Cisco Prime [EOL] Reviews

We use the solution to control the physical service station that is part of the SCADA network. We connect and control them remotely. 

The product's pricing can be cheaper. 

I have been using the product for ten years. 

The solution is stable. 

The product is scalable. My company has 100 users for the product. 

The solution's deployment depends on the experience. It took about three to four months to deploy the product. We have around 10 people who are supervising the materials. 

Our partner in Iraq helped us with the deployment. 

We update the license every five years. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. 

We use the solution as a monitoring tool for management and configuration.

The technical support team is very good.

The product needs to improve its interface and reporting. The setup should be made easy.

I have used the solution for years.

The product is not at all easy to deploy. It needs quite a bit of server, and the person installing must have the knowledge to handle and manage the product.

If we have a license for Cisco DNA, we can use the same license for Cisco Prime.

I recommend the product for medium to large enterprises. I would recommend SolarWinds over Cisco Prime. SolarWinds is user-friendly, has a pretty good UI, and allows us to customize the report. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

We use Prime to manage all our Cisco products like wireless controllers, access points, switches, etc. 

The endpoint information Cisco Prime generates helps us troubleshoot, and it's also useful for compliance reporting and endpoint identification.

Cisco Prime is a little outdated. It will soon be discontinued and replaced by DNA Center, which offers similar functionality.

I have used Cisco Prime for about 10 years. 

I rate Cisco Prime 10 out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Prime eight out of 10 for scalability. Prime is a management tool, so the scalability is there. It's sufficient for our environment. 

I rate Cisco support eight out of 10. Overall, Cisco's support team is knowledgeable. They easily understand our questions and provide solutions fast. However, some of their engineers take longer, so I have to deduct a couple of points. 

Positive

I rate Cisco Prime nine out of 10. All Cisco products come with a quick start guide that tells you every step. The initial installation takes a few hours, but it takes longer to integrate and populate the system to capture all your information. You can complete the deployment in two days. 

I rate Cisco Prime seven out of 10 for affordability. All Cisco solutions are expensive. 

I rate Cisco Prime eight out of 10. I recommend it. It's a useful tool for managing large Cisco environments. 

Cisco Prime helps us manage and monitor our network treatment, such as switches, routers, and firewalls. We can see when a module fails, and even push configuration. This is especially helpful when managing a large network of switches, as manual configuration would be difficult.

Cisco Prime provides us with a convenient way of deploying a configuration template to all switches in the network simultaneously. This makes managing a large number of switches much easier and saves time. Additionally, if our network is relatively small, we can use Prime to manage switch logs without the need to purchase additional hardware or software. The solution also has the capability for NetFlow.

Cisco Prime has been around for a long time, and it keeps getting better and better. The solution is the best platform for managing and monitoring switches and routers, even if we have thousands of them. Cisco Prime or DNAC are great options if we're not familiar with automation or scripting languages like Python or Terraform because we can configure devices and push the settings through without needing to know anything about automation or scripting. Managing and monitoring our network is made easy with Cisco Prime, but it is only available for Cisco-based environments.

The stability has room for improvement. I had an issue with the version I was using and it was suggested I upgrade the software to fix the issue. Once I upgraded, the issue I was having was resolved but I now have three new issues.

Cisco can only be used for Cisco environments and is not compatible with other vendors. I would like to have better integration with environments other than Cisco.

I have been using the solution for nine years.

The technical support team is very good.

Positive

We use HP NNMi because we have many of them and it is well-suited for managing Cisco devices. HP NNMi also works well with Moxa switches. For any switch we install, HP NNMi will be able to manage them. Cisco however is only optimized for a Cisco environment.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

I use Cisco Prime to check the interfaces and links and generate reports. I use the solution to see which locations are down.

What I found most beneficial from Cisco Prime is that it gives you an insight into what your network does, even when you're not actively monitoring what's going on with your network.

I would love for Cisco Prime to show bandwidth usage and consumption, but I can't monitor bandwidth usage at a given time on the version I use or on the subscription I have available. All I can see on Cisco Prime is the uptime depending on the date range or period I want to have an insight about, so this is an area for improvement in the solution.

If bandwidth usage and consumption data are available, that will help me with my reporting.

I discovered you need another license to see bandwidth utilization data. If Cisco can diffuse that functionality into a single subscription, I can monitor bandwidth usage and see reports and a few other functionalities, which would improve Cisco Prime.

I've been using Cisco Prime for around six months.

Cisco Prime is a stable product. Its stability is eight out of ten.

I've yet to try to scale Cisco Prime.

I've contacted Cisco Prime technical support, and as it can be problematic at times and other times pretty seamless, it's a seven out of ten for me.

Neutral

Cisco Prime was the first solution I used, and then I just supplemented it with a free version of PRTG.

I didn't do the initial setup for Cisco Prime because I just came into the company after the setup.

A third party implemented Cisco Prime for the company.

I've used PRTG and then Cisco Prime.

I have to check the version of Cisco Prime that I'm currently using, but I'm sure it isn't the latest version.

A third party deals with Cisco Prime, which can sometimes be troublesome, though it's pretty seamless at other times.

Up to thirty people use the solution within the company.

I'd tell people looking into Cisco Prime that the decision should be based on what you need the solution for. What are you looking to monitor? It would be best if you also looked into licenses supporting your use case. This is the best way to go about it.

My rating for Cisco Prime is eight out of ten.

Our main use cases are for device management as well as for wireless monitoring. I'm an account service delivery manager and we have a gold partnership with Cisco.

Operationally, Prime is quite easy to use and I like the wireless heatmap and search management features. 

The reporting could be simplified and the information made clearer to the user. There is a lack of detail and a useful breakdown that shows what is happening. The dashboard should have more options which would help with analysis. This is crucial for us as the system is currently too slow and it seems we have reached our limits because a lot of databases are getting loaded into it.

I would like to see link management for routers, and a functioning network discovery feature that exists in the solution but for some reason does not function. We've been told that we need to manually add it. That is unacceptable and it's the biggest downfall of the solution. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The stability is not terrible, there are no issues. The problem is the time it takes to get visibility. I need to wait for more than 30 seconds to get what I need. 

This is a scalable tool. We have four people in the company using Prime. 

The customer service is average because some of the support staff are knowledgeable, but some are not and it can take a while to resolve things. They should all know the product and which features are for what purpose.

Neutral

I wasn't involved in the initial setup but last week we upgraded to the 3.10 version and had a lot of difficulties with the upgrade and the patch management. We have it sorted out now. I think the issue is that there is a refresh happening, a check that all the data is available, so the loading time has been slow and I feel it on each and every screen. 

I'm not involved with licensing. 

This is actually a wonderful tool with good features but it's slow so I rate this product eight out of 10. 

We use it primarily for managing the wireless infrastructure, which is the use case in our current scenario.

Cisco Prime, from a management perspective, has good reporting.

For our use cases, where we have reachability issues, we can fine-tune and bump up the coverage by increasing the signal strength. The insights that it provides are great.

The initial setup is easy.

The solution scales well.

It has proven to be quite stable. 

Migrating from on-prem to the cloud is seamless.

The solution offers excellent documentation. 

If you look at some of the wireless site-survey tools that are available in the commercial space, Cisco should include similar solutions, which would help our on-plant engineers when they're doing a site survey. For example, there are some great features in Ekahau. We use it primarily for doing heat mapping, WiFi design, and spectrum analysis. Prime has certain limitations when you compare it with Ekahau. If they can't build a product, they should go for an acquisition.

Mostly, we are happy with the features on offer. Their roadmap is also clear with the DNS Center and the DNS Center stability. Once it becomes more stable and accepted across the industry, I don't see any major challenges. Cisco Prime is more of a network management solution, NMS. The roadmap is clear and Cisco wants to position DNS Center as an immediate replacement for all these other Cisco products, which is absolutely fine.

We've used the solution for more than five years. 

It is pretty stable. On a scale of five, five being the highest, we could rate it at four. 

There are very minor issues. However, those are very negligible in nature. Overall it is a very decent tool.

The product is scalable. 

We have three people working directly with the solution in our organization. They are across the globe and offer 24/7 coverage.

The product is used on a daily basis. 

If you asked me five years ago, the complexity was less. Now, the complexity has increased. So the quality of work also has taken a slight hit with respect to their tax support especially. 

