AWS X-Ray vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance comparison

AWS X-Ray vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

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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

AWS X-Ray

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

46th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (42nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.1%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.3%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji

Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Improving performance through efficient trace metrics and data insights

As an application developer and architect, I appreciate AWS X-Ray ( /products/aws-x-ray-reviews ) for checking latency and identifying bottlenecks. I use it for performance tuning, conducting performance testing on applications, getting real-time traces, and gaining data insights. It helps in improving throughput and tuning infrastructure. The trace metrics and data collected provide valuable insights.

Read full review

Pifu Lin

Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.

Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support

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 quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."

"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."

"The solution has made it easier for us to trace the problems that we have with our requests and to monitor the timing of each step in each request we do in our endpoints."

"AWS X-Ray's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."

"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."

"The most promising feature of AWS X-Ray is that you can debug the issues through the proper logs. You can also get an analysis out of the logs for some use cases, though I have yet to try all the features of AWS X-Ray."

"The most important one is compliance. We're able to achieve our regulatory levels. We're able to achieve the security level that we need for the federal government."

"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."

"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."

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

"This solution has helped to improve the interaction between our network, datacenter, and application teams. I have used other tools, but this tool can pinpoint the root cause of my application or network issue in the majority of the cases. So, it helps different divisions or groups in the IT department to troubleshoot together and get an issue resolved. This tool helps a lot in our day-to-day networking application and IT operations."

"The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread."

"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."

"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."

"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

Cons

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."

"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."

"What needs to be better in AWS X-Ray is the log filtering. Predefined filters could be helpful because the power of analytics comes from how you can filter the data. I also want to see more KPIs from AWS X-Ray."

"Like most Amazon products, the user interface, configuration, and tuning aren't the easiest. That's the biggest reason why people tend to go to products like TerraForm and Terragrunt. We use TerraForm and Terragrunt. So, for setting things up and interacting with X-Ray, it's definitely the user interface that can be better."

"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."

"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."

"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."

"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."

More AWS X-Ray cons

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

"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."

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."

"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."

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

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"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."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As you develop a relationship with Amazon, your pricing gets lower. You get credits for the amount of the system you use, and then if you're the government, you can get government pricing. For commercial users, there's a hump when you go from small to medium to big enterprise. Small businesses can live pretty easily off the free tier in a lot of cases, but when you go from a medium to a big enterprise, it becomes more expensive on a per-user basis. I'd like to see that curve going in a different way where pricing can be driven down while people are trying to adopt the technology."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

36%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?

While I have not compared it with GCP or Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ), AWS generally offers cost-effective services. Some services, like Athena ( /products/odyssey-software-athena-eo...

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers. The current manual instrumentation is challenging compared to the almost automatic instrumentation of other pro...

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.

What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs AWS X-Ray

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Azure Monitor vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 8% of the time

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ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 46% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 17% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 11% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 11% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Product Reports

AWS X-Ray

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

AWS X-Ray is a powerful debugging and performance analysis tool offered by Amazon Web Services. It allows developers to trace requests made to their applications and identify bottlenecks and issues.

With X-Ray, developers can visualize the entire request flow and pinpoint the exact location where errors occur. It provides detailed insights into the performance of individual components and helps optimize the overall application performance.

X-Ray integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it easy to trace requests across different services and identify dependencies. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs and SDKs, enabling developers to instrument their applications and capture valuable data for analysis. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, AWS X-Ray is a valuable tool for developers looking to improve the performance and reliability of their applications.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow

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

AWS X-Ray vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance