DX Spectrum Previous Solutions

DC
Senior Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

 We previously used HP OpenView, but DX Spectrum is more comprehensive.

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CL
InfoVista Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did use a performance and fault management tool, but that is a really old solution. It was a tool built by a consulting company called INS, going back to the early 2000s possibly.

Another tool I used was something called Infovista, which is a suite of tools, so it has more than just fault management. It was primarily for performance management.

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UW
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

We had NetView from IBM. We switched over to DX Spectrum because we were just flooded with events, and we had no idea about the root cause of the event. We tested the other solutions at this time, like HPO View, but they never gave us the view that we have in Spectrum now in terms of pinpointing where the problem is.

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Buyer's Guide
AppNeta by Broadcom vs. DX Spectrum
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about AppNeta by Broadcom vs. DX Spectrum and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
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NR
Solution Architect at Infosys

We did not previously use a different solution, but I have done many migrations from other vendors. At the moment, the only thing which doesn't make CA Spectrum a market leader is its price.

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HR
CSI manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I was a vendor for CA before they were acquired by Broadcom.

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it_user558627 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Operations Manager at a individual & family service with 10,001+ employees

We were using SolarWinds previously and it just did not offer a lot of the features that CA Spectrum does. CA worked really hard to create a strategic partnership with us which is very important. Being a large company, we have a wide range of products that we use from various different vendors and we need that support. We chose CA over IBM, and also SolarWinds. So again, the scalability of the product, the ease of implementation, and the account team was way easier to work with than any of the other vendors.

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SW
Senior NMS Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We did not have a previous solution. I came onto the scene to help clean up and modernize a lot of our operations. This was one of the things we looked at.

As one of my operation managers put it, we were driving down the road at 80 miles an hour with the windscreen painted black. Sometimes, we would roll down the windows and stick our head out the window, but we recognized it as a big gap. It was something that we needed: good fault monitoring. 

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ZH
Director at Starways

I have used OpenText before DX Spectrum. 

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RK
IT Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

We used several solutions prior to this one. The reason we switched is that the combination was causing a problem and we needed to standardize.

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RK
IT Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

We have extensive knowledge when it comes to using Spectrum. Some teams around me are using Zabbix.

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it_user778728 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at GEICO

We were using CA Performance Center, and CA Spectrum is a logical extension of CA Performance Center. Between our management and CA themselves putting on the full-court press for sales, we decided to go that route.

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it_user516528 - PeerSpot reviewer
OSS Manager at Telefónica UK / O2

I've never had to switch from another product to CA Spectrum. Most places I have worked either already had Spectrum or I've recommended it/implemented it as a new tool.

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it_user643890 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Systems Management (ESM) Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

This organization previously used the IBM Tivoli product.

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it_user558132 - PeerSpot reviewer
Application Performance Analysis/Migration Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Our company merged with another company, and since the merger, our company has outsourced all our LAN and WAN management. All our network tools have been at our vendors and we have had no access to them. Pre-merger, the second company did everything internally and used Spectrum as their network management platform. Now, with the integration of both networks, network management is coming in-house.

I recently attended a conference primarily to take a look at the CA Spectrum product and its capabilities regarding what advantages it's going to have when they bring in it.

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it_user558375 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Network Performance Engineer - Engineering Performance Services at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

We didn't have any other solution before. We were using some supplemental products. We knew we were missing that managers tool. As we looked at other products, we decided to make sure we had the funding for this one.

We chose this product because of its scalability and also we had confidence in CA, which we didn't have in any of the other vendors.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor were scalability, stability and support.

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it_user37836 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director - Enterprise Technical Computing at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used lots of tools, such as PRTG, IBM Tivoli, and SLMO. CA spectrum helped our organization automate fault management across multi-vendor and multi-technology infrastructure. Spectrum integration with service desk helped us reduce manual effort.

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it_user558357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Of Staff at Aig

We have used no other solution prior to this one. We've been using the same thing for a long time.

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LG
Big Data Architect en Seguros SURA at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We did not previously use a different solution.

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FB
Senior IT Manager at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

I did not previously use a different solution. At the time (fall 1990), there were only very few products available, where just two or three of them had a graphical visualization.

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it_user572898 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Charter Communications, Inc.

I am not sure how they knew they needed to invest in a new solution, but when I got in, Spectrum was on the rise of being implemented. Before this, we had NetCool.

When I select a vendor, first, I look at the product; how viable it is. Second, I look at the support that I'm going to get from the vendor. Those are the two major things that I look for.

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it_user558300 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Service Delivery Analyst at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

I don't believe they were using anything prior to this. I think it was on an "on-call, this-is-down" basis.

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it_user378384 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect EMS Practice at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

We previously used lots of tools, such as PRTG and IBM Tivoli. CA Spectrum helped our organization automate fault management across multi-vendor and multi-technology infrastructure. Spectrum integration with service desk helped us reduce manual effort.

