Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs DX Performance Management comparison

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. DX Performance Management

Download the complete report

Helped 903,067 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 Provider Connectivity...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

47th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (40th)

DX Performance Management

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

45th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure Capacity Planning (1st), DX NetOps (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Performance Management is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
DX Performance Management	0.6%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance	0.7%
Other	98.7%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin

Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.

Addresses connectivity issues with real-time monitoring while offering good local support

I had prepared for COC and the client. I work as a vendor for a client using Flow Mount for network performance monitoring. I focus on resolving client-side issues related to Packy Performance and quality use. This involves addressing network device issues, specifically Cisco network devices One…

Read full review

reviewer1810893

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When a remote contact complains about a slow application, we can immediately pinpoint the cause of concern."

"We have found this to be a very valuable toolset, and has paid for itself several times over."

"It is very stable, has reduced downtime and migration time, and with Skylight we never forget anything."

"If [the problem] is something related to HTTP or VoIP, then I can have a quick look into the protocols, a process which gives me some good ideas..."

"It is about finding operational problems. When sites go down, we try to determine who is at fault. While there is not much finger-pointing, the solution is just trying to analyse when there is an outage and where do we start looking to fix it. The very nature of why organization chooses to use the solution is to accelerate the meantime to resolution and find where problems lie to get them rectified as quickly as possible."

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good; the sensors are low cost, their licensing model lets clients start small and grow as they need without being forced into expensive appliances or subscription models, and that is one of the things that we really like about offering it to our clients because they are not left out getting the right sort of information straightaway."

"Capturing traffic [is very interesting]. Currently, with our configuration, we don't capture the payload of the packets, just the header. But when we want the body, the payload of the packets, we can do a PCAP, and then analyze it within Wireshark."

"APM analysis is much faster than traditional root cause analysis of application problems."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"There is another component of the tool called Network Flow Analysis. It gives us the ability to troubleshoot issues which do not appear right away."

"Scalability is great."

"Customer service is top-notch."

"The integration to the other products that we use: NFA, we use ADA, we use Spectrum; and CAPM integrates all those into a single pane of glass, for performance."

"Downloads and records are the most valuable features."

"When devices are having performance issues, it proactively build dashboards which allow us to go and do health checks, and resolve problems before they become an issue."

"The network teams have transitioned to becoming proactive in responding to network performance issues, rather than being just reactive to outages."

"It's a solution which is highly recommended."

More DX Performance Management pros

Cons

"For the PVX, they are in the process of getting the results to export to cloud and SaaS for analytics. They told me that this will happen later this year. Right now, for the most part, I create that data myself."

"It needs the possibility to export data because it is not easy to see larger data sets, e.g., for one month. It would be interesting to export data into a PDF or dashboard to keep a history of the situation."

"Embed a warning system to a mailbox when it exceeds the threshold for use of bandwidth over a given period of time."

"If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document... it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either."

"So scalability, at the moment, is pretty bad for us now, because our modus operandi have totally shifted."

"Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud. In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams."

"The licensing of the virtual pollers is problematic because they are attached to the physical ESX on which they are installed."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"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. "

"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."

"DX Performance Management should increase high availability. If one of my two data centers goes offline and the other is operational, I need a seamless transition from the primary to the secondary data center. It's crucial to maintain consistent monitoring of the devices during this transition. Therefore, I require continuous, 24/7 monitoring of my system using this tool."

"There are some issues. We started supporting UTA and began to see both major and minor problems."

"The quantity of views which are tied to specific metric families is too high. Also, the problem is the view doesn't tell you which metric family it uses, so you don't know why you don't see data."

"It needs role-based administration."

"I would like to have more tasks, graphs, and possibilities for linking to the graphs and reports added to the solution."

"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."

More DX Performance Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."

"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."

"The pricing of Accedian Skylight is really good. The sensors are low cost. Their model to analytics for sensors is by license, endpoint, or session. With the probes for their analytics, if they get deployed virtually, they are free. The licensing is only based on flows. So, you can effectively deploy probes everywhere in your network. Then, if you want to look at a specific type of traffic, you can enter into it with a very low cost license. You can just use things like spam ports, mirrors, TAPs, and aggregators to optimize what sort of traffic you send to these analysis tools. Then, if you want to start looking at more, you can up your licensed as you go. You are not getting forced into expensive appliances or subscription models."

"If you look into Riverbed, it's a licensing nightmare. You need to pay for every type of analysis... If you don't look into licensing, Riverbed and SolarWinds are pretty comparable. But if you look into licensing it would not be smart to go for either of them. On the pure, bare-metal basis, it's the same. But when you get the bare metal and a few basic licenses, then you need all those other licenses just to be sure that there's no issue... One of the great things about Skylight is you have them all, and you actually need them all."

