Make sure you get the low down on your licensing and understand the licensing requirements before making a purchase, especially when it comes to an upgrade. Make sure that it suits your needs before you commit to it. For example, we purchased ATA at version 6.2.1. At that time, the licensing covered everything we need. NETSCOUT comes out with 6.2.2, stating that in order to upgrade, you had to purchase CyberStream licensing. Now that requires some additional funding from both a capital investment and a maintenance cost. That's something that should have been said, "Well, if you want these additional features, you will need to purchase these CyberStreams." Otherwise, we should be allowed to continue on the basic operations as it is now through the newer releases without being stuck.

There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product may come across as a cheap tool for some, while it may seem costly for others.

Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions. I'm getting to the point to where I'm going to have to upgrade my licensing level, and it's a pretty big hop. But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level and it works on all of their products.

Cost is probably the biggest drawback. Compared to some of the newer vendors that have popped up in the space, it's definitely more on the expensive side. It shows its value, though, in the reliability of the solution, the support that we get from NETSCOUT. It's been able to keep its value, even in the face of the cheaper competition.

Like any company, we always want better pricing. The pricing is okay, but it's not a cheap solution. When you want to deploy it across an enterprise as large as ours, you go into seven figures. It's not a cheap solution to get out there.

Again, it's kind of a "white elephant." If you are able and you are willing to use everything that NETSCOUT provides to you, it's probably a relatively fair price. The problem is that it's such a large and such a complex tool that I'm not sure that many companies would be able to use it entirely, the way it's expected to be used.

So what I'm paying today, based on the value that I'm getting out of the tool, makes me believe that I'm overpaying. You pay for the entire thing whether you use it or not. And these days, that's not the wisest way to go.

I don't know exactly how the licencing works. I think it's about the ports from InfiniStream. For example, if you have five InfiniStreams, each InfiniStream has four ports, so I think you need to acquire a licence for 20 nodes.

We can get everything in a bundle. But the price is different if you acquire virtual InfiniStream or vSTREAM. But in the end, the price is only for acquisition; it's not a licence. The license is for the ports, one per InfiniStream.

The product is too expensive compared to other products.

Licensing is flexible, it's not tied to anything else. We can easily switch up the licensing piece. Pricing is something that our budget team takes care of. Obviously, NETSCOUT is a little bit in the higher range, but it gives you value for money. You get what you pay for.

We have a premium customized contract for the solution. So, it has all the features we require. There are no additional expenses.

I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five.

The pricing is fair.

We have a yearly agreement that covers extensions, etc. There are no additional costs.

It is important to spread the cost across the various IT silos as this solution works as an umbrella to provide information to all teams.

Try to target major aggregation points in your network to deliver the best potential data to the solution. You can from that point start to target specific areas to resolve specific issues or gain particular insight into certain areas.

Do not forget applications traverse North-South as well as East-West and in layers of those. Think about your typical WAN breakout, Layer 2 connections, Virtualized environments, and servers supported by back-to-back connections (eg. web server supported by DB server, with a direct connection).

It is a little overall pricey and expensive, but you get what you pay for.

The license becomes cost prohibitive very quickly.

• Type 1 - up to 50 interfaces
• Type 2 - up to 10000 interfacs

The platform is expensive.

It is very expensive, but it's well worth the money.