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DX Performance Management vs DX Spectrum comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

DX Performance Management
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
57th
Ranking in DX NetOps
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (2nd)
DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
20th
Ranking in DX NetOps
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (22nd), Network Troubleshooting (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the DX NetOps category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 37.0%, up from 36.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Spectrum is 33.3%, down from 36.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
DX NetOps
 

Featured Reviews

Sandip Kheni - PeerSpot reviewer
The vertical database loads faster than any other product available
We experience disconnections between the solutions own components. In the last five years, there have been many intermittent connection issues with the four components and we still don't know the reasons. The solution has issues when loading groups that have been created in the application interfaces. It would be nice to have a mobile application. In the current industry and technical word, the mobile phone is the only thing that is always in your hands. Other Broadcom products have mobile applications but the solution doesn't offer one. It would be great to view device parameters and view or download graphs from a mobile device.
DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies
The product helps to correlate events.  The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.  I have been using the product since 2005.  I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is another component of the tool called Network Flow Analysis. It gives us the ability to troubleshoot issues which do not appear right away."
"When we deployed it, right out of the box we were able to stand up Performance Management within two weeks, in our production environment, with full discovery and relevant information, actual information, that we could use in our command center, our 24/7 operations center."
"The tool helps us understand network performance."
"One feature I like about CA Performance Management is the certification of the devices."
"You can create intelligent alerts so you have enough time to replace the router or interface before it's full. The same is applicable for CBQoS channels.​"
"The most valuable feature of DX Performance Management is the quick way we can collect data without putting much effort. They have a lot of customization and features with the solution internally and out of the box. We can discover the device, and start collecting information. For example, if the device is available, we can receive the CPU and memory utilization, and the interface optimization is simple and very fast to implement."
"You can have thousands of devices inside and hundreds of thousands of interphases without a problem."
"It is very easy to add devices; just be aware that it requires SNMP to be enabled."
"Some of the most valuable features are it's highly scalable, the carrier is great, and if something has SNMP, it can monitor it. It's a great network fault management solution."
"Generally, I would recommend DX Spectrum because, despite its pricing issue, it is a valuable solution."
"Scalability is a highly rated feature of this solution. It is better than some of the other tools that I've used in terms of scalability. We scaled it to tens of thousands of devices."
"It has a high-quality graphical interface."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"DX Spectrum uses an SNMP Trap to accept all the details, especially for device monitoring of faulty devices, allowing me to use Spectrum effectively."
"We use Spectrum for network analysis, failure detection, and sending information to our service management tool."
"The main thing is obviously notifications about alerts, getting ahead of the curve to make sure that we do not have system going down, or if it is down we get to know it earlier."
 

Cons

"This solution is not very scalable."
"​Global synchronization errors. Sometimes it just doesn't finish in time due to the load."
"Some of the individual report views, the way some of the columns sort, there's room for improvement in giving us more flexibility in being able to sort reports based, for example, on what columns the metrics fall under."
"It would be helpful if CA provided online training for its customers."
"Product has issue collecting IP SLA data."
"Even though we can see when something is not available, it would also be it would be nice if some sort of alerting took place to that you could know immediately if something went down."
"It could be a little easier to integrate new metrics."
"This solution's implementation process could be quicker. They could also optimize the hardware requirements."
"If they could interact with the MIBs of vendors better, and have a lot more pre-loaded ones, that would be amazing for us right now."
"The GIS map feature needs to be enhanced and synced with topology views of containers and global collections."
"Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols."
"OS monitoring needs to be better developed, as well as their services, e.g., cluster monitoring, URLs, etc."
"For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts."
"Make it easier to certify devices."
"It takes some time to learn how to use this solution."
"It's not a great performance management tool. Its reporting capabilities are not very good at all."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchase a license to use the solution every three years and we have multiple contracts. They have been increasing the price annually. We have a baseline for three years and then we need to pay the difference from the baseline, and we are in the process of negotiating a new price for all the licenses we need. The price overall is affordable."
"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"Do your homework and know how many devices you will be managing out of the gate. Be sure to project what your growth will be each year."
"We were looking at other vendors in the marketplace for NetFlow, and CA just beat everybody else in price, cost, and the size to implement. ​"
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"The price is very high."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Performance Management?
The tool helps us understand network performance.
What needs improvement with DX Performance Management?
Spectrum's topology view sometimes does not rebuild automatically when a device is shut down and reconnected. It requires manual discovery and rebuilding of the topology, which I hope can be improved.
What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals.
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
 

Also Known As

CA Performance Management
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Jack Henry & Assoc, Target, CenturyLink, Bell Canada, BrightHouse Networks, Telus, Unisys, Verizon, Southern California Edison, GEICO, Fidelity Investments, Wells Fargo, American Family Insurance Group, Deutsche Telekom AG 
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Performance Management vs. DX Spectrum and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
859,687 professionals have used our research since 2012.