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Cisco Prime [EOL] vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

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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
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (14th)
 

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.
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

"The customer service and support for this solution is good."
"The map overview of our campus environment shows the distribution of RF frequency channels and the distribution of a client, providing us with a great idea of where the busier areas are within our environment to allow us to tweak and tune."
"Cisco Prime, from a management perspective, has good reporting."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Prime is the heat maps."
"The interfaces are a valuable feature."
"Cisco Prime allows us to do a lot of functions with the users and it is flexible."
"Enables oversight in order to tweak and tune."
"In terms of reliability especially, Cisco is light years ahead."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
"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."
"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"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 tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"It's very easy to use."
 

Cons

"The product is expensive compared to other vendors in the market."
"The solution has issues with real time monitoring of devices and NetFlow such as inadequate visualization for reports, sources, and destinations."
"Cisco can only be used for Cisco environments and is not compatible with other vendors."
"I would love for Cisco Prime to show bandwidth usage and consumption, but I can't monitor bandwidth usage at a given time."
"Cisco Prime is slow at times, we often have to restart the database to run reports or to gain access."
"If you look at some of the wireless site-survey tools that are available in the commercial space, Cisco should include similar solutions, which would help our on-plant engineers when they're doing a site survey."
"They can also improve the management of more enterprise devices."
"Prime is used for managing all the infrastructure and if it can be integrated with the SIEM tool it could be well managed."
"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."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"IBM's technical support takes a long time to do root cause analysis, and we have to go through several levels of help before getting a solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"You need to get special quotes from the company for each order."
"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."
"The solution is not inexpensive but is worth it for large-scale environments."
"We update the license every five years."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors in the market."
"The product's performance monitoring feature could be more intuitive."
"I would rate the pricing of Cisco Prime a seven out of ten."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"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."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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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 Prime Infrastructure
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mohawk Industries, Universidad EAFIT, Halton Healthcare
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, Fortinet, Skyline Communications and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: October 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.