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Cisco Prime [EOL] vs DX Spectrum comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Prime [EOL]
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), Network Monitoring Software (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

AR
Network Engineer at Edmonton Catholic School Board
Has an easy implementation process, but the performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive
The project implementation was easy overall. Adapting Cisco's solutions to our specific environment required effort, as their documentation only covers some network scenarios. The deployment didn't happen all at once; it was staged and controlled to ensure a smooth transition. We started with a small test environment before gradually rolling it out to all campuses. This gradual approach helped mitigate the risk of any issues arising across multiple locations simultaneously, especially on a critical day like Monday morning. We have a team of three executives working on the process. Their job roles included network specialists and a manager. It requires maintenance, which is included in the annual cost. We receive updates and support as part of the renewal process.
PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Prime is a one-stop place to log in and manage our entire wireless infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is the heat map."
"The interfaces are a valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is the heat maps."
"We use Cisco Prime for network mapping and surveys."
"Cisco Prime is very good management-wise, giving you the ability to upgrade switches remotely, schedule the upgrade time, perform backups, and monitor the health of all networks."
"The solution is very easy to use, and I absolutely advise using it, as long as your budget has no limits."
"What attracts customers to Cisco Prime is it is readily available."
"As the kind of enterprise that straddles the line between telco size and enterprise size, it scales for us, because we're not all the way at telco yet."
"They are very good; I open up a case and hear back from them the same day, they are very knowledgeable and helpful, and if I do not have time to research something and need it fixed, I just tell them and they take care of it, even connecting remotely to do it themselves sometimes."
"Root-cause analysis and modelling pinpoint the exact cause of problems, which makes life easier."
"By using event rules and procedures, we got an improved event management process, and CA Spectrum is very useful for event handling and brings us a robust manager of managers console."
"It is easy to navigate."
"The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us."
"We see an ROI in the operational cost, as we have a lot of automation behind the events coming in, and the operators get a very key understanding of what's happening, so our operations people are much faster in reacting to and solving problems."
"Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
 

Cons

"That is unacceptable and it's the biggest downfall of the solution."
"The solution is a bit pricey."
"Cisco Prime's initial setup is complex."
"The product's pricing can be cheaper."
"The solution is not easy to configure. It's not user-friendly for admins."
"Now, the complexity has increased, so the quality of work also has taken a slight hit with respect to their TAC support especially."
"They could consider offering more flexible pricing options for their customers."
"Cisco Prime could improve the graphical user interface."
"It's really tough to say because it really does have a lot to do with how much time you put into it."
"OS monitoring needs to be better developed, as well as their services, e.g., cluster monitoring, URLs, etc."
"CA Spectrum provides value, but it can be very expensive."
"The visual is good but it's a little archaic."
"It needs better integration with other CA products."
"Stability could be improved. I find on a regular basis that those of us on-call tend to usually have to go in and restart or reboot a Spectrum server because the landscape's gone down."
"It's not easily scalable."
"There are a very few occasions when the system "barfs" and it looks like your infrastructure has gone dark, but it bounces back quickly (the system)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The cost is quite high."
"The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive."
"You need to get special quotes from the company for each order."
"I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten."
"We update the license every five years."
"The price of Cisco Prime was reasonable because we purchased it as part of a Cisco One package. The package was a bundle of Cisco solutions together, such as Cisco ISE and CMX. The price is reasonable com compared to other solutions."
"If we have a license for Cisco DNA, we can use the same license for Cisco Prime."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Prime Infrastructure
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mohawk Industries, Universidad EAFIT, Halton Healthcare
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Skyline Communications and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.