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AppNeta by Broadcom vs Sisense vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

DX NetOps
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Cliff Chapman - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent support, easy configuration, and a reliable tool to know what the problem is and where the problem is
They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes. Currently, when we have short-duration problems, we use a different tool, but we only use that different tool for short-duration problems. With AppNeta, as long as the problem exists for more than a few minutes, such as within 10 to 15 minutes, we can normally tell where the problem is. However, most of the problems that we deal with are intermittent. They're very rarely a permanent condition that needs to be addressed. That makes it more difficult to troubleshoot. We would look to see at least two or three events and hope they show the same results to raise our confidence that we've actually found the problem, rather than just a problem.
Wiboon Thabsuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps businesses save time and offers good integration features
I would say that using Sisense on Linux's platform might not be advantageous for everyone. I am more familiar with Windows than Linux. With Windows, the system performs very fast. Even if your data size consists of like 10,00,00,000 loads or whatever, it works very fast. When using Sisense, it is better to have some people with a very good understanding of Linux. I need more technical people who understand about Linux OS. Only two people would be enough to operate the tool.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Delivery and experience are valuable. The usage in terms of the traffic application captures and other similar things is also valuable."
"The main feature that we use is what they call Delivery, which is the testing of network paths end-to-end."
"A lot of times one of the AppNeta transactions showed that there is an issue, whereas everything seemed to be working properly. Once we dug into it, we realized that it really was highlighting a problem that otherwise we would not have seen."
"The solution's technical support is very good."
"The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues."
"We get complete, hop-by-hop visibility into the internet and we can know how much latency is taking place from one hop to another. That way, we know whether a particular hop belongs to the ISP, or that it is something owned by our own client's office, or is something to do with the SaaS network."
"This solution helps prove that, if we move to cloud, we'll still be as effective as we are on-premises."
"The Sisense solution was very easy to set up, and its visualizations were effective."
"ElastiCube Manager is a very easy to use ETL tool, which includes the ability to easily transform raw data into reusable data."
"Visually displaying data."
"​Allows users to build their own solutions without as much reliance on technology staff."
"The Sisense solution was very easy to set up, and its visualizations were effective."
"The solution's technical support team is good."
"The most valuable thing I have found is the ability for Sisense to connect data from totally different sources."
"Whenever we have an issue or are unsure how to proceed, they manage to simplify the issue and help us execute it in a graceful and scalable way."
"The product is scalable."
"You can monitor performance counters effortlessly."
"The abnormal traffic notifications are good. Most of them are remote, and it is very good for notifications and monitoring for the traffic."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerts."
"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes."
"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
"The most valuable feature is the way it monitors the environment, and how user-friendly the console is for the end-user. The interface is also very easy and it captures all the information very well."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
 

Cons

"They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes."
"Instead of integrating with other people, they should expand their interior capabilities."
"I think some of the product's documentation has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"I would like to see some advanced dashboard features. It could also be integrated with third-party tools. For example, an integration with a reporting solution would be helpful. Out-of-the-box, there are few dashboards or reports. What it does have is useful, but there should be additional dashboards."
"AppNeta by Broadcom needs to add more features to its dashboards. It also needs to work on providing out-of-the-box reports."
"Cloud monitoring could be better. That's one of the biggest pain points for me. I have shared this feedback with them multiple times, but they're limited to some extent. That's one area where I've seen a problem."
"Having to deal with configuring the end devices using a USB stick is a bit cumbersome. It would be nice if there was a better way of handling that."
"The administrative side of Sisense is a little cumbersome and confusing."
"I would like Sisense to improve its performance, particularly when we are dealing with large-scale data."
"I would like to see more development and growth for the support of Knowledge Base and Community forums."
"At present there are additional costs involved if we wish to share our data queues within this solution, which we would like to see removed."
"I would say that using Sisense on Linux's platform might not be advantageous for everyone."
"The solution's setup process could be easier."
"I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster."
"I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster."
"The only real caveat that we have or that I have an issue with is when I go on vacation, it's a little hard for me to go and modify alerts so that I don't get alerted about things when I'm on vacation."
"The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds."
"In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
"The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product."
"SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market."
"There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Broadcom software is always a little expensive because they provide quality."
"The small probe is probably around $3,000 and the very large probe that they make for massive data centers might be $50,000 or $60,000. It's a subscription model, so the payment is per year."
"I find the solution's price to be fairly good."
"I inherited this from a different version, and I haven't yet gone through a renewal because we had purchased three years upfront. So, to me, that still remains to be seen. Once it comes up for renewal, we'll see what happens. Especially because now it is Broadcom, it is going to change anyway."
"AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive."
"We typically don't get involved in the commercial side, but the list price is probably something like $3,000 for a small probe. However, that gives all of the features that the probe can do, whether or not you use them. In the old days, up until two or three years ago, each of the separate features was a separately licensable module so that you could add things that you wanted, and you didn't have to add things that you didn't want. They've changed all that now, and everything the probe can do is a part of the base license."
"It's worth the money."
"This solution is more expensive than Tableau, Qlik and Dundas. It is an expensive tool. They charge $75,000 while Tableau is $45,000."
"Compared to Power BI or Tableau, Sisense is much more expensive."
"It is not an expensive product."
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
"There's standard licensing, and then it depends on the size of the customer."
"Some solutions are open source and free."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
45%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
7%
University
6%
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What open source tool can one use to measure bandwidth from one's upstream service provider?
One I am looking closely at is AppNeta. They have an appliance that can digest the flow and do a better job than N...
What do you like most about AppNeta?
The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues.
What needs improvement with Sisense?
I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster. Additionally,...
What is your primary use case for Sisense?
I was looking into some of our business operations with tow truck companies. I focused on evaluating turnaround times...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sisense?
There was no significant difference in pricing between Sisense and ThoughtSpot. They were practically dead even from ...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ebay, Citrix, National Instruments, Marriott, AT&T, Bon-Ton, McDonald's, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, QAD
Ebay, WIX, Wave Accounting, ESPN.com, Magellan Luxury Hotel, Paylogic, Sony, Merck, EDA, One Hour Translation, NASA, Plastic Jungle, Philips, Yahoo
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard