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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

"Spectrum is a very stable product."
"DX Spectrum has been great for us; it's the strongest available, the main problem is the pricing, but it's in accordance with the features."
"We use Spectrum for network analysis, failure detection, and sending information to our service management tool."
"​The stability of the product is key. It never breaks, really. The stability and reliability of the Spectrum product have been top-notch.​"
"Overall it is a good tool."
"CA Spectrum helps our organization improve network service levels, and with Spectrum’s integrated automated fault management and fault isolation features, it helped us reduce MTTR by 50% and costs as well."
"The most valuable feature is automatic discovery."
"It is an excellent product, and is probably one of the best we have seen in terms of being able to do mass configurations in the network."
"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

"There should be better integration with other Broadcom products, like network performance manager. Currently, for every part of a product, you need a separate server environment. You have something for Spectrum, you have something for network performance, and you have something for NetFlow. There are a lot of islands and server farms with different technologies. They should be redeveloped to get one platform for all."
"Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems."
"I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement."
"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."
"The CA Technologies sales team destroyed their relationship with our business units."
"I'd like to have more dynamic weather map capabilities and network mapping tools."
"I would like to see CA move Spectrum, Performance Manager, and some of their other tools moved to a SaaS based model. You see a lot of other manufacturers which are moving toward SaaS based models."
"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

"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 price is very high."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"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."
"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
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
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...
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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
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