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Cisco DNA Center vs DX Performance Management comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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 DNA Center
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
36th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (2nd), Network Automation (3rd)
DX Performance Management
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
38th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (1st), DX NetOps (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 0.7%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Performance Management is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center0.7%
DX Performance Management0.8%
Other98.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Mahir Öztürk - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri
Client history has helped resolve past network issues more efficiently
I mostly use the client history feature of Cisco DNA Center. I didn't use the real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center because I primarily used it for client history regarding issues and problems. I don't use it for real-time monitoring. If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
reviewer1810893 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Operations Specialist at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Flexibility and detailed performance stats enable effective network monitoring
Spectrum is very good at monitoring all network faults and configurations. It enables me to take action based on network issues. The Performance Management provides detailed network performance stats, including CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth. Additionally, Spectrum is flexible and allows me to organize and treat devices uniquely without impacting other devices.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In day-to-day operations, especially post-pandemic, the majority of our customers have to work from anywhere, and having that single integrated dashboard for each and every activity while being able to correlate those activities in line with a business objective has been very well addressed by Cisco DNA."
"The solution helps with the management and orchestration of campaigns. It helps with visibility and analytics. I also like its SDA configuration."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"DNA Center is scalable."
"The most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."
"My advice to others is if you are a large enough company to have the Cisco DNA Center technology, you must try it because for a large enterprise or multi-site organization it's impressive and it saves a lot of money and time."
"It enables monitoring of various components such as access points, switch cards, and other elements within the company's solutions."
"I can get it to run a report showing, for instance, what root drives are in the critical range in terms of being full, like 90 percent full, and disseminate that information to the other areas of the organization."
"Spectrum is very good at monitoring all network faults and configurations."
"It's a solution which is highly recommended."
"Technical support is very responsive and knowledgeable."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use."
"You can have thousands of devices inside and hundreds of thousands of interphases without a problem."
"I think the product has matured a lot, and I’m impressed with CA when I hear about new features."
"When we deployed it, right out of the box we were able to stand up Performance Management within two weeks, in our production environment, with full discovery and relevant information, actual information, that we could use in our command center, our 24/7 operations center."
 

Cons

"An area that needs improvement is the integration with other vendors."
"The tool's IoT integration should be better."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"It's a very good product, however, it comes with a very high price."
"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."
"What could be improved is the licensing cost of Cisco DNA Center. It's a little bit expensive."
"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."
"Cisco DNA Center isn't as stable, particularly with the logs, because it doesn't replicate the exact logs."
"Install is done as root, which is a security no-no, and the database IO requirements were not stated correctly, which lead to a year of instability."
"CA PM Business Hours Filtering: I understand that all monitoring systems have defects. The Business Hours Filtering does not always function properly. Sometimes, when applying business hours to CA PM reports that are 30 or more days in duration, the report generation times out and does not display results. We have other CA PM reports that, when we apply Business Hours Filtering, the report results displayed are the same as without the filter. We are not sure if this is a defect in CA PM or if it is a result of our complex configuration (folder structure) and application of business hours."
"The solution could improve the database model. It is also not very good because they have a lot of interconnections with other data sources, such as NFA and VNA."
"When it goes through discovery, or whatever it is doing in the back-end that slows it down, sometimes we get some failures with it. ​"
"We experience disconnections between the solutions own components."
"For CA PM, there should be a way of easily migrating the reports coming from eHealth going to CA Performance Center, since CA PC is replacing eHealth."
"This may be available by now but for server space, when it comes to the disk file system, I'd like to see that graphically represented, or the trend, rather than what I'm seeing now."
"I think it would be helpful having a more comprehensive set of certifications so that I could natively deploy devices to my environment and the tool would immediately recognize and immediately be able to provide relevant performance information without a lot of tuning on my part."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little bit expensive but depends a lot on the customer's usage. If you use it in the right place, you can easily pay for it."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."
"The product is very costly."
"The price of the solution is expensive. The hardware is licensed on the device, but the hardware on the server is expensive."
"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."
"The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model."
"Cisco DNA Center is too expensive."
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"We were looking at other vendors in the marketplace for NetFlow, and CA just beat everybody else in price, cost, and the size to implement. ​"
"We purchase a license to use the solution every three years and we have multiple contracts. They have been increasing the price annually. We have a baseline for three years and then we need to pay the difference from the baseline, and we are in the process of negotiating a new price for all the licenses we need. The price overall is affordable."
"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"Do your homework and know how many devices you will be managing out of the gate. Be sure to project what your growth will be each year."
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
7%
Outsourcing Company
23%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?
After evaluating other solutions, we will provide feedback.
What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant. The deployment ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco DNA Center?
In my organization, we currently have some Cisco devices such as access switches, and we also have infrastructure, but that is not part of our responsibility. We do not manage that infrastructure. ...
What needs improvement with DX Performance Management?
Spectrum's topology view sometimes does not rebuild automatically when a device is shut down and reconnected. It requires manual discovery and rebuilding of the topology, which I hope can be improved.
What is your primary use case for DX Performance Management?
I have used Spectrum for monitoring all network faults, configurations, and troubleshooting network issues. It provides network performance stats, such as CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth detai...
What advice do you have for others considering DX Performance Management?
I would recommend this solution based on its functionality, flexibility, customizability, and ease of use. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I am just a customer and not a par...
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
CA Performance Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Jack Henry & Assoc, Target, CenturyLink, Bell Canada, BrightHouse Networks, Telus, Unisys, Verizon, Southern California Edison, GEICO, Fidelity Investments, Wells Fargo, American Family Insurance Group, Deutsche Telekom AG 
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. DX Performance Management and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.