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NetWitness Platform vs OpenText Enterprise Security Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 2025

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

NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
30th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (34th)
OpenText Enterprise Securit...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Enterprise Security Manager is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Enterprise Security Manager1.5%
NetWitness Platform0.6%
Other97.9%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.
Gaurav Ranade - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels at performing regression and correlation on the data
ArcSight is a legacy technology, and many customers want AI-powered technologies integrated with it. That hasn't been done yet, but ArcSight needs to catch up with the newer solutions and technologies available in the market. It can't just rely on the legacy technology from 2010 or 2012. You can't run that in 2024. It's a legacy technology with its own limitations. Customers often face issues that other software or newer solutions can resolve easily. That's the main challenge we face from customers right now. So, the only concerns are that AI needs to be integrated and scalability improved. Those are the main areas to be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are its ingestion of logs and raising of alerts based on those logs."
"The most valuable features are the packet decoder, log decoder, and concentrator."
"It gives the ability to investigate into network traffic in the Net and the organization what we couldn't do before."
"The solution is really scalable for the high-end power, enterprise customer."
"The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult."
"NetWitness Platform offers flexibility for deployment and robust integration capabilities."
"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."
"Their technical support responds quickly and are knowledgable."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is that it can be deployed to the cloud."
"Stable solution with good customer service support."
"The solution offers very good monitoring."
"Usability is the most valuable feature. The accessibility is quite good."
"ArcSight gives us better visibility into threats that were unknown earlier."
"The out-of-the-box rules that help us configure functioning rules within the environment are valuable."
"The solution has gone beyond signature-based monitoring and analysis and is AI-powered. It is good enough to cover the full range of cybersecurity services."
"ESM has valuable features for event prediction and security analysis."
 

Cons

"If we have the ability to run a dynamic analysis through malware in the same suite, it would be great to have a sandbox solution to analyze malware through dynamic analysis."
"I'd like to see improvement in its ease of use. It's basically unusable. It's overly complex."
"The implementation needs assistance."
"It should have a monitoring feature. It would help us analyze the current state of attacks faster from a single platform."
"An area for improvement would be better automation and more inbuilt use cases."
"The documentation is not as structured as I would like, personally, and I think that it can be improved and made much more user-friendly."
"The product's licensing models are complex to understand. This particular area needs improvement."
"The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement."
"Its search part can be improved. When I go to the console and search for a few logs or something else, it takes a lot of time. When I try to search for three days or one week, it takes too much time. This is a major area of improvement. I wanted them to include features like SOAR, threat intelligence, and automation, and they seem to have included all these features in version 7.3 or 7.4."
"The stability of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is not very robust."
"When we need to consume old events, we have to wait for a long time. ArcSight should improve the database capability to reply to queries faster. It would also be interesting if they implemented network visibility. For example, they could add a feature like NetWitness with a model just for looking through the packets."
"ArcSight ESM is lacking cloud scalable technology."
"The way that scaling is set up isn't very cost-effective."
"The visualization is not very good compared to Splunk."
"The product should include a lot more predefined scenarios so the adopted company will have knowledge and a broader skill set in security and network."
"What could be improved in ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is its analytics feature. That feature should be more powerful and have more correlation in terms of AI/ML, though MicroFocus has done a good job in adding analytics to ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) which has become a big draw to customers. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is the addition of AI/ML features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
"It is cheap."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"Compared to the competition, the is price is not that high."
"The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"Thanks to Micro Focus's licensing model, as an MSSP, we are able to see a complete return on our investment almost immediately."
"The licensing cost is affordable if you get an enterprise license. The licensing is based on EPS, so you can probably provide a package of license for multiple ESMs with their correlational end fees. It is cost-effective."
"Aggregation can help a lot in pushing down licensing costs."
"The pricing model is expensive compared to open-source alternatives."
"Pricing is good, I'd rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being low price. It's better than Splunk and IBM QRadar because their pricing is based on EPS."
"ArcSight is pretty expensive compared with its competitors. I believe that is fine as it provides value."
"ArcSight ESM is an affordable solution, it cost approximately $200,000 for three years. This price was at a substantial discount."
"The cost of the solution is not very high, although hiring a qualified analyst to work with the product is expensive."
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
Which is the best SIEM tool for a mid-sized financial services firm: Arcsight or Securonix?
In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was pretty good. Now a lot of them are looking for a more effective solution due to ...
What do you like most about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
We utilize ArcSight ESM for real-time threat detection in our organization. We have custom rules that we've developed on top of the WAN services, along with scheduled licensing activities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools. It is worth the investment if you are considering the cost.
 

Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics
Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
Find out what your peers are saying about NetWitness Platform vs. OpenText Enterprise Security Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.