Earlier, on a scale of one to ten, if you asked me, ten being the highest, their tax support was somewhere about seven and eight. Now it has gone to five and six since you hardly get CCIE-certified engineers when you are dealing with certain advanced issues, and that is where we lose a lot of time. That is a concerning factor that they need to address.

It's been a gradual decrease since they have started already losing out some of their customer base to multiple competitors out there in the market. The decision lies with Cisco - whether they want to position themselves as a LAN-networking gold-standard or a platinum-standard player in the market. They need to move very quickly, especially in the wireless area.

Neutral

We use Cisco products predominantly.

I have tested Meraki as well, and I'm very comfortable with Prime since, for the kind of data that we use as a performance metric scale, Prime provides us with what is very essential. Meraki may be glorified reporting in a simplified way for more non-technical people. Good, technically sound people will tend to go more toward Cisco Prime.

We have used Aruba AirWave with Cisco Prime. The major advantage is that Cisco has a DNS Center under their roadmap, which provides a single pane for your entire network troubleshooting stack, right from the user device all the way back to your application. That is possible through DNA Center, whereas Aruba AirWave still needs to catch up in that area.

It is straightforward to set up. It is not complex at all.

I'd rate the ease of setup at a three out of five. Eventually, we will be moving to DNA Center, and DNA Center provides a lot more under a single umbrella. So, as far as their roadmap, they're going in the right direction.

Originally, it was an on-prem server where we installed Cisco Prime. Right now, we are moving to the cloud, and it has been very seamless since we migrated from on-prem to the cloud. Cisco's support was pretty good. Their documentation was very clear, so we could do it just by referring to their data sheets and documentation.

The initial setup was handled in-house. 

I see cost being a major factor for their hardware. However, when you buy Aruba AirWave, that is a very expensive product compared to Prime. You need to at least look at price competitiveness.

Cisco's pricing is quite competitive. That said, there are products that provide bare minimal feature sets. It all boils down to the network manager, and what tasks they want to accomplish using a particular tool. If the buyer is very clear, they should not face any issues with taking the product as it will provide a modular license, which is a nice thing.

I'd rate the affordability at a four out of five. It's one of the most competitive options on the market.

They have different licenses. The cost purely depends on the Prime license subscription that we take. They charge differently if we manage LAN devices and take traditional backups on the network switches and devices. Ours is a hybrid license. It is not a locked-down license against X number of devices. That way, it is not that expensive at all.

I don't see any similar product in the market that is as reliable in nature, especially if you talk about its competitors like Juniper or HP. A relevant product, which is widely used in the market, is Aruba and Aruba is just winning based on the cost factor. However, if you remove that cost factor, they're not that great. We did do the POCs for a couple of our very large plants. In fact, it is spread around a couple of kilometers, so you could understand the wireless connectivity, the full wireless POC. In terms of reliability especially, Cisco is light years ahead.

I'm a Cisco customer and end-user.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is Assurance. It helps us manage and monitor analytics and fix issues such as poor voice quality. We can investigate by fetching reports and real-time alert generation for VoIP infrastructure. For example, suppose there is latency during calls, it can be immediately alerted to take immediate action before we investigate the deeper issue.

Cisco Prime could be improved for other devices like Aruba and Juniper by focusing on the features to be enabled for non-Cisco vendors. For example, the onboarding process could be improved and developed to enhance compatibility for non-Cisco devices. Otherwise, for Cisco infrastructure, it's well suited.

We have been using this solution for approximately ten years.

The solution's stability depends on the product's chosen requirements.

The solution is scalable.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. They are responsive and helpful. They are available to assist when issues occur but do not provide support for the entire configuration process.

We previously used Juniper. However, it did not provide some of the parameters available on Cisco.

The product is both straightforward and complex. However, it is primarily straightforward because Cisco provides their OVA template and open virtual appliances for deployment using the VMware ESXi. Hence, it's easy to deploy, but it's a little bit difficult to configure according to your use cases and what is performed or delivered to the customer.

Deployment can be done in three ways and the time varies depending on the chosen one.

I cannot comment on pricing and licensing as another department handles it.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by including features for non-Cisco vendors. I recommend this tool to customers looking for a good tool that can provide an advanced level of monitoring for people with 90% infrastructure or inventory from Cisco.

