Cisco DNA Center vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

Cisco and Zenoss are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.0, while Zenoss is ranked #77. Cisco holds a 1.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Zenoss’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zenoss users who would recommend it.

Cisco DNA Center

Read 42 Cisco DNA Center reviews

8,684 Views
1,910 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Zenoss Cloud

Read 8 Zenoss Cloud reviews

1,336 Views
721 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco DNA Center

Zenoss Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Zenoss Cloud and Cisco DNA Center are competing in network monitoring and management. Cisco DNA Center often seems superior due to its advanced features and integration capabilities.

Features: Zenoss Cloud offers robust monitoring capabilities, scalability, and supports diverse IT environments. Cisco DNA Center provides advanced automation, superior data analytics, and seamless integration with Cisco infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: Zenoss Cloud could enhance its integration options, improve data analytics capabilities, and bolster automation features. Cisco DNA Center could simplify its deployment process, potentially reduce costs, and enhance user interface usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zenoss Cloud is easy to deploy with minimal technical expertise needed. Cisco DNA Center may require more advanced configurations but provides strong support for network personalization and strategic network alignment.

Pricing and ROI: Zenoss Cloud generally has a cost-effective pricing model favoring budget-focused organizations, leading to favorable ROI. Cisco DNA Center, while presenting a higher initial cost, can offer significant long-term ROI through enhanced network performance and security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco DNA Center vs. Zenoss Cloud Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. Zenoss Cloud

July 2025

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Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)

Zenoss Cloud

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

77th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (31st), Event Monitoring (14th), Server Monitoring (26th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (53rd), Container Monitoring (10th), Cloud Monitoring Software (39th), AIOps (25th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Helmy

Sr. Director, Business Development & Sales Operations at connect professional services

Experience unified visibility and monitoring for enterprise campus and significant time savings and enhanced troubleshooting with reliable support

We have been working with Cisco DNA Center for ten years. Our clients use Cisco DNA Center for unified visibility/monitoring across Enterprise Campus both LAN & WLAN along with Access and fast technical issues troubleshooting The solution provides fast troubleshooting capabilities and fast…

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ClaudiaChen

Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra

Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features

As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

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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 most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."

"Automation is another key highlight. With automation, you can automate everything through a single port."

"We have many people from the team who manage a lot of devices. By using Cisco DNA Center, it has taken some of that burden away, we are impressed with it. We did the investment in CAPEX, but in the OPEX was very low."

"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."

"It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices."

"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."

"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."

"It enables monitoring of various components such as access points, switch cards, and other elements within the company's solutions."

More Cisco DNA Center pros

"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."

"It's easy to use."

"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."

"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."

"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."

"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."

"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."

Cons

"When it comes to deploying wireless fields, integrating defaults into the DNS interface can be challenging."

"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."

"We encountered issues with their response times, which had a big impact on our workflow."

"The solution’s security side could be improved."

"The product has many features that do not work properly."

"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."

"In terms of the clustering part, there are some concerns."

"DNA Center has been on the market for a few years and they need to update it."

More Cisco DNA Center cons

"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."

"The AI aspect needs to improve."

"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."

"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"

"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."

"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."

"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."

"The tool's licensing may not come across as something that may be friendly for users."

"The tool is medium-priced."

"It is an expensive solution."

"Our licensing agreement is for three years."

"We have a three-year license with them."

"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 too expensive."

More Cisco DNA Center pricing and cost advice

"It depends on the customer, what he wants."

"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."

"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."

"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?

After evaluating other solutions, we will provide feedback.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?

We have utilized the software-defined access (SDA) feature of Cisco DNA Center. The AI-driven needs enhancements and Integration and unification of visibility and monitoring to include other areas ...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Catalyst Center vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 14% of the time

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiManager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco DNA Center Competitors

Zabbix vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 26% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 24% of the time

Nagios Core vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

SolarWinds AppOptics vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

Centreon vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

More Zenoss Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center

August 2025

Download Cisco DNA Center product report

Buyer's Guide

Zenoss Cloud

July 2025

Download Zenoss Cloud product report

Also Known As

DNA Center

Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics

Overview

Cisco DNA Center offers a comprehensive platform for network automation and management, providing detailed analytics, enhanced security, and streamlined operations for both wired and wireless networks.

Cisco DNA Center integrates with Cisco infrastructure to deliver efficient network automation and management, helping organizations improve network visibility, security, and control. It supports AI-driven analytics and automated workflows to enhance operational efficiency and reduce errors. Challenges include compatibility with third-party systems, steep learning curve, and complex deployment. Its interface facilitates centralized control, vital for troubleshooting, policy management, and configuration management, with support for zero-touch provisioning and SD-Access.

What are the key features of Cisco DNA Center?

Robust Analytics: Provides detailed insights into network health with AI-driven analytics.
Centralized Security: Integrates with ISE for comprehensive security management.
Automated Device Management: Simplifies device provisioning and configuration transfers.
Wi-Fi Analytics: Offers deep insights into wireless network performance.
Zero-Touch Provisioning: Streamlines new device deployments with minimal human intervention.
Scalable Segmentation: Efficiently segments network traffic ensuring security and performance.

What benefits should users consider?

Operational Efficiency: Automation reduces potential errors and streamlines workflow.
Enhanced Security: Integration with Cisco ISE bolsters security capabilities.
Network Visibility: Comprehensive dashboards and analysis tools enhance monitoring.
Troubleshooting: Real-time monitoring aids in identifying and resolving issues swiftly.

In sectors such as healthcare, finance, and retail, Cisco DNA Center is utilized for its ability to enhance security and compliance, manage large-scale networks, and provide detailed analytics for better operational decision-making. Its support for location tracking and policy automation ensures efficient network management across diverse environments.

Cisco

Zenoss Cloud revolutionizes IT infrastructure monitoring with a service-centric approach, prioritizing the overall health of services and applications. Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIOps), Zenoss Cloud offers end-to-end visibility across servers, networks, storage, and applications. Real-time monitoring, event correlation, and automated remediation ensure immediate insights and efficient issue resolution. The customizable dashboards empower users to tailor visualizations to their needs, while scalability accommodates diverse infrastructures. Zenoss Cloud guarantees improved application performance, reduced downtime, and enhanced IT efficiency, making it an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes, from small enterprises seeking simplicity to large corporations requiring advanced scalability. Experience unified monitoring and proactive management with Zenoss Cloud, a comprehensive solution that transforms IT infrastructure optimization in today's complex environments.

Zenoss

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. Zenoss Cloud

July 2025

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