Cisco Prime pros and cons

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

The solution provides data that allows us to time travel through logs and perform remote operations or troubleshooting.

If an AP or any wireless device goes into critical mode, Cisco Prime sends an alert. That is the most helpful feature.

Cisco Prime can help customers fix their Wi-Fi issues with scientific and digital data.

Cisco Prime is user-friendly, so we are comfortable using it.

The hardware Cisco provides is excellent. It's a well-made product.

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.

Has a good wireless heatmap and search management features.

The installation is easy.

Cisco Prime has been around for a long time, and it keeps getting better and better.

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.

The solution needs to include centralized management that aligns with the Greenfield network and its focus on real-time, scenario-based applications.

Cisco needs to improve Prime's monitoring tab. If any device goes down, there is a 15-second lapse before we know. It would be much better if we were alerted two or three minutes before a device is about to fail, so we can dispatch a field engineer and avoid network downtime. I would like to see a feature that allows you to access the devices directly from Prime's monitoring tab. That would make work easier for us.

They can also improve the management of more enterprise devices.

We would like to see the inclusion of detailed alerts.

The solution is not easy to configure.

I would love for Cisco Prime to show bandwidth usage and consumption, but I can't monitor bandwidth usage at a given time.

The reporting could be simplified and the information made clearer to the user.

It should be able to monitor Palo Alto, Juniper, and Check Point products - not just Cisco solutions.

Cisco can only be used for Cisco environments and is not compatible with other vendors.