Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs Viavi Observer Platform comparison

Cisco and Viavi Solutions are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #45 with an average rating of 8.0, while Viavi Solutions is ranked #99. Cisco holds a 0.7% mindshare in NMS, compared to Viavi Solutions’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution.

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

4,853 Views
2,863 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Viavi Observer Platform

Read 1 Viavi Observer Platform review

1,077 Views
1,077 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Viavi Observer Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance and Viavi Observer Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Auvik and others in Network Monitoring Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Network Monitoring Software Report (Updated: May 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

May 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 899,283 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

45th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (39th)

Viavi Observer Platform

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

99th

Average Rating

0.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 Viavi Observer Platform is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance	0.7%
Viavi Observer Platform	0.3%
Other	99.0%

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

JeroenDubbelman

Director at Bitrate

The product is extremely valuable and provides a lot of functionalities and visibility to organizations

The score-based application performance ratings help the network team. Often, customers have a siloed environment for security, applications, and servers. The network team is always asked to do troubleshooting. Being able to know how well an application worked in the past and what's happening today is really helpful. If someone has a complaint and the network team says that the problem is not on their side, they must be able to demonstrate it accurately. The network team is often given the least budget and the least number of employees. So, they must be able to troubleshoot and pinpoint problems as fast as possible. If it’s a network issue, they must fix it. However, if it is a cloud problem, an ISP problem, or a problem within the server or application environment, they must be able to demonstrate it clearly. It is the real benefit they get from the solution. Some of our customers are financial institutions. They use the tool for traffic accounting, especially when they get charged by ISPs or carriers for the amount of traffic they are using. In South Africa, we have banks that pay the service providers to allow customers to use their banking apps for free. The bank pays for it, not the customers. So, they need to compare to ensure they are paying for what has been used. Viavi enables them to do that. It is pretty much the best there is in the world. There is nothing to beat it. The product is extremely valuable and provides a lot of functionalities. It's really impressive.

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."

"Thanks to Skylight we have a tool for this kind of investigation and it has reduced our mean time to respond by at least 50 percent."

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

"I like this product because it is easy to use and it allows us to have a realistic vision of what is going on at the heart of our network."

"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."

"We heavily use the "network analysis" section to dissect and analyze flows."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"The score-based application performance ratings help the network team."

Cons

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"A lower price and more flexible versions will help the product."

"Support for more VoIP systems, Avaya, etc."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"The product must start using a bit more machine learning and AI, especially for security."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"The tool is very pricey."

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

899,283 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

18%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

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?

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

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

ThousandEyes vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

DX SaaS vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 4% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Competitors

Observer GigaStor vs Viavi Observer Platform

Compared 24% of the time

Datadog vs Viavi Observer Platform

Compared 23% of the time

Liongard vs Viavi Observer Platform

Compared 12% of the time

Pulseway vs Viavi Observer Platform

Compared 11% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Viavi Observer Platform

Compared 10% of the time

More Viavi Observer Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

June 2026

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

May 2026

Download Viavi Observer Platform product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

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

Viavi Observer Platform offers comprehensive network performance and monitoring solutions designed to meet the demanding needs of enterprises, with technologies that ensure efficient handling of network and application performance data.

Known for its robust offering, Viavi Observer Platform provides insightful analytics that allow businesses to have a detailed grasp of their network performance, focusing on real-time data visibility and deep packet inspection. Its ability to isolate communication issues and determine root causes quickly makes it essential for IT professionals looking to maintain high network efficiency and reliability.

What are the most important features of Viavi Observer Platform?

Packet Capture: Enables retrieval and analysis of detailed network packet data to diagnose problems.
Real-time Analytics: Provides instantaneous insights into network performance, facilitating rapid issue resolution.
Application Monitoring: Strengthens performance by tracking application behaviors and troubleshooting.
Customized Dashboards: Offers tailored views of key performance metrics for ease of access and monitoring.

What benefits or ROI should users consider?

Improved Network Efficiency: Streamlined diagnostics lead to optimal network operation.
Cost Reduction: Faster issue resolution reduces downtime and associated costs.
Enhanced Security: Comprehensive data visibility assists in identifying and mitigating security threats promptly.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands, ensuring consistent performance as businesses expand.

Viavi Observer Platform is particularly beneficial in industries such as finance and healthcare, where zero-tolerance for network latency and security breaches is crucial. Its strategic deployment in these sectors ensures uninterrupted service delivery and protects sensitive information.

Viavi Solutions

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

May 2026

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Auvik and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: May 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

899,283 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors.

We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.