Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs Pico Corvil Analytics comparison

Cisco and PICO are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.0, while PICO is ranked #73. Cisco holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to PICO’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of PICO users who would recommend it.

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

1,670 Views
1,083 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Pico Corvil Analytics

Read 9 Pico Corvil Analytics reviews

955 Views
429 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Pico Corvil Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Pico Corvil Analytics and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance are competing in the network performance and connectivity monitoring sector. Pico is considered favorable in pricing and support, although Cisco's comprehensive features justify its premium cost.

Features: Pico Corvil Analytics provides real-time analytics, packet-level visibility, and detailed insight into network performance. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers in-depth tracking, automation of assurance tasks, and emphasizes network reliability, featuring preventive capabilities and operational context.

Room for Improvement: Pico Corvil Analytics could enhance its breadth of network compatibility, integrations with third-party tools, and scalability for larger networks. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance may benefit from a more intuitive user interface, faster deployment, and refined cost efficiency for smaller organizations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pico Corvil Analytics is known for an easy deployment process and responsive customer support, appealing to teams lacking extensive technical skills. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance demands a more complex setup and utilizes a wide support network, ideal for large, intricate environments requiring ongoing updates.

Pricing and ROI: Pico Corvil Analytics offers competitive pricing focused on value from data insights and efficiency, with a manageable initial cost leading to quick ROI. Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance, with higher initial expenses, focuses on long-term savings and improved network reliability, promising significant ROI for businesses prioritizing comprehensive network assurance solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Pico Corvil Analytics Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Pico Corvil Analytics

April 2025

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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 Network Monitoring Software

40th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (46th)

Pico Corvil Analytics

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

73rd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 0.9%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pico Corvil Analytics is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Sylvain Germe

Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Highly scalable, responsive support, but lacking new features

This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example. If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful. I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten. I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

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Ted Hruzd

Founder at AI Fit LLC

Helpful support agents, beneficial issue detection, and high availability

The creation of charts and real-time windows was somewhat cumbersome. The vendor's website had an application called App Agent that required improvement. This API was designed to track message rates between microservers ingested into a microservice memory map. It allowed users to monitor the number of transactions that occurred at specific points within the application, and it was quite impressive. However, it had some limitations, and it mainly served as a tool for basic tracking. The protocols it employed could reveal the type of server-to-server communication and the specific order types, but it was not able to provide a more in-depth analysis of the application. The vendor has the potential to integrate application metrics more extensively into their product suite. The product suite could benefit from more out-of-the-box predictive analytics capabilities, such as projecting market or symbol movements. However, it is unclear whether the vendor currently provides this functionality. Users may need to adjust their software to perform such analysis independently.

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."

"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."

"The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

"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."

"One valuable feature we have is real-time monitoring for connection issues."

"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 ability to measure performance end-to-end across the cloud data center allows us to take corrective action to keep our channels online."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"As part of my role in monitoring multiple client connections, I would use Pico Corvil Analytics to set up alerts for performance issues, such as TCP resends and dropped packets. These alerts would trigger when the volume was low and performance was poor, allowing me to work with our trading partners to find a resolution. I would present them with the statistics I had and together, we would identify the source of the issue. This collaboration resulted in the client often reconfiguring their systems. For example, we may find that a network connection needed to be made. Overall, this proactive approach helped to maintain strong connections with our clients and minimize disruptions to trading revenue."

"We're able to quickly drill down and find answers to events that are happening in real-time, using Corvil's analytics tools. That's the feature which is most in the spotlight..."

"We can use CLI with the UI for configuring the new monitoring system, which is good."

"The performance metrics are pretty good. We've got everything from the network layer to the actual application layer. We can see what's going on with things like sending time and batching."

"We use the data to analyze how much time we spend within the applications. Then, based on that, we are doing multiple analyses and types of investigations to work on reducing the amount of time spent on the latency, which helps our applications."

"The analytics features of Corvil are really good... As long as you know what the field is in the message, you can build your metrics based on that field... It means you can do the analytics that you actually care for. You can customize it..."

"We like the dashboards because they essentially organize all the sessions into one viewpoint."

"What is most valuable is the ability to troubleshoot when a client complains of spikes in latencies. It gives us the ability to go granular, all the way down to looking at the network packets and analyze them."

