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Cisco DNA Center vs ITRS Geneos comparison

 

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
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
ITRS Geneos
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
64th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (34th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (45th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 0.9%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 0.6%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco DNA Center0.9%
ITRS Geneos0.6%
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.
DeepakR - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer(Observability) at Sapiens
If one server fails, the agent will automatically be reinstalled
ITRS Geneos is a legacy system. It predicts or provides proactive measures once an issue is resolved. It doesn't offer any predictive capabilities or root cause analysis. They throw a lot of data if there's a 90% error. You need to check which process is consuming more CPU and determine the root cause for yourself. You need to troubleshoot it manually. This legacy system could introduce predictive analysis and root cause identification. They are reluctant to switch to newer solutions, which may require writing queries to fetch data. Manually logging into servers, checking CPU usage, identifying processes, and determining root causes is time-consuming. Once the root cause is identified, the issue can be resolved efficiently. The manual troubleshooting process is time-consuming. The content is not openly available in the market. If you search for it somewhere, it is not readily accessible. If you want to try it out, no trial version is available. Therefore, it will be challenging to learn. Loading ITRS is difficult, as you need to purchase it first. Secondly, only a few people are knowledgeable about ITRS in the market, making it challenging to find resources. Thirdly, the documentation must be well-documented, making finding content or training material hard. The UI also needs to be updated, which adds to the difficulty.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's most valuable feature is the visual representation of the switch's front panel."
"Has a good processing feature with a high level of accuracy."
"Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution."
"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."
"The solution helps in user microsegmentation."
"The most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."
"I like the visibility, instant build, network, policies, and the ability to control access. I also like that you can visualize your whole network."
"The automation features are significant, reducing configuration time. This means outstanding functionality. By deploying the controller automatically, the rest becomes automated"
"The NetProbe carries over 100 samplers which are capable of monitoring hardware, OS, and the application layer."
"ITRS Geneos is very well known in the financial services community as being the best platform to monitor real time data infrastructures and the application does what it says on the tin."
"The ability to logically normalize data gathered from multiple types of sources via pre-built plugins is extremely powerful."
"The filtering in the Active Console is exceptional. Depending on the user base, some people don't want to see server-level errors, so we have filters set up in the Managed Entities view, which allow us to filter out things that certain groups don't want to see, while allowing them to see other things. It's a great real-time monitoring solution. And you can draw graphs immediately, right from the Active Console, whether they're current graphs or historical graphs."
"The clean and colorful UI and easy to use options like snooze and active times."
"We have been able to monitor the repeated critical alerts and work on producing a more stable environment for our customers."
"Real-time log monitoring with desktop alerts is valuable as it tells us immediately when there is an issue."
"ITRS uses SNMP to communicate with our devices as well as SNMP net probes installed on our servers."
 

Cons

"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."
"From the recent DNA point of view, there are some stability challenges with Cisco, but very minor."
"When it comes to deploying wireless fields, integrating defaults into the DNS interface can be challenging."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"There should be an option for automation of template deployment by using the stored data. It is not easy to save configuration information for lots of devices without using other tools. There should be a tighter, better repository of information that can be merged with the templates."
"The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI."
"Requires more focus on the digital side of things."
"One area where there is room for improvement is the log file. I would like to be able to do a pre-run on the log files. When you are testing log files for regular expressions, it would be good to be able to do a quick check up front on that side of things before you release that into production."
"Backward compatibility with deprecated features and in system documentation on what configuration areas are needed to be updated."
"The ITA, the post-incident analytics, could be improved."
"I would really like to see something from the Geneos side to set up automated reporting from ITRS. We have to send reporting to management every day. To do that we have to check the dashboard and then we have to report whether everything is fine or not. In the future, I want something, some reporting kind of feature in ITRS, where it can collect all the data and mention what is green, what is amber, what is red in a report."
"Currently the dashboard does not have the capability of providing different status levels, and this needs to be updated."
"The deployment method for upgrading is a bit tricky. It takes a little bit of manual effort."
"They have the Webslinger solution where you can see when something is alerting. It's a little bit cumbersome."
"ITRS Geneos is not on the cloud at a time when everyone is moving to the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"Affordability is a problem because it's created for large enterprises only. So, some customers, even if their engineers want the solution, might have problems with budget limitations."
"Cisco DNA Center is a licensed product with multiple levels of licensing available such as basic, advanced, and essential. I don't have the exact figure, but Cisco DNA Center is costly. For example, the box has information about the essential license and costs a considerable amount of money. You need to pay extra to use advanced features in Cisco DNA Center. My company sees Cisco DNA Center as a solution that's worth the money, which is why it invested in the solution. If you want centralized management for your network, especially when upgrading it, Cisco DNA Center is perfect, but it's more suitable for a large-scale rather than a small-scale network."
"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."
"We have a three-year license with them."
"We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product."
"The tool's licensing may not come across as something that may be friendly for users."
"Based on feedback from colleagues and friends working in the financial sector, Geneos is relatively costly. Many companies have been switching from Geneos to Dynatrace, Sysdig, or other monitoring tools in the past two years because of the price."
"The organization is not just purchasing a license for the product, but also managing services and professional services from ITRS. Another factor is if the implementation is going to be in production, non-production, or both."
"The licensing cost may seem expensive upfront. However, the service is outstanding, the tool does things that no other tools can do, and the customizability more than makes up for the cost of licensing."
"When I first came in, their pricing was very high. ITRS had a high expectation of what their price should be based on perceived value. I think they have been realizing, more recently, that there are other competitors, so their pricing is a lot better. Licensing for on-premise is okay, however I feel there is quite some work to be done for cloud and containers. We're still working with them to try and work out what that pricing should look like."
"ITRS Geneos is not a cheap tool. It's a moderate price for the banking industry. The reason we are not able to add the ITRS monitoring tool for the non-banking industries, and non-finance industries, is that the pricing is too high."
"Its price is reasonable. It isn't too expensive, and it isn't too cheap, but it also depends on a company's volume and negotiation."
"You will get the best price if you get a single global deal."
"I can say it's not that cheap because the licensing is a little bit costly"
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
67%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
3%
Outsourcing Company
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco DNA Center?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration.
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?
In my opinion, the client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days. I am using it in a huge factory in Turkey, and sometimes I need to see what occ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?
The pricing is high. Licensing fees might be around 500$ per server monthly.
What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?
ITRS Geneos is a legacy system. It predicts or provides proactive measures once an issue is resolved. It doesn't offer any predictive capabilities or root cause analysis. They throw a lot of data i...
What is your primary use case for ITRS Geneos?
ITRS offers multiple products, including upgrades for synthetic monitoring and a SaaS platform. Geneos is used for infrastructure monitoring, covering KPIs such as CPU, memory, processes, network l...
 

Also Known As

DNA Center
Geneos
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ITRS Geneos is used by over 170 financial institutions, including JPMorgan, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Clients range from investment banks to exchanges and brokers.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. ITRS Geneos and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.