Azure Monitor vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance comparison

Microsoft and Cisco are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.7, while Cisco is ranked #43 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 3.3% mindshare in APM, compared to Cisco’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 56 Azure Monitor reviews

10,028 Views
8,925 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

2,574 Views
1,107 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Accedian Skylight and Azure Monitor are leading contenders in network performance monitoring. Azure Monitor is preferred for its comprehensive feature set, making it a worthwhile investment.

Features: Accedian Skylight is praised for its deep packet inspection, real-time analytics, and ability to quickly identify and resolve network issues. Azure Monitor is known for its extensive integration capabilities, scalability, and broad feature set that often overshadows Accedian Skylight's specialized functions.

Room for Improvement: Accedian Skylight users suggest enhancements in reporting capabilities, better documentation, and more intuitive navigation. Azure Monitor requires improvements in alerts, data aggregation latency, and user interface complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Accedian Skylight's deployment is noted as straightforward, with strong customer support aiding users through setup processes. Azure Monitor offers flexible deployment models and extensive online resources, though users sometimes struggle with its complexity. Accedian Skylight's customer service gets high marks, yet Azure Monitor's extensive documentation and community support are significant advantages.

Pricing and ROI: Accedian Skylight is regarded as cost-effective, delivering good ROI through efficient troubleshooting capabilities and proactive monitoring. Azure Monitor has a higher initial setup cost, but users find it beneficial due to its comprehensive monitoring suite, justifying the expenditure with broader capabilities. Pricing strategies differ, with each product appealing to different budgetary requirements and ROI expectations.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

December 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

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

7th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

43rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (43rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 3.3%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure Monitor	3.3%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance	0.7%
Other	96.0%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Andy Rabern

Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees

Telemetry insights have improved how I track user behavior and application performance daily

I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it does well. My perspective is more based on an Application Insights agent running on a service or an app service and sending the telemetry via the agent, and also doing the filtering of telemetry at the agent level so you are not having a ton of telemetry. I believe Azure Monitor does pretty much the same thing. I have also used tools such as New Relic, and New Relic is a much more robust tool, but that is a different product and you are going to pay for that. It is a different offering altogether. The subscription that we had at the time allowed for a couple gigabytes of telemetry during the month, and I believe that telemetry only lives for about two months. You have to experiment with it to see how much you want to pay. I was not really involved in the pricing. It was more along the lines of we were running up against our limits in terms of the amount of free telemetry or telemetry that we get with our subscription, and so we either needed to scale back or turn specific telemetry types off or do some more sampling. It is nice that those capabilities are there so that you can reduce the amount of telemetry. I cannot really speak to pricing but I do believe that it is somewhat reasonable for Azure Monitor. New Relic is pretty expensive, I believe.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am impressed by the reporting on the average eight ports that we get from this solution."

"It's a Microsoft native tool, so it works well with other Microsoft technologies, which is predominantly what our customer end-user base is."

"Among the valuable features of this solution, Application Insights stands out as one of the most significant. It provides insights into application performance and helps identify issues and bottlenecks."

"The upside to the solution is if you are working in a Microsoft or Azure environment, it makes things easier."

"You can scale the product."

"I use the solution to monitor the infrastructure and applications."

"The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate."

"It has good troubleshooting features."

More Azure Monitor pros

"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."

"I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas..."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

Cons

"This solution could be improved with more out-of-the-box functionalities and artificial intelligence to complete event correlation."

"If I contact the First Line Support, they seem disconnected and lack technical information."

"It might not have all of the capabilities we will need."

"There is room for improvement in stability."

"The query builder could be better. In comparison to other monitoring tools, in order to use Azure Monitor, your engineers need to have KQL experience. If they don't, it's not intuitive as a system."

"Azure Monitor could improve by adding capabilities for data observability and integrating more tightly with their data platform components."

"The solution should have cross-connection or cross-communication between tech partners."

"have used multiple products like Webex and PRTG. Some features could be added. Azure Monitor should add SMS and APIs. We have very limited access to Azure Monitor. I usually get alerts on my phone when they are integrated with Slack. I am not always available, but my team is. Sometimes, I am traveling and don't have access to my email, but I have Slack and other third-party projects that send me instant messages if a sensor goes down."

More Azure Monitor cons

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."

"Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable... It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

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

"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."

"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."

"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."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects."

"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."

"Azure Monitor is a competitively priced solution."

"The licensing is a monthly fee."

"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."

"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."

"The tool is expensive."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"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."

"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."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

25%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	9

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

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What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

See all answers

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Azure Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

January 2026

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

January 2026

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is known for its user-friendly approach to network analysis and performance monitoring. It excels in real-time diagnostics, helping organizations quickly resolve network issues and optimize performance effortlessly.

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance focuses on comprehensive network troubleshooting and performance monitoring, assisting in identifying bottlenecks and analyzing applications. Real-time data collection and evaluation ensure IT infrastructure efficiency. With active monitoring of latency, jitter, and throughput, users maintain smooth operations across multiple sites and applications. While highly effective, improvements in data handling, protocol support, and dashboard aesthetics are suggested to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance?

Flow Matrices: Advanced analysis of network paths and traffic distribution.
SQL and DNS Analysis: In-depth insights into database and domain queries for troubleshooting.
Bandwidth Assessment: Evaluation of network capacity and utilization for performance optimization.
Real-time TWAMP Monitoring: Tracks network performance using Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol.
Application Performance Modules: Monitors the performance of various applications and services.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized views for tracking critical network metrics and trends.
PCAP Capturing: Detailed packet analysis using tools like Wireshark for deeper insights.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Ease of Use: Intuitive design allowing users to swiftly diagnose network issues.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Enhanced visibility of network activity for better control.
Performance Efficiency: Optimization of throughput, reducing downtimes and improving service delivery.
Cost-Effectiveness: Balances features and functionality with competitive pricing for better ROI.

In industries such as telecommunications and finance, where network reliability is crucial, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers critical network performance insights. It supports high-demand environments by providing data-driven decisions, ensuring infrastructures handle increased loads efficiently.

Cisco

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

December 2025

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