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it_user778524 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director IT at CNO Financial Group, Inc.

This was before my time at the company.

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it_user778590 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Tools Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Many enterprises have something called "tool sprawl." Over time you invest in tools and all of a sudden you step back and realize there is some overlap in the tool set that you have. You have tool X and tool Y and they each do some different things but then they do some of the same things as well. You realize you have some overlap.

We had a maintenance contract come to term. We paused and listed all of our tools and listed their functionality and made a matrix, then added to that what we wanted to look for in the future. Then we stepped back and we evaluated different vendors, and CA was one of those vendors. We looked at their offerings and from that process we decided to go with a CA suite of infrastructure management tools.

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DM
Network Manager at SMA

We are moving from CA Spectrum because it is not a solution for us. We are moving to an open-source solution that is less expensive.

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it_user778884 - PeerSpot reviewer
Communication Systems Analyst at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

A couple other solutions. It cancelled some of those out. 

We switched because it was a bigger thing. We swapped so we could have support for just one monolithic thing, as opposed to a lot of little things. 

It just had more support, we could call somebody. It was very complex business software. We probably still don't use 40% of the solution at this point.

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DZ
Developer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

It was the first solution that we used when I started working. Right now, we are trying Naemon (Nagios). Here is my comparison:

Raw monitoring:

Naemon has a lot more flexibility, i.e., you can script and monitor anything with it, giving you more options than CA Spectrum.

Performance:

CA Spectrum is a lot better. The way they have for consulting SNMP in bulk is great, thus reducing the load a lot. It has around four times more performance with CA Spectrum.

Administration:

CA Spectrum offers you templates, Discovery tools, menus, etc.

In Nagios, we had to develop our own administration tools in order to discover and maintain over 10K devices. This needs a high understanding of the solution.

Business logics:

Here, it is a big win for CA Spectrum. With the events, you can make any of them interact with each other, even with different devices. I can’t think of any business logic that I wouldn’t be able to implement. (I am not saying it is easy, but with a lot of thinking, most of them could be done).

In Nagios, each service runs as an individual check.

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it_user558009 - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitoring Engineer at Interval International

When I started, we were already using the solution and, as far as I know, it has been with us for 5-10 years. We've used it for quite some time.

When looking for a vendor, the application is most important. That's what stays with you the longest period of time. Again, you may not have to call support and you may not have to deal with sales very often, but the application is the one thing that you're constantly involved with.

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it_user510261 - PeerSpot reviewer
Services Consultant at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

I previously used Nagios and Zabbix, but CA Spectrum is more efficient.

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it_user496368 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Coordinator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I’ve worked with free tools such as Zabbix / Nagios. Right now, we only work with CA products and, as I’ve written, Spectrum is the way to go when you need networking monitoring.

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Umair (Abu Mohaymin) Akhlaque - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Solutions & Services Head at Duroob Technologies

CA NSM, Solarwind

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it_user558537 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head IT Operations at ICBC Argentina

Before choosing Spectrum, we used an open-source solution called Nagios. We also used a monitoring tool from BMC called PEM, Patrol Enterprise Management. In 2009, our bank decided to implement the complete suite of tools for IT management and delivery from CA. It's a strategic decision that we took six or seven years ago and we're happy with the switch.

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it_user558102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Allscripts

Our company was partially using CiscoWorks before this product.

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it_user394989 - PeerSpot reviewer
TEM Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

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JE
Presales Consultant at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees

We previously used a different solution, and we switched mainly because the company needed scalability.

We were using Zabbix, a similar product, at the time, and we had a custom poller written in C and six servers to make it run. However, to get it past 12k elements (the break point for this solution), we would have to redo the entire file system using GFS from Red Hat to allow simultaneous write for a shared storage area. So, when we presented the project, the company realized it was time to invest in an enterprise solution. CA Spectrum was the winner after a series of tests and PoC process with the suppliers.

To install CA Spectrum and discover the network, it required half a day, back in 2008. Some of the competitors couldn’t complete the PoC after one week.

And CA Spectrum offered also a variety of OOTB features such as an easy certification process, VLAN discovery and other stuff.


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it_user404031 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Network Operations Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It was the first ever solution I tried and it worked so I never had a chance to work on other solutions. This applications works best on medium to large-sized organizations.

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it_user351225 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principle Engineer at a media company with 10,001+ employees

There were three companies we looked at. Spectrum was chosen for its flexibility, for its ability to manage all device types, and ease of growth for our environment. Nothing scales like Spectrum.

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it_user558210 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Architect at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were using another CA product. We had to integrate that system with other systems, but it lacked the API. We decided to upgrade to APM for that reason.

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it_user558237 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capacity Planning at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

We've been using Spectrum as long as I've been with the company.

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it_user215913 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The previous product did not scale and it was very basic. If you need enterprise network and server monitoring & alerting there are very few options out there.

