Centron and Cisco Secure Network Analytics are competitors in the network monitoring and analytics category. Cisco Secure Network Analytics seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced threat detection capabilities integrated within its security ecosystem.
Features: Centreon offers scalability without additional licensing costs, active monitoring, and customizable visualization for infrastructure monitoring. It provides flexibility through scripting, built-in plugins, and integration with third-party modules. Cisco Secure Network Analytics emphasizes network traffic visibility and threat detection with capabilities including NetFlow for traffic analysis, anomaly detection, and integration with Cisco’s security ecosystem for comprehensive threat response.
Room for Improvement: Centreon needs enhancements in UI flexibility, cloud service integration, and network discovery tools. Users also desire greater API functionality and improved cloud environment support. Cisco Secure Network Analytics requires better device discovery integration and streamlined configuration. Users seek improved reporting features and development in machine learning and AI capabilities for real-time threat detection.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Centreon supports varied deployments, including on-premises and cloud, and offers community-level support with options for paid assistance. Feedback calls for 24/7 support for critical issues. Cisco Secure Network Analytics mainly operates on-premises with established technical support structures within Cisco’s ecosystem, though deployment is complex, suggesting less flexibility compared to Centreon.
Pricing and ROI: Centreon, being open-source, is cost-effective with its free features, though additional modules and support require investment. Users view its licensing model as cost-effective with ROI from reduced downtime and efficient monitoring. Cisco Secure Network Analytics has a higher price point influenced by network flow-based licensing, yet provides value with comprehensive security coverage and integration, indicating high ROI for detailed network insights and threat visibility.
Centreon provides timesaving and costsaving benefits as it lets us manage multiple devices on a single platform.
It significantly saves time by automating monitoring tasks and reduces costs as it requires fewer resources.
We do not have direct access to Centreon's technical support.
If issues arise, like services appearing as down in Centreon, technical support helps check the polar-server communication.
Technical support from Centreon responds within 24 hours and resolves issues quickly.
There is a lack of adequate local support from the Indian side.
For technical support of Cisco, the support they provide depends on how the client procures it, and so far, it's understandable.
Occasionally, for several hours, we do not receive any alerts, causing a business impact.
We use other tools for adding and deploying configured devices, but direct access from Centreon would be beneficial.
Centreon is a much more straightforward and stable tool compared to Icinga.
Sometimes we do not receive alerts, causing business impact, and users ask why no alerts were received.
Cisco products are incredibly stable, boasting a 200% stability.
Once resolved, the system works well, and overall I think it's good.
Enhancements are needed in identifying configuration issues, providing real-time alerts in case of issues, and improving the HTTP configuration tasks.
While Centreon excels at server-level monitoring, it lacks the ability to track web app availability and latency, unlike Dynatrace, which is efficient in this area.
Reliability is sometimes an issue. Centreon has a developer mode and production mode, but sometimes alerts don't come through in production mode.
The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the application and OS layers.
Proper management of the database is also important; it should be centralized for easier data collection from a single database.
Centreon's pricing is not very expensive.
Cisco solutions are considered to be very expensive.
Regarding cost, for the Bangladesh context, Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a little bit high-priced because we are a developing country, making it tough to manage affordable solutions.
Monitoring is a fundamental pillar of technical support, and Centreon streamlines this process, reducing the need for extensive manual checks.
Centreon's real-time monitoring, despite having some manual aspects, supports us in managing our operations effectively.
Centreon allows us to monitor all of our devices on one platform.
The most valuable features include encrypted traffic analytics and the ability to fulfill requirements at the network level.
Every solution is gradually integrated with AI, and Cisco has already implemented AI building features in their solution.
Centreon is an all-in-one IT monitoring solution that is a network, system, applicative supervision, and monitoring tool. It is free and open source, and one of the most flexible and powerful monitoring softwares on the market.
Centreon Features
Centreon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
Centreon Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing Centreon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Centreon users.
PeerSpot user Thor M., CEO at a tech services company, says, "The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks. It provides a nice benefit when it comes to helping align IT operations with business objectives. The top-down views, dashboards, and business context reporting are things that are nice to have because you want to be able to show the customer that everything is working, that problems have been addressed, and that you're providing value.”
Thomas C., Managing Director, Canada at Eva, comments, “The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility, the ability to integrate all kinds of equipment. As long as something has an IP you can monitor it. What we try to achieve all the time is not only saying a company's system is available, but to give additional data on the performance of the equipment. So the flexibility is what matters the most to us, where we can script everything. Centreon has a lot of Plugin Packs, meaning they support, by design, a lot of devices. And on top of that, we have the ability to add our own scripts and do whatever we want and display the data as we want in the central dashboards.”
Marcilio L., President at ITS Solucoes, expresses, "The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."
Florent Q., Network Engineer at a computer software company, mentions, "The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."
Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a highly effective network traffic analysis (NTA) solution that enables users to find threats in their network traffic even if those threats are encrypted. It turns an organization’s network telemetry into a tool that creates a complete field of vision for the organization’s administrators. Users can find threats that may have infiltrated their systems and stop them before they can do irreparable harm.
Cisco Secure Network Analytics Benefits
A few ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Cisco Secure Network Analytics include:
Cisco Secure Network Analytics Features
Some of the many features that Cisco Secure Network Analytics offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a solution that stands out even when compared to many other comparable products. Two major advantages that it offers are the way that it enables users to define the threshold at which the solution will issue a warning to administrators and the predefined alerts that it offers straight out of the box.
Gerald J., the information technology operations supervisor at Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc., writes, “StealthWatch lets me see the ports running in and out and the country. It has excellent reporting, telemetry, and artificial intelligence features. With the telemetry, I can set thresholds to detect sudden changes and the alarms go through the PLC parts. I can see all the ports running on that trunk.”
A senior security engineer at a tech services company, says, “Cisco Stealthwatch has predefined alerts for different types of security issues that might happen in the network. Whether it's PCs or servers that are used for botnets or Bitcoin mining we receive the alerts automatically. This functionality is what we receive from the solution out of the box.”
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