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Cisco Catalyst Center vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Catalyst Center
Ranking in Network Management Applications
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco Catalyst Center is 3.8%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Catalyst Center3.8%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.9%
Other92.3%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

AadishBahati - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Solution Architect at EchoStor
Unified automation has transformed network operations and simplifies multi‑site management
The learning curve is better with Cisco compared to other products. Everyone has a learning curve because everyone is bringing new technologies, new interfaces, and new ways of doing things. The other products have a steeper learning curve. When comparing Cisco with VMware, I am not comparing Cisco with Arista, Juniper, or HP because those are companies which are doing a very basic level of automation. Cisco is doing way more advanced things. In terms of advanced handling and the advanced orchestration and advanced management plane control that Cisco is delivering, the only competitiveness in advancement is VMware NSX. However, it is really complex. Cisco's platforms are much easier to understand and learn compared to VMware.The only disadvantage with Cisco would be their services and licensing, which is a bit complex and a bit too expensive. Because their services are so expensive, companies end up buying Cisco, but they end up not buying Cisco services to do it. When they turn to external partners, not many people outside know the technology as well as Cisco does. People deploy it, but they do not get the right resources to deploy it.
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution primarily focuses on visibility into Cisco products and day zero, day one, and day two operations, enabling plug-and-play features, device onboarding, hierarchy definition, and telemetry data collection to offer a comprehensive 360-degree view with basic automation and visibility assurance at its core."
"The integration of Cisco Catalyst Center is fine"
"As a customer, the major use case for Cisco Catalyst Center is that it is easy to configure and troubleshoot, which are definitely the advantages of the product."
"Wireless incidents have reduced more than 50% going forward, as we were constantly getting issues with the wireless environment, but now with Cisco Catalyst Center and the integration of wireless controllers and ICE, we get very few incidents."
"The best feature of Cisco is its industry-standard nature."
"Customer service has been excellent."
"The assurance feature is the number one feature that Cisco Catalyst Center offers, and it serves as a selling point for many of my customers, having improved considerably."
"Storing the configs with Cisco Catalyst Center benefits my organization because if there is a failure, I can restore directly from it."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"The solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
"The solution is a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
"Full featured - event/fault management, performance management, topology map, discovery, RCA, event enrichment, Proviso will chart data from almost any source with a variety of aggregation options."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"The Netcool solution is great, and it's very easy to use."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
 

Cons

"If I had to pick one area to make better, it would be the reporting capability, and licensing is also important, so keeping track of device licenses and everything related to that is critical to us going forward."
"The deployment process is pretty complex"
"To improve Cisco Catalyst Center, I think the dashboard and UI experience is inferior to what I used previously with Ubiquiti equipment."
"I think Cisco Catalyst Center can be improved overall by making the sandbox setups and documentation more straightforward, as it was a little confusing because the DevNet page documentation, controller URL, and sandbox credentials were separate."
"The price to get in the door is quite high."
"The integration of Cisco Catalyst Center is fine, but the deployment process can be pretty complex, involving some irrelevant or uncertain information during setup."
"The main drawback of Cisco Catalyst Center is that it can only manage and monitor Cisco devices with a DNA license, specifically the Catalyst 9000 series."
"I rate the product overall as a six out of ten."
"IBM's technical support takes a long time to do root cause analysis, and we have to go through several levels of help before getting a solution."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"It was a bit expensive to purchase but the benefits outweigh all the cons by far."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"I think the UI should be updated and made more presentable and eye-catching. Compared to NCE in Huawei, NSN in Nokia, the UiPath and Ubiquiti, it feels very old legacy."
"Customization and integration that you need to do to make the product fit your needs is very complex. It is not a product that somebody could easily pick up without any prior training or experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise33
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Catalyst Center?
We did not purchase Cisco Catalyst Center through the AWS Marketplace as we used the Cisco DevNet always-on sandbox which gave us temporary access to a hosted Catalyst Center environment for testin...
What needs improvement with Cisco Catalyst Center?
I think Cisco Catalyst Center can be improved overall by making the sandbox setups and documentation more straightforward, as it was a little confusing because the DevNet page documentation, contro...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Catalyst Center?
My main use case for Cisco Catalyst Center in the sandbox is to test APIs and integrate network data into the FloodGaurd project, where I tested device inventory, device health, network health, sit...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Catalyst Center vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.