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DX Spectrum vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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 Spectrum
Ranking in Network Management Applications
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 3.6%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 2.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DX Spectrum3.6%
IBM Tivoli NetCool2.4%
Other94.0%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

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…
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is automatic discovery."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"It is easy to understand and determine when and/or where the network is failing."
"Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
"We were able to standardize the internal processes across all internal departments, resulting in almost an elimination of non-standard process flows through our organization."
"Generally, I would recommend DX Spectrum because, despite its pricing issue, it is a valuable solution."
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"It helps our NetOps group actually handle alarms in a way that lets them see the bigger picture of those alarms, and how they might affect our services. It helps us communicate information about the network state better to services that might be impacted by a specific network condition."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"NetCool has a huge database that can collect and process about one million alarms a day."
"It's very easy to use."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution. NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility. There are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite. Whenever an issue happens, rather than going to technical support, if you find the exact issue in Google, you can get tech notes for that particular issue."
"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
"It's very easy to use."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
 

Cons

"The upgrade process could be smoother. More of the steps around upgrading could be automated."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow."
"Technical support for this product is not so good. It needs improvement."
"Event correlation only works on one server, rather than on all of the servers in the same cluster environment."
"We have a lot of different monitoring tools in the background, so orchestration has been a little bit of a challenge."
"It's not a great performance management tool. Its reporting capabilities are not very good at all."
"The biggest issue is our integration right now between UIM and Spectrum is lacking."
"There's a little bit of complexity to the initial install because you're dealing with operating systems. You have to make sure all the prerequisites are done, anti-virus exceptions, etc. Then there's the bringing it up and then there's discovery of the network and setting that up. It takes time."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"The solution is too expensive."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"The price is very high."
"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 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."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
32%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise88
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What do you like most about IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The tool had many built-in automation capabilities.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The main challenge is its licensing model, which is very complicated.
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.