Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
21st
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 (20th), Network Troubleshooting (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the DX NetOps category, the mindshare of DX Performance Management is 35.7%, down from 40.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DX Spectrum is 33.3%, down from 41.4% 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.
Umair (Abu Mohaymin) Akhlaque - PeerSpot reviewer
Good for monitoring, covers networks well
If you are looking for the right monitoring tool, Spectrum is one of the best solutions. It covers networks very well. It has all the capabilities that you're looking for when it comes to monitoring. Spectrum is great for root cause analysis. It has excellent correlation event management. Spectrum's stability and scalability are also amazing. If you have a CA Service Desk, then it can be integrated so that if you have open tickets they can be closed automatically. The configuration manager is great as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 integration with NetFlow, the NFA solution, so that we can have our flow forensics paired with the SNMP polling performance metrics on the same page."
"Great dashboards and good integration with other solutions."
"You can have thousands of devices inside and hundreds of thousands of interphases without a problem."
"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 gave us one location, one place to do all of group administration, and to build dashboards, and device administration, inventory counts... it really reduced our overall administrative overhead."
"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."
"There is a good amount of vendor certification which comes with the product. That's all factory-loaded, no need to load any custom-made files. Most of the metrics are calibrated and captured from the devices based on the defaults available from vendor certification."
"Discovery: Scheduled, on-demand, synchronized with eHealth."
"​The stability of the product is key. It never breaks, really. The stability and reliability of the Spectrum product have been top-notch.​"
"The containerization of different objects was very helpful in building an org structure. Being able to separately manage your MSP clients with separate visibility was also helpful."
"The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component."
"Spectrum is very useful for us, because the product lets us monitor and control all the various components of our infrastructure that support our business from an IT perspective."
"The fault management is perfect."
"The tool is very mature, and its valuable features are monitoring and configuration management."
 

Cons

"We would like to be capable of reporting network performance with a report strictly focused on the times outside business hours, which CA PM does not currently support. We have discontinued the use of the Business Hours Filtering until CA engineers are able to resolve or offer guidance."
"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."
"​Global synchronization errors. Sometimes it just doesn't finish in time due to the load."
"I'm not a fan of many extra features since they usually burden the software and reduce its reliability."
"This solution's implementation process could be quicker. They could also optimize the hardware requirements."
"We experience disconnections between the solutions own components."
"DX Performance Management should increase high availability. If one of my two data centers goes offline and the other is operational, I need a seamless transition from the primary to the secondary data center. It's crucial to maintain consistent monitoring of the devices during this transition. Therefore, I require continuous, 24/7 monitoring of my system using this tool."
"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 was somewhat complex to implement."
"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."
"I would like to see better scalability, and maybe, a more intuitive user interface. ​"
"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."
"DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features."
"I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management."
"​I would like to see them eliminate the Java console. The user interface for this is a Java applet that runs on your desktop, and it is very problematic for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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. ​"
"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 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."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"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."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"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."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which DX NetOps solutions are best for your needs.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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?
We are a customer of Broadcom, we use a group license that covers various CA products, including DX Spectrum. The company purchases the licenses they need from this group license, and we do not hav...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches t...
 

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 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.