No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
41st
Ranking in DX NetOps
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (1st)
DX Spectrum
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
21st
Ranking in DX NetOps
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Network Troubleshooting (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the DX NetOps category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 27.4%, down from 34.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Spectrum is 24.7%, down from 30.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
DX NetOps Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
DX Spectrum24.7%
DX Performance Management27.4%
Other47.900000000000006%
DX NetOps
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1810893 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Operations Specialist at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Flexibility and detailed performance stats enable effective network monitoring
Spectrum is very good at monitoring all network faults and configurations. It enables me to take action based on network issues. The Performance Management provides detailed network performance stats, including CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth. Additionally, Spectrum is flexible and allows me to organize and treat devices uniquely without impacting other devices.
PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Considering all these factors, it's really a good and easy product for analyzing your network performance, health status, and the quality of services."
"It can be easily integrated with other systems and is powerful enough to collect data from a large number of devices."
"You can have thousands of devices inside and hundreds of thousands of interphases without a problem."
"In the last three years, it has had a great improvement in its stability; it is great that it works and we have had no outages in this time."
"What is most useful is visibility."
"The tool helps us understand network performance."
"The capability where not only the traditional SNMP information is captured but also the netflow data; who is consuming the data on the WAN, and voice-related information, is helpful. The voice quality makes it very easy for first- and second-line operators to see where the issue is, and who is impacted."
"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."
"It's a mature product and has been around for a long time."
"It's a good tool; it's simple to do the configuration and has good discovery and integration."
"It is very stable. We have not had any major issues in over 10 years."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"If you like to sleep at night and not be disturbed on the weekends, get Spectrum."
"The automation we have in place saves us some head count and data is now more accurate."
"With the implementation of the shallow water approach, we've been able to significantly cut down on the number and duration of outages and the number of severities in all the categories."
"Spectrum does such a great job of discovering our network that we have a high confidence in what our inventory is."
 

Cons

"We experience disconnections between the solutions own components."
"There are some issues. We started supporting UTA and began to see both major and minor problems."
"The database should have higher availability in case of an incident."
"There are some areas in the technology right now, like with VMs, where we are lacking with our abilities to get inside the VM to monitor traffic within the machine."
"It seems like we escalate more than I would like to. If anything, they should look at how the tier support goes in place."
"The quantity of views which are tied to specific metric families is too high. Also, the problem is the view doesn't tell you which metric family it uses, so you don't know why you don't see data."
"Today, tenants are bound to a data collector which requires a lot of networking and resources to configure."
"For CA PM, there should be a way of easily migrating the reports coming from eHealth going to CA Performance Center, since CA PC is replacing eHealth."
"The report area is very poor and we cannot work properly with additional information and the custom reports."
"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."
"No good technical support from CA."
"The price is very high. It makes it very difficult with respect to the business because, with any other product, we have to look at a lower-cost licensing model."
"The EventDisp logic (code) is too complex."
"There appears to be no intelligence within Spectrum itself, for example if we were to move a network device to a different switch port, it will see the neighbor as being available, but the link or switch port as down."
"The visual is good but it's a little archaic."
"Reporting and network bandwidth monitoring features needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I like the licensing model because it's device-based."
"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."
"They should provide more scalable licensing for the product."
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of network devices."
"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. ​"
"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."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which DX NetOps solutions are best for your needs.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your primary use case for DX Performance Management?
I have used Spectrum for monitoring all network faults, configurations, and troubleshooting network issues. It provides network performance stats, such as CPU, memory, and interface bandwidth detai...
What advice do you have for others considering DX Performance Management?
I would recommend this solution based on its functionality, flexibility, customizability, and ease of use. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I am just a customer and not a par...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
 

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: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.