Our company uses the solution for management of complex configurations, archiving routes and switches, and monitoring wireless connections. Our team of seven administrators serve as system integrators for our clients and currently manage more than 1,000 sites. 

The solution's configuration management tool is amazing because it centralizes and pushes configurations which saves a lot of volume and effort. 

The solution has issues with real time monitoring of devices and NetFlow such as inadequate visualization for reports, sources, and destinations. Because of this, I have to rely on other tools for monitoring and troubleshooting so I am only able to use 50% of the solution. 

I would like the solution to allow open monitoring for use with other products in the same fashion that competing vendors support any SMP products. 

I have been using the solution for six years. 

The solution is stable if the appliance is functioning properly without interruption. 

We experienced three cases where the solution was interrupted on push and almost corrupted. 

Sudden outages that interrupt host availability will cause instability. 

The solution is scalable from the configuration management side. 

There might be limitations on the monitoring side. 

Technical support is good with no issues. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy and deployment takes about 30 minutes. 

Our company implements the solution for customers. 

The solution uses a licensing model for pricing. 

The solution is only good for configuration management and has issues with real time monitoring. 

Our company had the expectation that we could use the solution for both configuration management and real time monitoring, but unfortunately we were not able to replace our other monitoring tool.

We still recommend that our customers use the solution for configuration management, especially if they have a lot of Cisco devices. 

Predominantly we have been using Cisco Prime to manage the wireless infrastructure for our enterprise customers. We also use it for pulling critical reports, monitoring alerts, and managing all the configurations of the wireless portfolio.

A customer's biggest problem is usually poor Wi-Fi, especially in meeting rooms or video conferences. Cisco Prime can help customers fix their Wi-Fi issues with scientific and digital data, which helps to improve the Wi-Fi experience of the customer. Even if most of the workforce goes back to the office, there would still be a need to connect to an office network using Wi-Fi, not only wired LAN cables.

Cisco Prime is a critical tool which helps us design the Wi-Fi network. If something doesn't work properly, the entire operations team can use it to troubleshoot and discover what went wrong in a particular building or floor.

Cisco Prime is a one-stop place to log in and manage our entire wireless infrastructure. We don't need to log in to individual devices to perform configuration changes, allowing us to pull critical historical reports for the customer. It is an excellent platform if the devices need to be upgraded or downgraded. It helps to maintain a database where we can manage the licenses of all the devices.

They can add 3D wireless maps to Cisco Prime. They can also improve the management of more enterprise devices. There is currently a way to manage more enterprise products, but it's not great. However, it is perfect for managing wireless devices.

Cisco is transitioning away from Prime and is getting replaced by Cisco DNAC, the next generation.

We have been using this solution for about eight to ten years, deployed on-premises. There is no cloud version of this solution, and we are using the latest version, 3.8.

It is very stable. No product on this planet is 100% bug-free, but Cisco Prime is one of the best tools for managing the wireless portfolio of Cisco products.

There are no issues with scalability. It is awesome.

The technical support is good. Cisco Prime has been in the industry for a long time, and many engineers have solid backgrounds.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, and there is a lot of installation documentation available for free on Google and videos on YouTube. It's a very straightforward process if we consider the memory and CPU utilization. We only need two resources for the deployment, an onsite engineer and somebody working remotely. It took about an hour to deploy.

No maintenance is required, and we just need to ensure the license is valid. We have approximately 17 people using this solution.

There is a great return on investment because it is a centralized management platform where we can deploy to hundreds of locations. Without Cisco Prime, we would have to hire more network engineers to manage our 50 office locations across the globe. So it is an indirect cost saving for hiring employees.

The price of Cisco Prime is higher than Aruba, but the difference is not exponential.

Aruba has a similar product to Cisco Prime. However, Aruba's only advantage over Cisco Prime is its flexibility to host on cloud. With Aruba, you can host on a private or public cloud like Azure, AWS, or GCP.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. Regarding advice, if a customer has decided to adopt Cisco Wireless, then Cisco Prime is a great choice. However, if they have decided to adopt a different vendor solution for wireless, then Cisco Prime may not be the best choice.