We evaluated quite a few, including open-source. The one that came closest was the LiveAction Networks solution, because that's what Cisco recommended at the time. But it was looking at network performance, not security. Plixer was like killing two birds with one stone. It had a better platform for network performance monitoring and it gives you the bonus of security monitoring.

The way that LiveAction displays traffic between devices in a map is probably a little bit better. Aside from that, the level of data that you can drill down to within Plixer is significantly enhanced, compared to LiveAction.

Overall, Scrutinizer has much better functionality.

We did compare it against SolarWind's NTA and against another product as well.

SolarWinds was more of an all-things-to-all-people type of tool with a lot of different blades on the Swiss Army knife. Whereas Scrutinizer is pretty much one blade. I've got to be careful when I say that, because it still does a lot. But its main function is traffic analysis on the wire. And that's what makes it shine, because it does that one thing really well.

Our customers evaluated LiveAction, Stealthwatch, AkenTech, and ExtraHop.

I saw a gap in our visibility, and I already knew what solution would make that work. This solution was something I knew we needed to bring in. Because Plixer is dedicated to the idea of NetFlow, I don't think there is anything out there that could be gleaned from NetFlow that they haven't thought of or built into their product. So, I'm comfortable giving them a leader role in that technology because that is where they're focused.

We did evaluate other products. We had a minimal capital for an expense on a tool, and I was put up against the guy who does all the Voice over IP. They had Actionware's QoS manager look at all of the QoS network-wide and keep it tuned so we were at least flowing the right data for the right reasons in all the right places through and through so everything matched. He wanted a tool that kept all of that in place. I felt that watching the data flow outside of where QoS ran would be a bigger bang for the buck. I won out on this one.

The differences between the two products is that they service a different master. They're not apples to apples by any means. One is just making sure that your policies are uniform and balanced for QoS, not crossed all of your products. Whereas, Scrutinizer is there to show you what your product's actually doing. It can be used for tuning QoS if you wish to, but then you would be doing that part manually. It could be used for telling you how your site has been over the last week or month, as it does capacity planning. It's real easy for the end user to look at it too. It gives them a view so they get that self-help. High level management can build their own views and look at it, whereas nobody else can really look at the QoS tool because it actively changes the network. So, you don't want to give that tool out. Therefore, it really wasn't apples to apples. 

For our business, it was which direction was the right way to go for the money involved to make our department more visible. It made better sense to have this solution than just something that helped our one engineer engineer QoS better. 

Our SD-WAN is not directly a product that needs Scrutinizer to be effective. I would almost consider it a slight competitor. Its internal metrics and tools provide a very similar insight to what Scrutinizer does. It is the only product that I probably have in my entire architecture that doesn't need Scrutinizer to watch it. It watches itself with a little better clarity, but that is only because it knows itself really well. 

Our SD-WAN solution, CloudGenix, is able to do some IPFIX. We don't send it at Scrutinizer, because their data is just as good, and there is no need to duplicate it on the network.

The solution has been around for a while. The monitoring of our firewalls was the driving concept for choosing it. They did well with demonstrating that ability.

We evaluated Cisco Stealthwatch, but it was so cost prohibitive that we did not go that route. It was about 10 times more expensive than Scrutinizer. Cisco Stealthwatch was very clunky and use. The menus were very different. While you could get a ton of information, you really had to dig to get it. There was some better features obviously, because the cost is a lot higher. It's more of a security network product, but it was hard to use and cost prohibitive. Also, we saw that its ongoing maintenance to keep it running would be a nightmare. There was a lot you had to do to keep it working correctly.

We did use other products, but they were small network monitoring tools. This is a better way because it comes in an all-in-one package. 

Scrutinizer is a good solution compared to other products because, if you use it correctly, it gives you a lot of data and it has good integration. With other products, we may have to install additional modules or do some additional deployment and integrations, which takes time and maintenance. Scrutinizer is all in one box so we don't have to worry. It internally integrates all the features we need.

We did look at other vendors and solutions, but because of our current monitoring system, we needed a complimentary system. During 2013, we made this substantial investment using Plixer. But, if we had to change everything now, it depends on the correct strategy. To replace Scrutinizer would be very difficult. That's the reason way we don't want to change it.

In terms of monitoring, the biggest competitor would be SolarWinds because they integrate an operations manager from another managing giant. They also provide a data flow collector and reporting variability with extensive monitoring ability for SMTP and troubleshooting. So, if you want an all in one solution, then maybe it will be different with them. 

Most users in our company have all the monitoring tools, people prefer to logon to Scrutinizer to see how the network is going instead of using all the monitoring tools because it is so user-friendly.

We liked this one the best of the ones we evaluated. We chose Scrutinizer over two other solutions. One was the incumbent but it was so long ago that I don't remember its name. We also reviewed LiveAction LiveNX.

The capacity the Plixer system can handle and the cost of that capacity were among the deciding factors, as was the performance when you run reports and get results. This is a big tool and it's analytics. Minutes count when something's broken. Scrutinizer did it faster. If something took five minutes, Scrutinizer took three.

I don't think it lost in any category that we cared about.

Compared to the other solutions, it is in the top two for usability, and it is at the top for capacity, performance, and cost.

In addition, the vendor's years of experience in delivering security and network visibility influenced our decision absolutely. We knew their support was excellent, that the vendor has the knowledge, and there was also the fact that they did this one thing and this one thing only. They concentrate on doing it really well. It wasn't a secondary offering. This is their job. This is their only task, and they do it really well.

We already had some solutions in place. So, we evaluated Scrutinizer, which did what we needed it to do. At the same time, we were evaluating open source and SolarWinds.

Scrutinizer does exactly what we need it to do. We're very happy with it. We're not looking to change in the short-term or long-term. It's a product that runs without any issues and gives the information that we need.

Compared to previous solutions that we have used, this solution is a lot more intuitive, less clunky, and resource-hungry.

Compared to other solutions, the functionality Scrutinizer delivers is better.

I have one comparison to another product, which also has very basic NetFlow accounting.

We had a look at SolarWinds. The issue with SolarWinds is that it's a statistical model, so it doesn't capture everything, it captures a subset. We dismissed it on that basis. 

We've recently had a look at the Cisco StealthWatch solution but I believe it's a statistical model as well. I need to have a closer look into it. It's fine, but it's about averages. We need a model that captures everything, and that's what Scrutinizer does.

Scrutinizer is better than SolarWinds in terms of functionality. The new Cisco NetFlow product looks to provide — I wouldn't say better functionality — but a better set of graphs, a better user interface. They recently bought a company that provides a better user interface. It's not that you can't do that with Scrutinizer, it's just that it comes out-of-the-box with StealthWatch. But StealthWatch provides it on statistical data, which means that they miss stuff, and it doesn't have a SIEM. Scrutinizer has a SIEM.