Azure Network Watcher vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE comparison

Microsoft and NETSCOUT are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #47 with an average rating of 8.3, while NETSCOUT is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.5. Microsoft holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to NETSCOUT’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of NETSCOUT users who would recommend it.

Azure Network Watcher

Read 12 Azure Network Watcher reviews

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630 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Read 50 NETSCOUT nGeniusONE reviews

3,252 Views
2,276 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Azure Network Watcher

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE and Azure Network Watcher compete in network monitoring. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE appears to have the upper hand in pricing and support, whereas Azure Network Watcher is preferred for its cloud-native capabilities.

Features:NETSCOUT nGeniusONE provides NetFlow traffic analysis, packet inspection, and application-specific monitoring, essential for network performance, issue resolution, and communication optimization. Additionally, it offers traffic investigation and tracks voice call metrics. Azure Network Watcher emphasizes architectural visibility, cloud security, and effective cloud-native firewall use, making it suitable for connection troubleshooting in cloud environments.

Room for Improvement:NETSCOUT nGeniusONE struggles with complexity and user-friendliness, requiring expertise that leads to higher costs. The broad feature set often results in unused capabilities, necessitating a shift towards virtual deployments. Azure Network Watcher needs better documentation, a more intuitive setup, and should consider integrating features like Wireshark to improve traffic analysis and diagnostic capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:NETSCOUT nGeniusONE primarily serves on-premises and hybrid environments and needs dedicated personnel for support, which is responsive but costly. Azure Network Watcher managed for the public cloud is supported by Azure's team, acknowledged as good but with potential procedural improvements.

Pricing and ROI:NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is expensive, with costs justified if fully utilized. Users often feel they overpay due to its complexity. Azure Network Watcher pricing is reasonable for larger enterprises but may be high for smaller businesses. NETSCOUT's ROI can be substantial if integrated across IT infrastructures, while Azure's cost-effectiveness benefits environments leveraging cloud resources.

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

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

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

15th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is 1.5%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE	1.5%
Azure Network Watcher	0.4%
Other	98.1%

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.

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Mohammed Hassan

Regional Director at iSecureMind

Helps us by providing root cause analysis when it comes to latency and performance issues

I would recommend NETSCOUT nGeniusONE to others yet not for small SMBs due to the pricing. It is important to have the necessary NETSCOUT experience for smooth integration. The automated issue detection sometimes has a few false positives but is overall cost-effective for our customers. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

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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

"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."

"What I like most about Azure Network Watcher is that it's focused more on the architecture. I also like that it has a packet capture feature that tells you how the packet travels and whether it's exiting Azure, etc."

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

"The most valuable features I have found are typology, visualization, and capture."

"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."

"I like the visibility."

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

"The solution is stable."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"The fact that it's able to capture and store packets from the wires is very useful for troubleshooting with our vendors, when issues do come up. It's valuable that we have that overall data for them."

"The details it provides are among the most valuable features; the ability to drill down and get to the packet level."

"It helps us get to the root cause quickly. It helps us find massive error codes, then we drill down on that error code, knowing that is the source of our problem."

"Deep packet inspection is probably the strongest feature."

"The product is very good. We have very few problems."

"Among the valuable features, if it's TAP'ed well, are the density of the data that you can get and the relatively high veracity or accuracy rate that we see from it."

"The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is it helps customer to understand what risks are in their network. For example, if a customer has some wrong configurations. It could cost them some critical services to slow down."

"This solution provides us with increased visibility while conducting IT deployments. E.g., if we have devices which have overloaded or links which have saturated, then this tool tells us exactly what is going on with that link or device. Very few tools do it at this level for things like DDoS."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE pros

Cons

"Lacks sufficient security features."

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

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

"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 initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."

"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 Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications. For example, an application to log activities for in and outbound traffic."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"The feature I am looking for is the Arbor technology, especially to run in parallel with our firewall... It's getting there."

"We would like more encryption of customer data, because we have a very security conscious company. We have a lot of regulation coming in which requires us to make customer data private."

"This is a typical thing, but every time they do a major code upgrade, we get hit with some nasty bugs. Some of them literally stop the whole platform from collecting traffic data. They should really do more Q&A on the software stability before release."

"The dependency mapping is good, but I am hopeful that they will build some type of partnership and relationship with ServiceNow. I want to see NETSCOUT partner with ServiceNow so they can leverage Service Now Discovery and Service Mapping to automate the build of the service dependency mappings inside of nGeniusONE."

"I would love to have them reassemble fragmented packets. That would be a very big plus in my book."

"Our biggest area of concern right now, supporting the applications, is that while NETSCOUT does a good job of monitoring the network and the applications, we need more visibility into system health and performance monitoring."

"The solution could do more for security. It should offer more security-related features."

"For individual subscriber tracings, sometimes it does not capture all the messages. There is a little bit of room for improvement there."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"The price is only for acquisition; it's not a licence."

"The product is too expensive compared to other products."

"If you are able and you are willing to use everything that Netscout provides to you, it's probably a relatively fair price. The problem is that it's such a large and such a complex tool that I'm not sure that many companies would be able to use it entirely, the way it's expected to be used."

"We have a premium customized contract for the solution."

"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."

"It can be expensive, but if you have a good configuration, based on what you are looking for, it's okay, it's manageable."

"The license becomes cost prohibitive very quickly."

"Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions... But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level, and it works on all of their products."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE 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

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

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	14
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	37

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...

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What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.

See all answers

What do you like most about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?

The pricing is a bit high yet not overly expensive. The cost depends on the size of the customer, as sizing controls the pricing.

See all answers

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

ThousandEyes vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 9% of the time

Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 8% of the time

Pico Corvil Analytics vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 4% of the time

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher

October 2025

Download Azure Network Watcher product report

Buyer's Guide

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

September 2025

Download NETSCOUT nGeniusONE product report

Also Known As

No data available

NETSCOUT nGenius, nGeniusONE

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

The nGenius Real-Time Monitor software provides you with tools to monitor and display information about your network both historically and in real time. The nGenius Real-Time Monitor software allows you to understand your current network usage and to plan for future needs. It also allows you to proactively troubleshoot problem areas in your network.

NETSCOUT

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Cerner Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

September 2025

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