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it_user191448 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Analyst at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We used to have Nagios, OpenNMS, etc. but they are not very efficient monitoring tools when compared with Spectrum and eHealth.

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it_user778827 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at Aerospace Corporation

We weren't using anything before Spectrum. We needed a product to monitor our network equipment for these type of things.

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it_user197100 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Analyst / Technical Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Recently, I opted for an open-source tool, due to the budget constraints of the place where I currently work.

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it_user392508 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer with 10,001+ employees

We did not use a previous solution.

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it_user293970 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I have used and implemented the old product, CA Infrastructure Management, which included Spectrum, but also I am implementing CA UIM.

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FS
Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

We tested other tools to see how well they met our needs; however, we did not see satisfactory results, and they had the same functionalities as what we already used.

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it_user558534 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Planning And Control at ICBC Argentina

For many years, we used Navios to monitoring our infrastructure. Then, when we started to work with Spectrum, we had some cultural difficulties trying to get used to a new tool and getting the technical people to use it. For a while, we were running Spectrum and Navios at the same time. Today, we only use Spectrum with the ATMs and self-service terminals. There is also a cultural transformation in relation to the digital transformation, so we are working on moving to UIM.

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it_user492783 - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitoring Consultant at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did not previously use a different solution.

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EP
Senior Technical Consultant at The Instillery

I tested different products before Spectrum. Tivoli was one of them, but it was too complicated and troublesome to configure and maintain. I didn’t like the interface of BMC Patrol as it wasn’t very intuitive, and HP OpenView was the same with a very unappealing GUI, and the algorithms used to keep track of changes in the network and root cause analysis very basic. I didn’t switch, it was only that I worked with these tools before working with Spectrum.

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it_user217680 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Yes, we used TNG, which was impossible to manage.

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KN
Techincal Support at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

One of our customers was using SolarWinds, but have since switched to DX Spectrum because they were issues with it. Once they implemented DX Spectrum, they were able to determine the root cause of their problem and solve it.

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it_user218196 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Manager at a government with 11-50 employees

I used another solution in another company, but in my current organization, the solution was already installed.

The great aspect about the CA Spectrum tool is not what it does, but the integration that it provides with the other CA monitoring tools, such as CA APM.

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it_user201036 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

No, I have been using CA products for almost 4 years now.

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it_user140679 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have been working on Spectrum from day one but I have experience with other similar products. I found Spectrum as being a complete network management solution with a great user friendly GUI.

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DR
Network Operations & Delivery Head for TSB Bank at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

We are also using Microsoft Network Node Manager.

The main difference is the availability to do the health-check on not only the devices but also some application services. These are in addition to the infrastructure, and with Network Node Manager, it's more based on infrastructure.

Also, the Drill down feature that DX Spectrum provides is something the Network Node Manager typically cannot do, as well as to drill down on a specific case or on a specific device.

That's also a really good feature of DX Spectrum.

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it_user217803 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Leader/Network management specialist of cNMS at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

No, I didn't use a different solution. I just have some skills with other umbrella tools, where I was able to see a behaviour and processes which are needed for operation.

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it_user345651 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Simac Techniek NV

Before we were using the HP solution, but then CA bought them. We like this vendor becuase of the strong network management system. So, what’s important to me is particularly the product more than the vendor. Vendors that integrate would be a nice plus. That’s the main reason we initially actually stayed with CA because the products can talk to each other, which has a good flow.

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it_user205827 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Using the tool comes as part of my job because my company uses CA Spectrum for their infrastructure monitoring. Previously, I have used Tivoli Console.

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it_user201033 - PeerSpot reviewer
CA Management Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

We didn't use a previous solution.

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it_user83484 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data Science at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I work as a System Integrator and we sell all known NFMs. Spectrum is the best.

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it_user234849 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Performance & Capacity Analyst with 10,001+ employees

I didn't use a previous solution.

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it_user198879 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network/System Engineer TL at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Yes and I switched to this product as its visualization is better.

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it_user676368 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure and Application Surveillance Specialist at a hospitality company with 201-500 employees

We used many, including HPOW, NetView, and Nagios.

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it_user558648 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees

Previously, we were using open-source solutions.

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it_user202551 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

No previous solution used.

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it_user198924 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

No I haven't.

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it_user564828 - PeerSpot reviewer
Telecommunications Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I didn't use a previous solution. I've always worked with CA Spectrum.

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it_user525810 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead ,Managed Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The client had always used CA Spectrum from its inception.

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it_user401589 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Analyst Level 3 with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have not used other tools. This solution gives more stability, capacity, quantity and quality, in regards to the monitoring configurations. Besides that, it is an excellent event manager.

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it_user216501 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Yes, we used Nagios, and SCOM. It not my decision to switch and I don't know why.

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Buyer's Guide
DX Performance Management vs. DX Spectrum
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Performance Management vs. DX Spectrum and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.