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Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs Grafana comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
45th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (45th)
Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 3.1%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Grafana3.1%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance0.7%
Other96.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights
Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread."
"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..."
"My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."
"It is not that expensive of a solution and produces tremendous value."
"Skylight is not used on a daily basis, but when it's used it usually helps to fix a problem pretty fast."
"The ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."
"We heavily use the "network analysis" section to dissect and analyze flows."
"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."
"It is easy to change and move virtual servers."
"The dashboards are very easy to work with."
"It excels in providing comprehensive details when there are downtimes or fluctuations, offering thorough reports."
"Grafana is stable and has great engineers."
"It gives us the visibility we need. I like that when we add deployment markers or release markers, we know exactly when an issue arises. For instance, if there is an increased usage of CPU, we can link it directly to the deployment that might have caused the issue. It increases productivity and observability. We can now easily tell when a certain issue arises. It's way easier to debug because it can point you to certain things based on these markers, and we can debug easier."
"Grafana's built-in integration with third-party tools, databases, and MQs is an amazing feature."
"The comparison feature is very good."
"It provides a graphical representation and it's clear to see what's happening."
 

Cons

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."
"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."
"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."
"The licensing of the virtual pollers is problematic because they are attached to the physical ESX on which they are installed."
"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."
"Increase the drive’s capacity to store more data, and maybe switch to a database system similar to 3Big-Data."
"Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"The interface is not well-liked by my customers."
"Its interface could be more accessible."
"Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us."
"I find that the alerting UI in Grafana can be complex for new users."
"It would be helpful if Grafana provided more information and training on how to use Prometheus."
"The security needs to be improved, such as the capacity to add permissions on dashboards."
"I would like the ability to download my results into any format in order to share the information with my clients."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer."
"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 pricing is cheaper than other competing products, which is better for our budgets."
"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."
"We understand there's a significant cost difference, but have yet to investigate fully."
"Pricing is a little bit expensive."
"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."
"It's not for free, clearly. But on the other hand, it offers very interesting functionality. We pay around €100,000."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"We are using the open-source license."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise25
 

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?
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
I purchased my Grafana Cloud subscription through the AWS Marketplace, which simplified my procurement process and allowed me to apply the cost towards my AWS committed spend.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
I find that the alerting UI in Grafana can be complex for new users. While it is very powerful, it takes time to learn the differences between contact points, notification policies, and silences. T...
What is your primary use case for Grafana?
My main use case for Grafana involves operational dashboarding and data visualization, where I use it as a central pane of glass to pull in metrics from multiple sources like Prometheus, Elasticsea...
 

Also Known As

Accedian Skylight, Accedian SkyLIGHT PVX, SkyLIGHT PVX, SecurActive, Performance Vision
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.