Azure Network Watcher vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE comparison

Microsoft and NETSCOUT are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #51 with an average rating of 8.3, while NETSCOUT is ranked #30 with an average rating of 8.5. Microsoft holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to NETSCOUT’s 1.6% 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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698 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Read 50 NETSCOUT nGeniusONE reviews

3,348 Views
2,344 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

July 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

51st

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

30th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Network Watcher is 0.4%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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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Ruslan Melnyk

Business Unit Manager at BAKOTECH

Useful for network performance monitoring

My manager can explain the use cases attached to the product. I am a unit leader in my company, and I don't sell the product directly to our partners or customers. In my company, I manage certain processes and a team while building, developing, and providing them with a direction for the market. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is a good solution for network performance monitoring since it is not cloud-based. My company sells NETSCOUT nGeniusONE in eight to ten countries. I think the solution is not good for capacity planning, but it is better to help find problems in applications because not every infrastructure is good at managing working applications. I think it is a solution meant for applications. The tool is useful for solving problems attached to applications. The tool's real-time network monitoring capability was used when the product was more reactive. In our company, if we use real-time monitoring, then we need to deal with raw traffic. In our company, if we don't see any problem in the real-time systems, we have the possibility to rely on the tool since it acts like a time machine for us, which can allow us to get back to the areas of problem and solve them. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. For many users, it can be a good monitoring system that can be scaled up in the future. I think it is a good product to start with when working systems in an environment. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is another tool used to manage raw traffic, and I find it to integrate well into our customers' network. I am not using it actively on the system. I use the tool for network packet brokers. I rate the tool a ten 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 stability is very good. I rate it a ten out of ten."

"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."

"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."

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

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

"The solution is stable."

"I like the visibility."

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

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"Network faults are easily and quickly identified through dashboards and drill down."

"It is an easy-to-scale platform."

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

"The system's ability to prevent downtime represents a significant return on investment, but I do not have specific numerical data."

"It gives me the MOS, latency, and jitter."

"From the standpoint of VoLTE and related things, it's providing visibility into the network and how it operates."

"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."

"Deep packet inspection is a very useful tool as it works in real time and uses serial packet-level analysis."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE pros

Cons

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

"User experience could be improved."

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

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

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

"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."

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

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"On a network the size of ours, the loading times seem a little extensive, 20 or 30 seconds to load up some graphs."

"I would like to see improvement in the user experience. It's hard to manage it. We need a dedicated, highly-qualified person, compared to similar tools. Obviously, it's in a higher bracket, salary-wise. That's something the NETSCOUT team needs to focus on. It's a completely niche-skill technology, where we need to have the skills to manage, maintain, and deploy it."

"The stability is only fair. It goes down a lot."

"There was a point in GTP where we were creating services on nodes and after that we wanted to have services on APN. We can't have both... There are some limitations with these types of things. When we would like to use a feature, we have to remove another one."

"I'd like to see the nGeniusONE, the nGeniusPULSE, and the OptiView, their three separate products, work a little better together, a little more streamlined."

"Maybe the optics cost could be improved. It's not about the product itself, but the optics cost from other companies is very high, which affects the business. When you buy a $1 million product, you shouldn't be expected to pay $500,000 for support. So, support, operation, and professional services are very expensive. It's the main weakness."

"While it is good, the single pane of glass view is too high level. It is better for management or someone doing sanity checks. A lot of times, I need to go deeper into the additional screens to get what I want out of it."

"I would recommend enhancing the APM capabilities."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

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

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

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

"Like any company, we always want better pricing. The pricing is okay, but it's not a cheap solution. When you want to deploy it across an enterprise as large as ours, you go into seven figures. It's not a cheap solution to get out there."

"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."

"The platform is expensive."

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

"It is very expensive, but it's well worth the money."

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

"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."

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

University

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Network Watcher?

I like the visibility.

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

It is affordable.

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What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

User experience could be improved.

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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

Comparisons

Microsoft Network Monitor vs Azure Network Watcher

Compared 23% of the time

ThousandEyes vs Azure Network Watcher

Compared 23% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Azure Network Watcher

Compared 18% of the time

Nmap vs Azure Network Watcher

Compared 18% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Azure Network Watcher

Compared 18% of the time

More Azure Network Watcher Competitors

Dynatrace vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 10% of the time

Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 10% of the time

ThousandEyes vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 10% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 8% of the time

Ixia Network Packet Brokers vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

Compared 5% of the time

More NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher

August 2025

Download Azure Network Watcher product report

Buyer's Guide

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE

August 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

July 2025

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