Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs OpenText Real User Monitoring comparison

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. OpenText Real User Monitoring

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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

46th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (42nd)

OpenText Real User Monitoring

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

44th

Average Rating

6.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.3%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Real User Monitoring is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

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

Aphiwat Leetavorn.

CTO at Marco Technology

Offers back-end monitoring, so it can analyze user experience but when customers change the software or version, this tool is quite sensitive

Real User Monitoring tools help proactively identify problems before they become critical by monitoring thresholds. There is a threshold and an SOA threshold. For example, it starts to go yellow, and if it becomes red, the system will crash. When it starts to become yellow (Threshold Approaching), we have to resolve it. This is the same case where we'll know what happened before it's too late. So we can make an early decision to prevent it, maybe by kicking some users off the system before it crashes.

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

"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."

"The solution’s UI and single pane of glass is good. The new dashboard is modern with its new design. The look of it is not pretty, but it is efficient, which is good. It is user-friendly; you can find what you need on the interface quickly."

"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."

"I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate."

"I always have the Skylight dashboard on one of my screens... Now you can create your own dashboard, specific to an application, specific to a server, or to something else."

"For us, the most valuable feature is something called TWAMP that allows for real-time traffic in a way that is 10 times lighter than things like SolarWinds. It's in the sub-milliseconds of accuracy, and you can divide tasks so that you can literally see things like the tagging for Quality of Service. That had been incorrect with the carrier, but there was no way on this planet you'd be able to tell a carrier that they're wrong. I have dozens of scenarios where we found "No, that's not right," and got it resolved instantly."

"The response times, with the performance, are really interesting too, where you can see the packet loss."

"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..."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"Very easy to implement."

"The most useful feature of this solution is tracking. When the application's traffic has been monitored it is taken from that particular application and analyzed. It is then given a live session of that particular user. For example, if you are using your bank application to do some kind of transaction, everything that you do can be tracked by that application."

"It offers near-real-time analytics, which is helpful."

"It is a good product."

"The reporting feature is good for us."

"Real User Monitor has improved our productivity."

"Real User Monitoring tools help proactively identify problems before they become critical by monitoring thresholds. There is a threshold and an SOA threshold."

"The technical support is good at resolving issues."

More OpenText Real User Monitoring pros

Cons

"There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely."

"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."

"The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"It's a bit slow. When I execute a query, something general with a short timeframe that covers one month, for instance, and I do not specify the IP source or IP destination, it can take ages because it has to query the whole database."

"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."

"This solution is expensive compared to some others."

"Human resource costs can be high when dealing with connection issues."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"Customer support needs to improve by bringing in more people who are knowledgeable about the tool, as there are very few left."

"We would like to see support for non-Windows environments."

"One area to improve is the user interface, of course. The second one is their R&D has virtually stopped building a product roadmap."

"This technology is considered to be older."

"The solution's technical support presents a lot of issues with too many delays."

"Real User Monitor needs to cover more protocols to provide more in-depth information. It could also be better at monitoring voice-related traffic. There is currently no visibility in that channel."

"When we want to monitor our encrypted traffic, this product doesn't work because our cipher is not supported."

"The diagnostics perspective, particularly in terms of the root cause analysis of failures, should be improved."

More OpenText Real User Monitoring cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"It provides value and the cost is not huge."

"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."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"The price is approximately €30,000 ($35,500 USD) for the enterprise edition."

"Not expensive."

"Compared to other tools, OpenText Real User Monitoring is an expensive solution."

"If I compare with other vendors, other vendors are more expensive"

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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862,624 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

38%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

12%

Energy/Utilities Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 Micro Focus Real User Monitor?

The diagnostics perspective, particularly in terms of the root cause analysis of failures, should be improved. There needs to be more development in this area, as the support and the number of peop...

What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Real User Monitor?

The use case is about user-level monitoring and the availability of a service for a user. It's about whether the service is available, its performance, and the type of errors a user is receiving, f...

What advice do you have for others considering Micro Focus Real User Monitor?

I rate the solution as nine. It is a good product. Everyone should have it as it is essential today, but choose the vendor accordingly. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Comparisons

Compared 44% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 14% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 12% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 10% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 8% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

OpenText SiteScope vs OpenText Real User Monitoring

Compared 60% of the time

New Relic vs OpenText Real User Monitoring

Compared 40% of the time

More OpenText Real User Monitoring Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

OpenText Real User Monitoring

Download OpenText Real User Monitoring product report

Also Known As

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

Micro Focus Real User Monitor, Micro Focus RUM, HPE RUM

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers real-time application and network performance monitoring, VPN management, and network diagnostics across multiple sites.

Organizations use Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance for active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and troubleshooting performance issues. Deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, it supports IT infrastructure, security, and analytics with end-to-end performance measurement across cloud data centers. The modern, intuitive interface features TWAMP for real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reports, along with insightful dashboards for circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput monitoring.

What are the most important features?

TWAMP: Provides real-time traffic accuracy and standardized reporting.
Insightful Dashboards: Monitor circuit performance, latency, jitter, and throughput.
Security Integration: Compatible with tools like Splunk for enhanced security.
Application Support: Facilitates comprehensive network performance analysis.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Quick Corrective Actions: Immediate response capabilities for performance issues.
Easy Navigation: User-friendly layouts simplify monitoring and troubleshooting.
Comprehensive Analytics: Advanced tools for in-depth network performance insights.
Cloud and On-Premise Options: Flexible deployment to meet different needs.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance ensures robust performance monitoring and quick diagnostics for VPNs and internet lines. It aids in maintaining the integrity and security of data transference, facilitating active and passive monitoring, stress testing, and performance troubleshooting across geographically dispersed locations, ensuring seamless operation and compliance with industry standards.

Cisco

Real User Monitoring (RUM) an End user monitoring that gives you visibility into user behavior for fast, targeted problem resolution. It monitors the performance and availability of business-critical application services for all users at all locations all the time. It automatically discovers underlying infrastructure and classifies user actions - giving you instant visibility into session and whole service health over web, cloud, and mobile user experience. It allows you to trace user experience across tiers, capture live sessions, see where customers clicked, measure response times, and see pages that caused problems. And you can easily capture and replay user sessions to create test scripts that reflect real user behavior. All this data gives you new ability to analyze which application transactions your users are performing and what application response they are experiencing. RUM currently supports over 20 application protocols and applications such as SAP, Citrix, and native mobile application monitoring on Android.

OpenText

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

Avea, Maccabi Healthcare Services, TEB

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. OpenText Real User Monitoring