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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
Ranking in Network Management Applications
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (2nd)
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is 2.3%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.9%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN2.3%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.9%
Other93.8%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Ashwani-Tyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager at Orange
Centralized control has simplified cloud access and has improved operational visibility
If they can have better firewall features as their competitors have, such as Fortinet and Versa, that would help to place this solution better so that we can address security related things. If they can have all the IPS, IDS, everything built on all the edge devices, whether physical or virtual, that could be one improvement. Actually, if customers are existing Cisco customers, if Cisco can be more flexible to leverage the existing investment, that could be another important aspect to save on cost and be more competitive from a pricing perspective. Overall, the pricing or the segment that Cisco deals with is a bit premium, which they charge a bit premium against the competition on the licensing, hardware, and services. The implementation is not straightforward. You need a specialized partner or specialized people who can implement this. It can be simplified a bit from that perspective as well. Mostly the way we implement the policies for a big environment requires a lot of things that we need to take care of. If that can somehow be improved, because they have different components, like they have vManage, they have vSmart, and vBond and all these components have to work with a certain flow that they need to follow.
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco SD-WAN is valued for its operational efficiency and ease of operation."
"The most valuable feature is the application-level routing."
"SD-WAN is very stable - once it's deployed, you can just forget about it, it runs by itself."
"The product's brand recognition is one of the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"If I have to give a neutral view of all the SD-WAN platforms that I have known so far, Cisco is good in routing."
"The solution offers good quality of service, visibility, connectivity, and security."
"SD-WAN provides a range of common benefits, including cost reduction, increased visibility, and scalability"
"The scalability is the most valuable feature."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"The Netcool solution is great, and it's very easy to use."
"The solution is a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"Full featured - event/fault management, performance management, topology map, discovery, RCA, event enrichment, Proviso will chart data from almost any source with a variety of aggregation options."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"NetCool has a huge database that can collect and process about one million alarms a day."
 

Cons

"They have taken away our ability to do what we are good at, which is working on the CLI, the interface right on the router. They have limited the commands so much that troubleshooting is nearly impossible."
"The process of onboarding the vSmart, vBond, and vManage should be improved to make it easier to manage in general."
"Customers require features that are secure for endpoints, on-premises, and for the cloud."
"Cisco could provide you your firewall and your SD-WAN solution together."
"The initial setup is complex and can be improved."
"Compression deduplication should be added."
"Cisco products are a little bit complicated, so making them a little bit easier would be an improvement."
"The main area for improvement in Cisco SD-WAN is the lack of documentation, which often lags behind the software releases."
"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."
"This is another one of those suites glued together from a myriad of acquisitions and it shows once you get under the hood."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"The solution is too expensive."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite expensive so it is important to enhance its cost efficiency."
"80 percent reduction in WAN costs. There are no MPLS or P2P circuits left in the organization."
"Licensing is on a subscription basis."
"The pricing for Cisco SD-WAN is more expensive than other brands or solutions, such as Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks, so it's one out of ten."
"It is expensive. The license limitation is there in terms of bandwidth. Basically, Cisco is always good in terms of performance and related things. However, if you want to have a license, for example, for 100 Mbps, they charge you because of their 100 Mbps. If you want to go without the license of 300 Mbps, it is a bandwidth license as well. This is not happening with other vendors. That is the reason why we moved away from Cisco. The bill gets a little bit high. I do remember that one time we were trying to increase the bandwidth for at least five devices, and the license got as high as 20-grand for five devices, only for the license. It was expensive for us at the time. Our company is not a big company, but it is a solid company. The price was very high, and we moved away from Cisco because of the price."
"The cost of Cisco SD-WAN is high and has room for improvement compared to competitors such as Fortinet which has similar functionality."
"You have to pay between 3000 and 10,000 euros, or something in that range. The core switches Nexus cost me between 10,000 and 20,000 euros."
"Cisco is more expensive than some competing products."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business49
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
Cisco offers premium enterprise capabilities, but its pricing, setup cost, and licensing models represent the most significant hurdles for IT organizations. Cisco hardware commands a premium price ...
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN can be improved in minimal ways, because they have updated it now, and the updated version is really good. The only concern is the cost; compared to others, the cost is higher...
What is your primary use case for Cisco SD-WAN?
We are a system integrator and a Cisco Select Partner, deploying all the Cisco portfolios like SD-WAN, switching, firewall, access point, and then Secure Access, our cybersecurity product. We have ...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
 

Also Known As

Cisco SD-WAN
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.