Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Cisco is ranked #42 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.8. Cisco holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

Read 24 Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance reviews

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4,149 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

9,088 Views
5,089 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Cisco Provider Connectivity...

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Accedian Skylight are both advanced application performance management solutions. VMware Aria Operations for Applications has an upper hand in ease of deployment and pricing, while Accedian Skylight stands out in features and support.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers effective monitoring, insightful analytics, and seamless integration. Accedian Skylight provides granular visibility, high-quality network performance metrics, and flexible deployment options. Accedian Skylight appears superior in offering more detailed and adaptable features.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications could improve scalability and intuitive design. Accedian Skylight needs better documentation and a more intuitive setup process. VMware's design needs enhancement, but Accedian's documentation issues put it slightly behind.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is straightforward to deploy and has responsive customer service. Accedian Skylight complexity in setup but has a proactive support team. VMware is easier to deploy, while Accedian offers better support post-deployment.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is cost-effective with good ROI due to lower setup costs. Accedian Skylight comes with higher initial setup costs but offers substantial ROI from advanced insights. Users feel the higher initial investment in Accedian Skylight is justified by its performance improvements.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

November 2026

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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

42nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (46th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (13th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.3%
Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance	1.0%
Other	97.7%

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

Ajay Shukla

Consultant at HCLTech

Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome

The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

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 performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors."

"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."

"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."

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

"Network control when experiencing problems indicating "the network is slow"."

"What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful."

"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."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pros

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"We have encountered problems with the license that is connected to the hypervisor on which the virtual appliance is deployed."

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

"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."

"The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve."

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

"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."

"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."

"Combination with Avaya switches pose some problems."

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance cons

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."

"However, it is still not a very mature product."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is a little bit expensive."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

More Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance pricing and cost advice

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

14%

Construction Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing 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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance

November 2026

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance report

Download Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

October 2026

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

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

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance offers a user-friendly interface with real-time monitoring and network analysis, aiding businesses in identifying connection issues and optimizing performance.

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance is recognized for its real-time monitoring capabilities and straightforward GUI, key in diagnosing network performance issues and managing application performance. Its bandwidth utilization and network analysis features help optimize performance. Users can program captures for comprehensive performance checks, improving application performance analysis and troubleshooting. Though high pricing and licensing challenges are noted, and there’s a demand for improved design and adaptable reporting, it remains a valuable tool for network health insights.

What Are Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance's Most Important Features?

User-Friendly Interface: Easy navigation and straightforward setup.
Real-Time Monitoring: Quickly identifies connection issues.
Bandwidth Utilization: Optimizes network performance.
Latency, Jitter, and Throughput Display: Offers insights into network health.
Programmable Captures: Ensures comprehensive performance checks.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Look For in Reviews?

Network Performance Diagnosis: Efficiently identifies and resolves issues.
Device Health Monitoring: Keeps a close check on network devices.
Application Performance Management: Ensures optimal functioning across deployments.
Reduced Packet Loss: Enhances overall user experience.
Bandwidth Monitoring: Aids in resource management.

Implementations of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance span industries from data centers to remote offices, supporting on-premise and cloud deployments. Companies leverage it to ensure network efficiency and reduce packet loss, providing vital analytics that enhance user experiences and support business operations.

Cisco

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

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

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

November 2026

Free Report: Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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