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DX Spectrum vs Micro Focus Network Management Center [EOL] 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 Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), Network Monitoring Software (18th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
Micro Focus Network Managem...
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user1040238 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Fingerprint Consultancy
Monitors network devices, switches, and servers but the current dashboards need improvement
The only thing I can say needs improvement is in how they present the data to the end-users. End-users are looking for a dashboard with an attractive view. The current dashboards we have are sufficient for our needs, but not attractive for the business users at the upper management levels.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Offers a lot of functionality."
"The Spectrum tool improved our network assurance levels for our business units."
"Spectrum is the best."
"The product’s stability and robustness are valuable."
"Without a doubt the most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."
"Allows us to have a single console/notification point, with the alarms of all the tools that we use for monitoring."
"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."
"​It covers a lot of different types of hardware. It can do a lot and saves us time.​"
"We manage about one thousand network devices in our data center, and now we have visibility on all these network devices through this tool, which gives me immediate alerts or notifications when some devices fail and helps us to identify the root cause and fix it as fast as possible to keep the operation running smoothly."
 

Cons

"I would like to see easier use in some things, such as trying to configure certain correlations I've been working on. It's been a little bit of a hassle, because I'm not super familiar with their products and the best way to go about things."
"The price is high, as compared to other solutions."
"It has a limitation in that it needed an old version of Java."
"Currently, it's using BOXI/CABI, which is terrible as it’s unclear and I don’t like this."
"The EventDisp logic (code) is too complex."
"It's a little disheartening when you go in to find whatever it is procedure you need to do and it's just not there."
"I would say integration between performance monitoring and CA Spectrum, as well as improved graphing capabilities."
"NCM needs to be more user-friendly and refined."
"The only thing I can say needs improvement is in how they present the data to the end users. End users are looking for a dashboard with an attractive view. The current dashboards we have are sufficient for our needs, but not attractive for the business users at the upper management levels."
"The only thing I can say needs improvement is in how they present the data to the end-users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is very high."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"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."
"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’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"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 price is reasonable for the services and different products we have.Compared to others, it's reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Network Management Center, HPE Network Management Center
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Retegal, KMC Technologies, NEC Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: June 2026.
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