Azure Network Watcher vs ITRS Geneos comparison

Microsoft and ITRS are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #47 with an average rating of 8.3, while ITRS is ranked #67 with an average rating of 5.0. Microsoft holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to ITRS’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of ITRS users who would recommend it.

Azure Network Watcher

Read 12 Azure Network Watcher reviews

670 Views
630 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

ITRS Geneos

Read 57 ITRS Geneos reviews

3,901 Views
1,053 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Azure Network Watcher

ITRS Geneos

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

ITRS Geneos and Azure Network Watcher compete in the realm of IT monitoring solutions. ITRS Geneos takes the lead in proactive monitoring and alerting capabilities, while Azure Network Watcher stands out with its network diagnostics and cloud-native tools.

Features: ITRS Geneos offers real-time monitoring with customizable dashboards and extensive plugin support, particularly beneficial for the financial industry. It supports multiple platforms, enhancing incident management. Azure Network Watcher provides robust network-centric monitoring tools such as packet capture and architecture visualization, designed for seamless integration with Azure’s cloud ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: ITRS Geneos could benefit from enhanced data visualization and a more intuitive configuration setup. There is a need for better support of cloud-based infrastructures and mobile application integration. Azure Network Watcher, on the other hand, could improve by incorporating more open-source features and enhancing its user documentation. Users have also identified a steep initial learning curve and the need for more comprehensive logging and visualization tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ITRS Geneos primarily operates on-premises, requiring complex deployment but is strongly supported with personalized customer service. Azure Network Watcher offers straightforward cloud-based integration with Azure, with customer support regarded as responsive though slightly less personalized.

Pricing and ROI: ITRS Geneos is priced at a premium level, suitable for large enterprises with extensive monitoring needs, providing significant ROI through system reliability. Azure Network Watcher's pricing is more accessible for users seeking cost-effective network monitoring, with value demonstrated in network efficiency and stress reduction.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Network Watcher vs. ITRS Geneos Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. ITRS Geneos

September 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 Network Watcher

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

47th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

ITRS Geneos

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

67th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (34th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (46th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Network Watcher is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure Network Watcher	0.4%
ITRS Geneos	0.5%
Other	99.1%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury

Program Manager at Capgemini

Network monitoring provides comprehensive analytics while the interface requires further development

The quality of Azure Network Watcher is quite good in terms of the in-depth analysis you can create from these matrices. There are other monitoring tools such as New Relic, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace which provide very detailed network tracing. Cloud providers such as Azure or AWS do not have that kind of GUI-based capability at this point, but using PowerShell or Python, you can develop it yourself. From the GUI perspective, it still needs to evolve in terms of quality and standard, though overall, it is quite good for troubleshooting. Regarding areas for improvement, when comparing to other network tools beyond Azure Monitor or Azure Network Watcher, those tools can identify single failed packets. This level of granularity is not currently possible with cloud providers as they only go to a certain level rather than the granular level needed for deep troubleshooting, though they do provide hints with available matrices.

Read full review

Sanket

Chief Manager at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

With the help of the solution, we can predict and prevent failures

Currently, the most valuable thing for an individual is a mobile device. Since that is where people are currently tracking everything, we have multiple applications or apps that are for various products. I would like ITRS Geneos to develop an app, where instead of going to specific login terminals or logging into laptops or desktops to check alerts, we can have visibility in the app itself. Using the ITRS Geneos app, we could see the error message during our travels or wherever we are. I would like to see the capacity of messages for forecasting increased. Since the NSE is the number one derivative stock exchange in the work for three consecutive years, the number of messages is important. We use the capacity planner in ITRS to forecast our data needs for the next two months. The planner is important because the volume of data we produce is becoming more and more volatile compared to when we first started using ITRS Geneos in 2014.

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 stability is very good. I rate it a ten out of ten."

"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."

"It provides good visibility."

"I like the visibility."

"The solution is stable."

"We use the solution to monitor network services. It helps to capture any network issues."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall. It is helpful for securing databases."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is using the gateways with the connections. The monitoring is useful for the logs and application insights into the data. The traffic filtering issues when it comes to deploying those applications are helpful."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"The ability to build integrations to tools that are not monitored out of the box is the most valuable feature."

"The built-in plug-ins allow administrators to easily configure monitoring components for market data systems such as Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform and SRLabs Wombat (formerly NYSE)."

"The Netprobe is so lightweight compared to the agents that most monitoring tools use. It's really superior to the competition. The agent that is used by almost every competitive tool takes a lot more system resources. It's slower and it requires a greater effort and more compromises in terms of security to install on the monitored servers. With Geneos, because it lives outside the code, it is far easier and far less taxing on the monitored systems."

"Ability to monitor logs for potential issues to prevent app outages before problems get a chance to arise. That's invaluable for our teams in a fast-paced trading environment."

"The filtering in the Active Console is exceptional. Depending on the user base, some people don't want to see server-level errors, so we have filters set up in the Managed Entities view, which allow us to filter out things that certain groups don't want to see, while allowing them to see other things. It's a great real-time monitoring solution. And you can draw graphs immediately, right from the Active Console, whether they're current graphs or historical graphs."

"The clean and colorful UI and easy to use options like snooze and active times."

"Real-time log monitoring with desktop alerts is valuable as it tells us immediately when there is an issue."

"It enables us to monitor application processes, to do log-monitoring on a 24/7 basis, to do server-level monitoring - all the hardware parameters - as well as monitor connectivity across applications to the interfaces."

