Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) comparison

Cisco and IBM are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #42 with an average rating of 7.5. Cisco holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to IBM’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

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1,083 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Read 54 IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) reviews

1,867 Views
1,079 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance are key players in the network performance management category. IBM SevOne may have the upper hand due to its emphasis on real-time data and comprehensive visibility.

Features: IBM SevOne NPM excels with agentless monitoring, scalability, and real-time data collection through one-minute polling. Users value its ease of certification, comprehensive infrastructure visibility, and user-friendly alert setups, along with its impressive data retention and granular historical analysis. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time traffic insights using TWAMP, detailed performance analytics for networks and applications, and customizable dashboards. It also provides traffic capturing and Layer 7 analytics essential for thorough performance insights.

Room for Improvement: IBM SevOne NPM could improve upgrade processes and data handling during migrations. Users call for better automation, comprehensive baselining, and an updated UI design. Enhancements in SNMP data handling and device certification are also suggested. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance could benefit from optimizing large data queries, enhancing data export capabilities, and improving Layer 7 transaction analytics. Users express a need for clearer data retention policies and more robust reporting features to meet changing needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SevOne NPM supports On-premises and Hybrid Cloud deployments, with users rating service reliability high, between 8-10. Its technical support is competent with some independence for upgrades. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance provides support for On-premises, Hybrid, and Public Cloud environments and earns praise for its responsive technical assistance, though some delays occur based on regional or issue complexities.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SevOne NPM offers a flexible pricing model based on managed objects, providing a pay-as-you-grow plan. While some see it as expensive for small businesses, it delivers significant ROI through operational efficiency and monitoring cost savings. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance, despite recent price hikes, is perceived as competitively priced in sensor deployment, offering a positive ROI with detailed event analysis and preventative monitoring.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

April 2025

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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 Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

40th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (46th)

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

42nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (19th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (46th), Log Management (48th), Cloud Monitoring Software (29th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.9%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is 1.0%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe

Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features

This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

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Grzegorz Nowak

Solution Architect at Wingu

Improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic

We use SevOne to collect and report on network flows SevOne improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic. We can look at bandwidth for specific endpoints on the customer's network and analyze traffic to identify issues. For example, maybe some connectors are unavailable.…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else."

"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."

"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."

"It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible."

"For us, the most valuable feature is something called TWAMP that allows for real-time traffic in a way that is 10 times lighter than things like SolarWinds. It's in the sub-milliseconds of accuracy, and you can divide tasks so that you can literally see things like the tagging for Quality of Service. That had been incorrect with the carrier, but there was no way on this planet you'd be able to tell a carrier that they're wrong. I have dozens of scenarios where we found "No, that's not right," and got it resolved instantly."

"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"Flexible architecture: You can extend the system and its capacity by attaching another cluster pair."

"Scalability. I have never had to worry about how to handle really big environments."

"I like the tool’s scalability and real-time reports. Earlier, we struggled to give real-time reports to clients. I also like the tool’s deployment model where we can deploy it either on-premises or in-house. We don’t have to carry the data all over the globe. Also, I am impressed with the tool's flow reporting and Wi-Fi."

"SevOne provides support for all universal connectors. They internally work with other data sources to get features implemented. We have an SD-WAN implementation and use other app data to monitor performance. If you pull that data into one centralized location, that is very useful for management."

"The most valuable feature is the NMS because that's the core of the system. Without the NMS, the other tools aren't that usable."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is the scale-up and scale-down. The scale-up is an operation where the CPU boosts-up and then the memory will boost-up. That works awesomely."

"The SMP and the xStats, which is for flat file integration, are both useful for integrating the various metrics that the device provides to monitor the performance of those systems."

"SevOne’s data collection functionality is very good. From a collection point of view, we pull SNMP data, which is simple. It is easy to manipulate the pull in the estate. It is really simple compared to some of the other products that we have used. However, for deferred data, i.e., things that we import or don't pull directly, we tend to have a preplanned integration. So, its Universal Collector is really useful."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pros

Cons

"I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration."

"Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams."

"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."

"There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely."

"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"Would benefit with the addition of AI modules for proactive data insights."

"The user management features need to be improved. It would be nice if we had more granular control, or layers of control, out of the box."

"The one area with room for improvement is probably administration. They added data insights to make a better user experience, but I'd like to see some improvements in the way the system's administered."

"Software upgrades can be tricky is not easy."

"There are a lot of pain points. My main problem is that we don't have a high availability system. There are 20 peers. We're going to lose the end-of-life appliances that are old. If we lose a peer and it doesn't come back, we lose all that data. The reason we don't have high availability is because it's double the charge."

"The method of searching for SIP and the way to create the groups."

"The GUI: both the dashboard/user view and the admin tool."

"Some similar solutions offer end-to-end visibility."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."

"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."

"It provides value and the cost is not huge."

"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."

"For the value that you get from SevOne, it's worth the price. There are a lot of cheaper alternatives on the market, and even free options. But they require more staff, more resources, and engineers with more advanced knowledge of monitoring. That's what makes SevOne worth the price."

"There are cheaper solutions available."

"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."

"A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved."

"Many tools price things based on the number of KPIs that you're collecting around a device. In many cases, there could be hundreds of metrics that you need to collect. SevOne provides device-level pricing. That gives us the flexibility to turn on, and expand on, the metrics that we're collecting around those devices, without taking a financial hit."

"Although I don't have exact details in terms of cost, my experience has been that SevOne is willing to make a deal with the customer."

"The pricing has not evolved with the market, which is one of the reasons we are moving to a new product."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

39%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Legal Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?

Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?

I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SevOne Network Data Platform?

There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities. It would be beneficial to have out-of-the-box integration with third-party vendors and improv...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SevOne Network Data Platform?

The primary use case of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) ( /products/ibm-sevone-network-performance-management-npm-reviews ) is network monitoring. It helps to maintain the infrastru...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering SevOne Network Data Platform?

To compete with custom-built tools, IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) should accommodate the desired features and be timely in the delivery of feature updates. I would rate the overal...

See all answers

Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 43% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 15% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 11% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 10% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

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Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 10% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

May 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

May 2025

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) report

Download IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) product report

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

SevOne

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time application and network performance monitoring, VPN management, and network diagnostics across multiple sites.

Organizations use Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance for active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and troubleshooting performance issues. Deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, it supports IT infrastructure, security, and analytics with end-to-end performance measurement across cloud data centers. The modern, intuitive interface features TWAMP for real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reports, along with insightful dashboards for circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput monitoring.

What are the most important features?

TWAMP: Provides real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reporting.
Insightful Dashboards: Monitor circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput.
Security Integration: Compatible with tools like Splunk for enhanced security.
Application Support: Facilitates comprehensive network performance analysis.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Quick Corrective Actions: Immediate response capabilities for performance issues.
Easy Navigation: User-friendly layouts simplify monitoring and troubleshooting.
Comprehensive Analytics: Advanced tools for in-depth network performance insights.
Cloud and On-Premise Options: Flexible deployment to meet different needs.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance ensures robust performance monitoring and quick diagnostics for VPNs and internet lines. It aids in maintaining the integrity and security of data transference, facilitating active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and performance troubleshooting across geographically dispersed locations, ensuring seamless operation and compliance with industry standards.

Cisco

The IBM® SevOne Network Performance Management (IBM SevOne NPM) solution helps you spot, address, and prevent network performance issues early with machine learning-powered analytics from a single source. Boost network performance and improve your user application experience by proactively monitoring your multivendor end-to-end network across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider networks.

Transform raw network performance data into intelligent and actionable insights. The IBM SevOne NPM solution goes beyond detection, combining industry-leading expertise and advanced technology to help your IT team plan and optimize your network and act on what matters: improving network performance to provide an exceptional customer experience.

For further information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud/sevo...

IBM

Sample Customers

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville

ATOS, Devereux, Spark New Zealand, Access4, Rogers Communication, Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink)

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

April 2025

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