Cisco Prime Reviews

We use Cisco Prime for managing and monitoring the Cisco network.

As a large organization, it is difficult to individually monitor every device. Instead, we use Cisco Prime to keep an eye on the network and services.

We do not use it as a node tool, as we have other tools for network operation centers.

When services go down, it can cause issues, we rely on Cisco Prime to monitor and notify us of any service disruptions.

We mainly use Cisco Prime Infrastructure for configuration-level tasks.

We also use Cisco Prime Infrastructure to back up all our Cisco devices including routers, switches, wireless devices, and controllers.

We are extremely satisfied with the reliability and robustness of Cisco Prime Infrastructure, which we have been using for many years.

Compared to newer products such as DNS centers or others, it has proven to be much more stable, which is important for large-scale operations.

Stability is a primary concern for us, and we are glad that Cisco Prime Infrastructure meets our expectations in that regard.

Furthermore, in regards to Legacy Plus new hardware, Cisco Prime has proven to be a reliable and adaptable solution thus far. Not only can it support older hardware, but it also has the capability to handle new features with the latest updates.

If we consider new solutions such as DNS Center, we may have to sacrifice some legacy features that we still rely on. We may need to continue using these legacy features for a few more years due to various reasons such as budget constraints or the site not being a high priority. However, if we switch to a new product at this stage, we may lose a lot of the monitoring and other capabilities that we have with Cisco Prime.

We have a close relationship with Cisco and understand that they are not prioritizing investments in Cisco Prime as they are encouraging customers to adopt the Cisco DNA Center. This means that we don't anticipate many new features to be added to the product in the future. While we know that we will eventually have to transition to a new solution, in the meantime, we plan to do a quick refresh of our legacy products.

I have been working with Cisco Prime for more than two years.

We are using the latest version.

I would rate the stability of Cisco Prime an eight out of ten.

This is not merely software, but rather a hybrid platform that connects your network devices. To access this platform, you use the WSM URL. It functions as an open network operations team. Typically, it takes around 15 to 20 minutes to connect to the platform.

Certainly, regular maintenance is required for the platform. This may include various types of maintenance activities such as upgrading to a new version if there are any known vulnerabilities in the existing version, as recommended by Cisco or other vendors. Additionally, if there are any operational challenges with certain features, we perform maintenance activities by applying updates.

The maintenance of the platform can be handled by a single individual as it mostly involves logical maintenance, rather than physical. However, since our organization is large and we have multiple levels of support with Cisco, we also receive online support from them.

If there are no issues, they are just on standby. However, when there are security concerns, we perform the necessary upgrades.

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.

Cisco technical support is helpful, stable, and responsive.

They are market leaders in this network.

There are multiple types of products from Cisco. Considering this product, I would rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

I have used SolarWinds, as well as the Huawei eSight.

I recently transitioned to a new organization that was already using this product, and it had been implemented in various other organizations as well.

The product is not overly complicated. It has been in the market for a few years now and has become more stable. Any issues you encounter can easily be resolved by consulting the community, such as the Cisco community, or other relevant blogs. 

This makes day-to-day operations much smoother than with newer products. While we do acknowledge that new features are necessary, deploying them is a straightforward process when using Cisco Prime.

The deployment time varies based on several factors such as the size of the organization, the type of clients provided by Cisco, and whether it is a large or small appliance. If we are starting from scratch, the deployment time may not be significant.

However, the time required for configuration and integration with your organization may vary. It could take a few hours or a few days, depending on the size of the organization, the number of devices, and the specific features you require.

The organization currently using this solution has deployed it on-premises. They prefer not to go for cloud services due to concerns about data confidentiality.

I don't think the company has heavily invested in cloud-based solutions for Cisco Prime. Therefore, it has always been an on-premises solution. 

However, we have deployed a cluster instead of a single node. Our data center is highly stable with strong SNA, ensuring power and internet service availability, along with site-to-site connectivity.

I am not able to consider the ROI since I don't have access to the relevant data. I am currently in the position to observe that the product is quite helpful for the organization. The automation features reduce the need for manpower, which is beneficial on a larger scale.

There are two types of licensing options available: traditional license and smart license, and the choice of license depends on the customer. The traditional license is perpetual, meaning once you purchase it, you own it. On the other hand, smart licensing requires renewal, and the cost of renewal varies based on the subscription plan, which can be for one, two, or three years.

I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten.

The pricing for the solution is reasonable and provides good value.

I would recommend Cisco Prime to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Cisco Prime a seven out of ten.

I would say that my rating of seven out of ten for Cisco Prime is based on my personal experience with the product and its usage in the current organization. However, the rating may vary depending on how the technology evolves and the upcoming projects. It is possible that as we move towards newer projects, the rating may change. Ultimately, the rating is based on individual experiences and perspectives.

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 company uses the solution to conduct remote operations or troubleshoot issues. 

For one use case, we used the solution to conduct bulk configurations. We created a server template and pushed it to devices instead of configuring them individually. The solution is particularly helpful for large-scale deployments and bulk processing. 

For another use case, our customer raised tickets related to slow or disconnected wireless service. We utilized the last month's logs to find when the issue started occurring and troubleshoot potential causes such as signal strength or roaming issues. 

The solution provides data that allows us to time travel through logs and perform remote operations or troubleshooting. This is very handy functionality for network engineers because it helps us to understand what or how things happened. 

The reporting feature is impressive and surpasses what is available in DNAC. Custom reports and combinations can be generated and provided to stakeholders. 

The solution needs to include centralized management that aligns with the Greenfield network and its focus on real-time, scenario-based applications. The solution is considered legacy and DNAC has overcome it because of centralized controls that allow a complete LAN network to be moved to centralized management. 

CISCO has suppressed the solution with no new development because they introduced DNAC and favor it rather than modifying the solution to the changing network environment. If this new tool hadn't been introduced, the solution would be improved to include SDWAN and SDA along with its other, better features. 

The solution's user interface could be improved to align with the changing market that is software-defined and includes graphic interfaces. 

I have been using the solution for five years. 

The solution has always been stable with no crashes during backups, configurations, and device management. 

On occasion, we experience a bit of slowness in processing. 

The solution is scalable. It is easy to integrate devices and push configurations from the template as long as devices are reachable. 

I use technical support to confirm deployments before implementing them. This is a precautionary step to ensure services are not impacted during deployments. 

I rate technical support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The solution was our first option and we did not use another tool. 

The solution is used for large-scale centralized deployment that can be completed by one engineer. 

For example, manually configuring a hundred wireless controllers would require six engineers who all have their own styles. Even with standardized documentation, manual errors might occur. With the solution's template, it is possible to push the same configuration to thousands of devices in a day. 

An issue is that devices compatible with the solution are reaching end of life and support. If this continues to happen, the legacy network and the solution will exit in the next ten years.

The 2504 and 5508 models of wireless controllers are near end of life. In the next six years, Cisco will end support for those models as well as the 5820 model. When compatible devices are no longer supported, there is no point to the solution which runs on IYS and not Catalyst where Cisco is concentrating its efforts.

Cisco needs to find a way to integrate Catalyst devices into the solution or release new, compatible devices. If not, it will be really difficult for the solution to survive the evolving market. Customers are already replacing legacy devices so they have to move away from the solution because it is not compatible. 

It would be beneficial to have two Cisco choices in the market. Right now, there is no competition for DNAC unless the solution becomes compatible with new devices. If that happens, customers can choose the best fit. A lower budget is a good fit for the solution and a higher budget that requires a software-defined network is a good fit for DNAC. 

I was not involved in the initial setup but other staff have reported that it is not difficult to setup the on-premises solution as long as the manual is followed. 

We implemented the solution in-house. 

The solution is not inexpensive but is worth it for large-scale environments because it saves time, prevents manual errors during deployment, and is easier to troubleshoot.

Budget is not an issue for companies with more than 50 wireless controllers because the solution helps with large-scale, non-centralized deployments.

Small companies may prefer Meraki which is not as handy as the solution or DNAC but will meet their needs. 

Most projects are migrating to DNAC because the solution is considered legacy and clients prefer a software-defined network.

DNAC has many bugs such as logs replicating slowly or users complaining that there are issues. When we attempt to troubleshoot, the logs do not properly show network issues or replications. 

The solution offers much better reporting options than DNAC. It never has bugs or log issues so we are able to troubleshoot. It also includes thousands of reporting features but DNAC only includes hundreds. 

For example, the solution offers multiple reporting combinations for MAC addresses, access points, and IDs. Reports can be easily customized to include any desired data. But with DNAC, you can only fetch 20-30 possibilities through very standard templates. 

Before choosing a solution, it is important to first understand your requirements such as network size, features desired, and log or report specifications. 

The solution is used in very large-scale environments such as L'Oreal Paris and Nestle where non-centralized deployment and management is needed. 

Small companies do not need the solution and it will not be cost effective to use it. For example, if you only have to configure a few switches or controllers, you would likely opt to do it manually or with scripting instead of using the solution. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten because it is being suppressed by Cisco even though it is a handy tool for troubleshooting and configuration. 

