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DX SaaS vs DX Spectrum comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 SaaS
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (71st), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (18th)
DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (22nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

DX SaaS and DX Spectrum aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. DX SaaS is designed for Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) and holds a mindshare of 0.6%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
DX Spectrum, on the other hand, focuses on DX NetOps, holds 30.4% mindshare, down 38.9% since last year.
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)
DX NetOps
 

Featured Reviews

JM
It's highly customizable but lacks many features of available in competing solutions
DX SaaS is a latecomer to the APM market. Some things that are straightforward in Dynatrace are complicated in DX. For example, upgrading the agents is a seamless process in Dynatrace, but it's a pain in DX SaaS. You should be able to upgrade in the Application Command Center. However, it is not working correctly. They upgrade the product every 15 to 30 days, and the process isn't seamless. It's like implementing the solution all over again. We monitor around 1,000-plus applications and have more than 100,000 agents, so we require a smooth upgrade process. It's nearly impossible to stay updated on the latest version. Upgrading the Dynatrace agent is smoother. You don't need to worry about it. If the agent is on the Dynatrace server, you only need to push it. After that, you will be notified to reboot the APM or CLM. That's it. It took us three years to deploy the agent on 1,000-plus applications across 40,000-plus servers. Now, they are saying they are ending support for 7.0.49, and we need to upgrade. The path to upgrading isn't straightforward. The first process is manual, and we can push it to different servers so it is visible. What's our configuration? Who is going to do the configuration? It's not typical or practical. I don't understand how product teams don't see that. That feature is not there. We hope they add this feature to the new product called DX Platform, which consists of net apps. All those network monitoring tools will be combined into DX Platform. All the monitoring functionality is moved to DX Platform. You can't see a trend of your metrics grouped according to the last month, six months, one year, etc. The resolution is not there. I want granular visibility into data captured in the last 15 seconds. Those are essential features. I am not saying that DX lacks solid features, but they need to consider it. Some core functionality of the product is missing. We have around 50-plus requests to add previously available features in the on-premise version. That is one reason application teams are reluctant to go to DX SaaS. We are struggling to make them understand and trying to find alternatives for the existing features. We've had many discussions with the product team, telling them we need this functionality. However, they tell us it's not on their product roadmap. They are gradually adding other features, but we need our requirements to be a priority. You cannot say you will try to add those requested features that aren't on your product roadmap. There is always a catch in the product. We use around 10 tenants in production and six in the test run. First of all, there is nothing in the pane. If we are trying to see the data from an application, how do we know which tenant and application are reporting? There was a feature called Enterprise Team Center, but that functionality has been removed. All the applications are connected to the manager, which is connected to ETC. If you go to ETC, you can find the server and see your data, but that functionality was not there. Every product should have a management feature, but that is missing, and they are saying that it is not there in the roadmap. It is a basic requirement. You need to understand that. That is not there, manager, and they are saying that is not there in the roadmap as well. They have created a new tenant page temporarily. It is not there currently. It is not a required thing. There is a feature called Domain, but that concept is gone. We've struggled a lot, and what they provided in the initial migration stage is no longer working. We were delayed for two months because we didn't give them the correct input. They don't know their product. We tell them there is a problem, and they say they're fixing it. Are we their Guinea pig? You cannot treat your customers like this.
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

"DX allows you to customize and gives you a high degree of control."
"Actionable insight is the most valuable feature."
"It supports numerous platforms."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features of DX Spectrum are the comprehensive alerts."
"I can use it to detect whenever things go wrong on my network."
"The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us."
"It creates transparency and makes everything work by being more transparent."
"What I like best is the configuration management functionality."
"Spectrum does such a great job of discovering our network that we have a high confidence in what our inventory is."
 

Cons

"Old user interface and dashboards could be improved."
"The ability to scale presents a challenge as the cost of handling vast amounts of data in the cloud must be taken into account."
"DX SaaS is a latecomer to the APM market. Some things that are straightforward in Dynatrace are complicated in DX. For example, upgrading the agents is a seamless process in Dynatrace, but it's a pain in DX SaaS. You should be able to upgrade in the Application Command Center. However, it is not working correctly."
"It was somewhat complex to implement."
"It doesn’t give you performance metrics: You need CA eHealth for this."
"Event correlation only works on one server, rather than on all of the servers in the same cluster environment."
"It needs better integration with other CA products."
"We have had some issues with the spec server and the high availability replication of data. It fails over well, but it does not come back very well. We get duplicated events."
"If nobody else has said the documentation needs improvement, let's go there. I understand, you can either write about it or you can do it. And most of us would rather they do it, but now that they've done it, those of us that didn't do it, we need to go and find: "Where did they write about this to tell us how to do it?" That's always lacking."
"If the integration is simplified or improved, it will be a unique selling point in comparison to the competition on the market."
"DX Spectrum could be improved by them getting rid of the Java console. It would also be better with Turkish language support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our monthly cost for DX SaaS is approximately $5 per user, which I considered affordable."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"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."
"The price is very high."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Real Estate/Law Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

CA DXI, CA Digital Experience Insights
CA Spectrum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CNN
National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
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