes do not place a device model in risk of getting out of live monitoring and avoiding incorrect alarms.

3. Spectrum Integrations –

a. CA BI – CA Spectrum uses CA Business Intelligence (CABI) for reporting purposes. The flexibility offered by CABI to design user defined reports and display data in a variety of info graphical formats lets admins design reports which can display to management in a glance the state of entire network/ sections of the infrastructure. CABI leverages the powerful SAP BO technology which offers a complete suite of information management, reporting, query and analysis tools in a user friendly and intuitive UI.

b. eHealth – CA Spectrum – eHealth integration offers functionality to map existing eHealth elements with the Spectrum device models to allow eHealth generated performance based alarms to be shown on Spectrum alarm dashboard against the relevant device element model. This creates a single pane of glass view for the NOC teams to view all fault and performance alarms in a single dashboard and helps in reporting and carrying out triages to determine RCA of faults. Also, detailed OOB designed eHealth reports are made available to users of Spectrum on a single click and discoveries can be scheduled on eHealth using only CA Spectrum system. Thus, it eases the system administrator’s job while providing a in-depth analysis of the entire network’s state and performance in real time.

c. SOI – Integrating CA Spectrum with CA SOI is now easy using the CA SOI connector. It helps to collect CA Spectrum data into CA SOI, convert it to a common format and expose the data for visualization, analysis,, management and reporting to organizations senior management. It helps to get a management view on a distributed and large network into a single dashboard view including Cis and alerts consolidated into a single frame. The entire infra can be broken down into logical business services and thus impact of faults can be analyzed on services running / hosted / provided by the underlying infrastructure easily.

d. EEM – This integration enables SSO feature for CA Spectrum. Single Sign-On (SSO) lets CA Spectrum users integrate with LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and Active Directory user management systems.

e. API – CA Spectrum provides web based and REST API for integrations. We found it very useful in creating a custom solution to monitor dynamic IP based devices. It can also be used in embedding CA Spectrum information in web sites or third party apps and fetching data into CA Spectrum especially updating custom attributes of device models with data from external systems.

4. Dynamic Global Collections – Global Collections allow us to model network views from any modelled elements in Spectrum. By specifying rules based on device naming convention/IP address/device type etc. we can dynamically add models into various global collection views as and when they are discovered and modelled in Spectrum. These views are very helpful in breaking down the entire network into logical segregated views based on any criteria which fulfills your business use case.

5. Interface Information - You can view information about the interfaces of a device model by selecting the model and selecting the Interfaces tab in the Component Detail panel. The Interfaces tab displays a list of the configured interfaces and sub interfaces for the selected device, along with the parameters of the interface models. The % utilization (In/Out), packet, errors/discards (%) rates can be viewed in graphical format and thresholds can be set to generate alarms.

Don’t try to do the planning without consulting a CA Partner or an expert. You will need help in other matters also; must have a good knowledge of SNMP protocol. Always read the documentation, which is very rich, and use the communities for extra help besides the support.

CA Spectrum is awesome for networks, but when paired with CA UIM, you can have everything: datacenter, networks, virtualization and on.

I would advise any engineer to use the application because it is user friendly and secure. I would recommend any organization that requires network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities all in a single platform.

We are very pleased with it. Plan, learn your environment, and plan the implementation. This is essential for success. Also, get CA support to help you document your environment before you start.

When selecting a vendor, I look for stability, the ability to meet our needs, and the ability for their products to integrate with other products that we use.

If you are looking for a product, make sure that the solution you chose integrates well with your other systems.

This product requires, in larger environments, one full time employee dedicated to it.

I recommend CA tools for monitoring the entire infrastructure in an organization.

I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

When we are selecting a vendor, what is important to us are

• stability
• proven background of actually doing it 
• cost to actual functionality.

I would say to seriously take a look at Spectrum. It is a very stable and good product.

I would say that if you have the financial budget to get this solution, you would be well taken care of.

I do not know any other product better for NOCs. When you start researching for this kind of solution, you should have prepared a list with all your devices you want to manage, and features you want from this solution. Usually the number and type of the devices is important.

