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Cisco Prime [EOL] vs DX Spectrum comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Prime [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (17th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (16th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

AR
Network Engineer at Edmonton Catholic School Board
Has an easy implementation process, but the performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive
The project implementation was easy overall. Adapting Cisco's solutions to our specific environment required effort, as their documentation only covers some network scenarios. The deployment didn't happen all at once; it was staged and controlled to ensure a smooth transition. We started with a small test environment before gradually rolling it out to all campuses. This gradual approach helped mitigate the risk of any issues arising across multiple locations simultaneously, especially on a critical day like Monday morning. We have a team of three executives working on the process. Their job roles included network specialists and a manager. It requires maintenance, which is included in the annual cost. We receive updates and support as part of the renewal process.
PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The customer service and support for this solution is good."
"The technical support team is very good."
"The VLAN mapping function has been most impactful in simplifying our network management tasks."
"The map overview of our campus environment shows the distribution of RF frequency channels and the distribution of a client, providing us with a great idea of where the busier areas are within our environment to allow us to tweak and tune."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is the heat maps."
"When you have a central management plan, it saves a lot of costs."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is its excellent audio and video conferencing with clear quality and no interruptions."
"Cisco Prime is very good management-wise, giving you the ability to upgrade switches remotely, schedule the upgrade time, perform backups, and monitor the health of all networks."
"The granular access control that it provided so that you could only see devices that were related to what you were working on was great. I couldn't see the entire inventory of devices. I could only see the ones that were related to my work. It has got a very granular access control component."
"The alarm and root cause analysis features are the most valuable to me, as they help to pinpoint causes of outages and performance issues and identify the specific component responsible for an issue, thus accelerating problem and issue resolution."
"I can use it to detect whenever things go wrong on my network."
"An organization using DX Spectrum is more easily able to understand the root cause when something happens in its environment."
"This tool makes it more transparent to the customers, and they can be alerted and be proactive based on the data we are getting."
"The presentation layer is pretty simple and straightforward and the dashboard is pretty easy to read."
"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."
"Functionality of the tool is awesome and it is easy for customers to use."
 

Cons

"Maybe it could be a little cheaper."
"The user interface of Cisco Prime could be more user-friendly and increase its performance."
"I would rate the scalability of Cisco Prime a six out of ten. To scale up from a hundred to a thousand devices, the platform needs to be rebuilt logically. This process might require a downtime window and may involve changing the hardware or upgrading to a larger appliance."
"The reporting feature of Cisco Prime should be improved."
"That is unacceptable and it's the biggest downfall of the solution."
"I rate Cisco Prime seven out of 10 for affordability. All Cisco solutions are expensive."
"The solution is not easy to configure. It's not user-friendly for admins."
"Cisco Prime could improve the notifications in the system. Having more details about what is happening would be useful, such as traffic numbers or who is connected. We can see them through the firewall controller, but it would be better if you can see them from one place."
"There were some issues with deployment."
"I would like to see better scalability, and maybe, a more intuitive user interface. ​"
"The only area which I found that can be improved is that sometimes issues come up with alert clearing i.e. alerts don't clear when triggered and clear events occur too fast."
"It has a limitation in that it needed an old version of Java."
"It doesn't really allow for multi-tenancy. If you're an ISP or an MSP and you want to use this tool to provide these types of fault management services to your customers, you would need a separate SpectroSERVER for each customer..."
"The graphical interface is still designed in an old fashioned way, and they should include some management views in a much more modern manner."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated."
"What I additionally would like to see is utilization information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not inexpensive but is worth it for large-scale environments."
"The price of Cisco Prime was reasonable because we purchased it as part of a Cisco One package. The package was a bundle of Cisco solutions together, such as Cisco ISE and CMX. The price is reasonable com compared to other solutions."
"If we have a license for Cisco DNA, we can use the same license for Cisco Prime."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors in the market."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten."
"The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive."
"Cisco Prime is an expensive solution."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"The price is very high."
"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."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Prime Infrastructure
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mohawk Industries, Universidad EAFIT, Halton Healthcare
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Skyline Communications and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.