"The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution."

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"The pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"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. "

"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."

"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."

"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."

"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."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

903,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	25

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Accedian Skylight?

Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues. I require more tools to file and resolve these issues efficiently.

What is your primary use case for Accedian Skylight?

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

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...

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Comparisons

Compared 5% of the time

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

DX SaaS vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

New Relic vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

DX Spectrum vs DX Performance Management

Compared 6% of the time

Zabbix vs DX Performance Management

Compared 5% of the time

Datadog vs DX Performance Management

Compared 5% of the time

Centreon vs DX Performance Management

Compared 5% of the time

Kentik vs DX Performance Management

Compared 5% of the time

More DX Performance Management Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

DX Performance Management

Download DX Performance Management product report

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision

CA Performance Management

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is known for its user-friendly approach to network analysis and performance monitoring. It excels in real-time diagnostics, helping organizations quickly resolve network issues and optimize performance effortlessly.

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance focuses on comprehensive network troubleshooting and performance monitoring, assisting in identifying bottlenecks and analyzing applications. Real-time data collection and evaluation ensure IT infrastructure efficiency. With active monitoring of latency, jitter, and throughput, users maintain smooth operations across multiple sites and applications. While highly effective, improvements in data handling, protocol support, and dashboard aesthetics are suggested to enhance user experience.

What are the key features of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance?

Flow Matrices: Advanced analysis of network paths and traffic distribution.
SQL and DNS Analysis: In-depth insights into database and domain queries for troubleshooting.
Bandwidth Assessment: Evaluation of network capacity and utilization for performance optimization.
Real-time TWAMP Monitoring: Tracks network performance using Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol.
Application Performance Modules: Monitors the performance of various applications and services.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized views for tracking critical network metrics and trends.
PCAP Capturing: Detailed packet analysis using tools like Wireshark for deeper insights.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Ease of Use: Intuitive design allowing users to swiftly diagnose network issues.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Enhanced visibility of network activity for better control.
Performance Efficiency: Optimization of throughput, reducing downtimes and improving service delivery.
Cost-Effectiveness: Balances features and functionality with competitive pricing for better ROI.

In industries such as telecommunications and finance, where network reliability is crucial, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers critical network performance insights. It supports high-demand environments by providing data-driven decisions, ensuring infrastructures handle increased loads efficiently.

Cisco

DX Performance Management provides crucial network visibility and performance monitoring, offering device certification, integration with key tools, and efficient network analytics through advanced features.

DX Performance Management is a comprehensive solution for network performance, health, and capacity monitoring. It facilitates baselining, trending, and real-time visibility, aiding in capacity planning and incident alerting. It integrates with services like NetFlow, NFA, and ADA, supporting multiple device types. Its database performance allows for efficient analysis with scalability across different device counts, while customizable dashboards provide a single-pane-of-glass view for network insights.

What are the key features of DX Performance Management?

Device Certification: Ensures network devices meet specific standards and requirements through thorough certification processes.
Integration: Seamlessly connects with NetFlow, NFA, ADA, Spectrum, and CAPC for robust network insights.
Report Generation: Offers automated report generation for enhanced network analysis.
Customizable Dashboards: Provides a tailored view of network performance metrics on a single screen.
Advanced Alerting: Monitors network conditions with sophisticated alerting mechanisms for proactive responses.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands with efficient performance across multiple device counts.
Multi-Tenancy: Supports various tenants within the same infrastructure, ensuring resource optimization.
Historical Data Analysis: Delivers past performance data for in-depth trend analysis and decision support.

Which benefits and ROI should users expect from using DX Performance Management?

Efficiency: Enhances network analysis through fast database performance and customizable interfaces.
Decision-Making: Improves decision support via comprehensive visibility and detailed performance metrics.
Scalability: Offers a flexible solution capable of growing with network demands.
Customization: Allows tailoring of reports and dashboards to meet specific analytical needs.
Integration: Provides seamless connectivity with other network management tools and service desks.

Network service providers implement DX Performance Management to deliver in-depth insights, monitoring routers and switches for SNMP data collection, aiding CPU, memory, and interface utilization analysis. It's integrated with network fault management and service desks, providing comprehensive performance analytics.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

T-Systems, Thomson Reuters, Bordeaux Metropole, CGI, Citadelle Regional Hospital Center, Lorraine Institute of Oncology, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Groupe BPCE, Group S, Splitpoint, Horus-Net, Audatex, Indexis, Province de Liège, EASI, Spie Batignolles, Faymonville

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

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. DX Performance Management