Don't consider this product a service desk product. It is an infrastructure management product with some light features for incident management. Spectrum is great for what it does as a management tool. You can monitor your infrastructure, manage events and alarms as you please (aggregation, alarm suppressing, thresholds, rules, etc.), manage configurations for network devices (depends on the management capabilities of the device), monitor SLAs and other great stuff like these.

The most important area for us is stability and they need to improve on this for larger use cases.

I would recommend this solution for enterprise networks but not for the telecommunications industry.

I rate DX Spectrum an eight out of ten.

Planning is key. Identify the topologies and design to be implemented and rules to be conducted for problem identification and alarms. Ensure that you have good support as a partnership for difficulties.

I think that the applications are great. The most important factor is who is going to be the partner helping you to implement this solution. Choose a good, trustworthy partner. I think that CA Spectrum is a really good tool.

This is a very stable product. It 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.

Think big, and look to exploit all this product has to offer around Fault & Service Management. When I was the Enterprise Administrator in a big data center in South America, my motto was: if the coffee machine has a network card, we can monitor it and see if we are out of coffee. Spectrum is capable of doing this and more.

For network management, this application is by far the best.

It will aid in troubleshooting and daily operations, and is invaluable in fault resolution.

One of the issues that we have is that our customers are not aware of the product's full capabilities and what it can do for them. We are running our own campaign to give our customers a better understanding of the benefit they can get from it.

In summary, I think that it's a fantastic and durable product. For me, it is nice and I am actively recommending it to my clients.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Read the documentation first before implementing, CA has a very well managed documentation and also good articles on their KB support site for known issues.

I would definitely recommend going ahead with the product. It will able to answer most of the network management related requirements of any organisation.

We are still looking at other solutions to increase the capacity of the devices that are being monitored with DX Spectrum.

We have a small set of devices being monitored and we are running a project to try to duplicate the monitoring on those devices.

DX Spectrum has been great for us. It's the strongest available, the main problem is the pricing, but it's in accordance with the features.

I can recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. 

I would rate DX Spectrum an eight out of ten.

I see many advantages for using this software except if you need it as a home solution.

When I started many years ago with the Spectrum, we did an initial screen of the application with a picture of my ca, Means the customization is possible with many ways.

I would consider this at the top for doing this type of monitoring.

Sometimes it can be overly complex, but at the same time, it does give you a lot of capabilities. It is complex in just the varieties and the capabilities it has.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Combination of meeting the requirements and the cost.

Get an overall perspective. CA is helpful and you should be willing to talk to them.

I would strongly recommend it.

This product is for all network and systems monitoring.

Don't freeze your selection. This product is mature and is the best. Start your project and move forward to solve business issues

The newer versions are easier to deploy and they have more features.

It's not the best product for availability and outages reporting.

Try to utilize it well.

Try to see through other product’s GUIs and focus on backend core features. How does the product isolate faults? Do different modules have to work together to triage root cause?

Stability and support are important to us. We want to have the confidence that the vendor is investing in their product.

Definitely recommend it. It's a good investment.

This is a good product, just be sure to train the ones who are setting it up because this is based on manual data entry and/or SNMP.

We also use CA eHealth tool.

I switched from Spectrum to Nimsoft because it's a better product for me. The network admin still uses Spectrum.

Try to test and tune every feature you want to implement in a controlled environment. CA Spectrum is a powerful solution that will allow you to do almost everything you ever needed to monitor your network infrastructure. Due to its many features, there are always multiple ways of achieving the same goal. Picking the most efficient is the hard task. For every monitoring/management challenges that you face, you have always the last resort alternative, which is using your own scripts/programs to interact with CA Spectrum Web Service, VNMSH, or even adventure yourself (re)writing Java code using the CORBA API.

The recent versions of the CA Spectrum, such as version 10, have new added features that give organizations a good ROI.

It is an excellent tool for monitoring, managing event correlation, and providing integration with other tools.

Spectrum is designed for large infrastructures, anything less than 4000 devices and it is probably a waste of money