More ITRS Geneos pros

Cons

"The solution could improve by limiting the need to clarify the logs. When the clarification is minimized, it is better for everyone involved."

"User experience could be improved."

"I still use Wireshark and Azure Network Watcher to get the required data. My team captures the traffic from Azure Network Watcher, downloads it, then imports that traffic into Wireshark to get more details on the number of hits and replies, for example. If you can do that on Azure Network Watcher and have Wireshark built-in, that would make Azure Network Watcher better. If Azure Network Watcher has that functionality where you won't need a third-party tool to get what you need, that would be helpful. I'm also expecting more from Azure Network Watcher. It's more complex than knowing how the IP flows from its source to the destination. The tool also needs more open-source features, such as having some built-in Wireshark that improves monitoring for customers. Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging. Is it one hundred percent an Azure issue? Is it a peer issue? You don't get complete information from Azure Network Watcher, so you must use other tools and depend on your strategies to resolve a specific issue. If more features could be added in the next release of Azure Network Watcher, specifically ones you can find on open-source tools, then that would be a plus point for the tool."

"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."

"I would like to see in the future if we can troubleshoot as a firewall because it is equipment as a network player and some diagnostics."

"Technical support from Microsoft needs significant improvement compared to other product vendors."

"The initial setup and deployment could be improved to be simplified."

"Azure Network Watcher needs to have better documentation and it needs to capture information accurately."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"t needs to have better middleware integration for things such as application and Microsft SQL servers."

"For the solution to stay relevant in the cloud-based monitoring environment Geneos needs more plug-ins with more features. Instead of offering clients workarounds, the solution should have a cloud-based out-of-the-box version."

"The deployment method for upgrading is a bit tricky. It takes a little bit of manual effort. If that could be a bit more automated, it would help us a lot."

"I would like better access to the data that is being collected."

"The dashboard feature is full of bugs. Grouping items results in a distorted dashboard."

"The main feature that needs work is the Dashboard designer."

"Sometimes, if there is a lot of data coming onto the servers, we have observed a little bit of slowness on the gateway servers which are doing the ITRS dashboard monitoring."

"Data visualization – real time and historical – is a weakness."

More ITRS Geneos cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"Pricing is the touchy subject, even here. Upper management always wants us to find a cheaper solution. But we have so much integrated with ITRS... It's expensive, but it does its job very well. And you set it and go."

"ITRS Geneos is not a cheap tool. It's a moderate price for the banking industry. The reason we are not able to add the ITRS monitoring tool for the non-banking industries, and non-finance industries, is that the pricing is too high."

"The pricing is fairly market-related. They have been very lenient because we have been working with them for so long. An example is that we're currently migrating some of our services to AWS, and they've given us a grace period for some of the things to help with the migration and not to grow additional costs while we are migrating, but it's still on par with the market."

"The market tools are on par with this solution, but if the solution included more features, then it would be well within the range for the cost."

"You will get the best price if you get a single global deal."

"When I first came in, their pricing was very high. ITRS had a high expectation of what their price should be based on perceived value. I think they have been realizing, more recently, that there are other competitors, so their pricing is a lot better. Licensing for on-premise is okay, however I feel there is quite some work to be done for cloud and containers. We're still working with them to try and work out what that pricing should look like."

"Pricing and licensing is based on the requirements."

"Given our spend and the amount of service we have in it, the pricing is quite reasonable."

More ITRS Geneos pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

University

Financial Services Firm

72%

Computer Software Company

University

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	39

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Network Watcher?

I like the visibility.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Network Watcher?

Azure Network Watcher is affordable from the perspective of basic costing. It doesn't cost too much at this point unless you are requesting customizable detailed matrices. For the default configura...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?

The pricing is high. Licensing fees might be around 500$ per server monthly.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?

ITRS Geneos is a legacy system. It predicts or provides proactive measures once an issue is resolved. It doesn't offer any predictive capabilities or root cause analysis. They throw a lot of data i...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ITRS Geneos?

ITRS offers multiple products, including upgrades for synthetic monitoring and a SaaS platform. Geneos is used for infrastructure monitoring, covering KPIs such as CPU, memory, processes, network l...

See all answers

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Splunk AppDynamics vs ITRS Geneos

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Datadog vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

ITRS Geneos

October 2025

Download ITRS Geneos product report

Also Known As

No data available

Geneos

Overview

Azure Network Watcher is a comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostic service offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a range of tools and capabilities to help users monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into their Azure network infrastructure. With Network Watcher, users can capture and analyze network traffic, monitor network performance, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and gain visibility into network topology. It also offers features like packet capture, flow logs, connection monitoring, and VPN diagnostics to ensure the smooth operation of Azure networks. Network Watcher enables users to proactively identify and resolve network issues, optimize network performance, and enhance the overall reliability and security of their Azure network environment.

Microsoft

ITRS Geneos is a real-time monitoring tool designed for managing increasingly complex, hybrid and interconnected IT estates.

Built with financial services and trading organisations in mind, it collects a wide range of data relating to server performance, infrastructure, trading, connectivity and applications, and analyses it to provide relevant information and alerts in real time.

Geneos can give full stack visibility across highly dynamic environments and presents all the information through a single pane of glass and its configurable and customisable dashboards provide end-to-end visibility to both technical and business users.

For more information, please visit https://www.itrsgroup.com/products/geneos

ITRS

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

ITRS Geneos is used by over 170 financial institutions, including JPMorgan, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Clients range from investment banks to exchanges and brokers.

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. ITRS Geneos

September 2025

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