Cisco Prime is used to monitor and manage network devices like switches, WLPs, and wireless access points. For example, if I have a building with four floors, I can all the access points and sitemap to Cisco Prime, so the next engineer who is working when I'm not available has a clear picture of how the site is configured. There's no need to physically go to the site. He can test everything remotely. 

I work for a telecom company on the network service delivery team, and 1,000 engineers on my team use Cisco Prime. There are different teams like monitoring, LAN, wireless, etc. About 10 percent of engineers in my organization use Cisco Prime.

As engineers, we cannot physically monitor all the devices. We cannot go and roam all the floors of every building. For example, say there is a city with four or five companiesthere. An engineer cannot run around to check that all the devices are up and stable. 

With Cisco Prime, we can go to the monitor tab and check the physical devices. It shows you a list. For example, it will say that there are 10 APs in critical mode at the Las Vegas building. At the New York City site, there are five devices. You can dispatch the engineers to troubleshoot the problem. There's no need to send someone to check every floor. 

If there is a new deployment, you don't need to physically check the old setup. We only need to add the sitemap to Cisco Prime, input the model numbers of the devices, and verify where each device is located, so we can upgrade. 

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

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.

I've been using Cisco Prime for about a year and a half. 

Cisco Prime is a stable and durable product that offers good value for the money. 

I rate Cisco technical support eight out of 10. I worked with Cisco Wireless at my previous company. I have also worked at Cisco as a technical support guy. It is excellent support. Now I'm working at a consultancy for a big telecom provider. 

Whenever I get in trouble, I open a Cisco ticket. If you have a priority one case, they will help you within 30 minutes. For a priority two or three cases, they will resolve the issue in four to five hours, according to the SLA.

Positive

Setting up Cisco Prime is straightforward. It's a user-friendly solution and any engineer or technician can easily go navigate all the tabs and monitoring areas. The deployment time depends on the size of your site. It will take almost three to four hours, to deploy Cisco Prime for a large enterprise.

It might not make economic sense for a small company. For example, if a client only has three or four devices, I wouldn't recommend using Cisco Prime. A small environment like that is manageable. However, I would recommend it for a large enterprise with many devices that can't be easily monitored and managed by an on-site engineer.

Cisco Prime is more valuable in that situation because it reduces employee time spent and prevents downtime. If an outage impacts a large number of users, that's potentially a huge loss for the company. Cisco Prime is absolutely necessary for a large enterprise, but a small organization with a few devices and employees has no need for Cisco Prime.

The license is on a yearly basis, but you can negotiate an agreement with the Cisco team for a five-year license as well. 

I rate Cisco Prime nine out of 10. If you are a large enterprise with a massive number of network devices, I recommend using Cisco Prime.

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.

Our primary use case for this solution is for network monitoring and conducting upgrades and we can manage devices in the network. Additionally, we deploy this solution on-premises.

We are planning to move to DNA Center, but we have legacy devices and near versions of devices that support Cisco DNA Center. We run both, but for DNA Center, we don't rely on it. In the future, when Cisco moves all of its device's DNA platforms, we will move from Cisco Prime to Cisco DNA Center.

Cisco Prime is user-friendly, so we are comfortable using it. In addition, we find the ability to monitor inventory and export reports from running networks valuable.

We would like to see the inclusion of detailed alerts. This feature is available in Cisco DNA Centre.

We have been using this solution for one year and are currently using version 3.8.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable, but if you want to expand the number of devices that can be used on the server, you will have to upgrade your license.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support which is why we have continued to use this product. However, the technical support depends on the licensing contract.

The initial setup depends on your experience with the specific product. It will not be difficult if you have had previous experience, but if you haven't, it may be difficult. In our case, we had moderate experience with our initial setup.

A solution integrator conducted the initial stages of deployment, but the other stages were completed in-house. Therefore, the time for deployment varies depending on the number of devices managed through Cisco Prime infrastructure for the site. Still, it doesn't take much time because multiple features like network discovery can be run with all the saved parameters.

We have seen a return on investment. When you have a central management plan, it saves a lot of costs. For example, the solution has reduced the resources and time needed to be spent on day-to-day tasks by managing our activities from a central management plane.

The licensing costs are much cheaper compared to Cisco DNA Centre. I rate the licensing costs a five out of ten because it is moderate. It is not too cheap or costly. The solution has a standard licensing fee and no additional charges, but the DNA licensing must be renewed every three, five or seven years.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good and has all the features we require for our environment. My advice to users implementing this solution for the first time would be to opt for Cisco DNA Center because, with time, I believe Cisco will force customers to use Cisco DNA Center because they may retire all other legacy platforms.

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.