More Pico Corvil Analytics pros

Cons

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

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

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

"I would like to see some improvements in parts of their synthetic transactions, which includes all the latency, jitter, and throughput. I would like to see some Layer 7 analytics in there. I want to be able to do a DNS request, HTTP GET request, or even SIP call point-to-point or via registration."

"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."

"Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable... It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better."

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

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"The creation of charts and real-time windows was somewhat cumbersome. The vendor's website had an application called App Agent that required improvement. This API was designed to track message rates between microservers ingested into a microservice memory map. It allowed users to monitor the number of transactions that occurred at specific points within the application, and it was quite impressive. However, it had some limitations, and it mainly served as a tool for basic tracking. The protocols it employed could reveal the type of server-to-server communication and the specific order types, but it was not able to provide a more in-depth analysis of the application. The vendor has the potential to integrate application metrics more extensively into their product suite."

"Overall, the Corvil device needs a little bit of training for people to handle it. If that could be reduced and made more user-friendly, more intuitive, it would be better."

"The analytics feature is very nice, but it's mostly software. We are hoping that it could be embedded in ASICs, so it could be faster."

"Alerting isn't great... you can only put in one email address in. And that's for all kinds of alerting on the box."

"In terms of performance analysis, if you really want to dig down into the minutiae and get statistics on the important things... that would be the only piece lacking because, in our environment, we have thousands and thousands of symbols. With the architecture that Corvil is built on, it's cumbersome."

"There is definitely room for improvement in the reporting. We've tried to use the reporting in Corvil but, to me, it feels like a bolt-on, like not a lot of thought has gone into it. The whole interface where you build reports and schedule them is very clunky."

"While the product is scalable, it's not easy to scale. It needs investment hardware and network bandwidth consideration. It's not something you can just do overnight."

"Before I got the Corvil training... one thing that was not very efficient was that every time you had to create a new stream or a new session from within Corvil... you had to tell it what protocol the message is going to come through and how to correlate messages, etc... After I went for the training, they had already added these nice features in the 9.4 version where it could do auto-discovery... Based on the traffic that it has already seen, it could create sessions on the fly."

More Pico Corvil Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"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 provides value and the cost is not huge."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"I like the way they've decoupled the hardware now... Everything's based on the licensing side now. The way they do the packs is fair. It's very flexible in that we're not charged per decoder, we're charged for a certain pack. Whether we use one decoder or 20 decoders, as long as they're in the same pack, there's no extra charge. Expensive but fair is how I'd summarize it."

"We bought a box from Corvil and it was $200,000 for one big CNE. Then there are obviously the recurring maintenance fees. The licensing is perpetual but the maintenance fees are not."

"Pico Corvil Analytics is expensive. There are several competitors in the market. Selling this solution to a trading firm might be challenging as there are several other solutions available that can perform basic similar operations, such as using Wireshark and Python scripts to obtain the required values. However, that does not nearly approach the comprehensive end-2-end automated depth of metrics and their correlations that Pico Corvil Analytics provides."

"As I am working more with Corvil, it looks like it is improving diagnostic times."

"It is pricey versus its competitors."

"Corvil has reduced the time it takes us to isolate root causes."

"The pricing is very expensive. Corvil could work on the pricing."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

39%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

56%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Accedian Skylight?

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

See all answers

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Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 43% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 15% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 11% of the time

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

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NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Pico Corvil Analytics

Compared 33% of the time

Datadog vs Pico Corvil Analytics

Compared 30% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Pico Corvil Analytics

Compared 20% of the time

NIKSUN NetVCR vs Pico Corvil Analytics

Compared 17% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

May 2025

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

Pico Corvil Analytics

April 2025

Download Pico Corvil Analytics product report

Also Known As

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

Corvil

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

Corvil transforms Network Data with speed and precision into the powerful real-time truth. Corvil captures, decodes, reassembles, and enriches vast amounts of data in motion, adding analytics and making the resulting enriched data and IT Operations Analytics available to humans, machines and other systems.

PICO

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

NASDAQ, Commerzbank, Pico Quantitative Trading, CME Group, Interactive Data, Tokyo Stock Exchange Inc.

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Pico Corvil Analytics

April 2025

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Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. Pico Corvil Analytics and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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