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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 (9th), Network Monitoring Software (26th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (23rd), Network Troubleshooting (7th), 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

"The granular access control that it provided so that you could only see devices that were related to what you were working on was great. I couldn't see the entire inventory of devices. I could only see the ones that were related to my work. It has got a very granular access control component."
"The network monitoring features are the product’s most valuable, due to the lack of these capabilities in any other monitoring tool."
"Spectrum is heavily loaded with alarm configuration, so it can detect whenever things go wrong, including issues I didn't even know could happen on my network, and I have integrated it into my ITIL incident, change, and problem management systems so it feeds right into my existing processes."
"The alarm and root cause analysis features are the most valuable to me, as they help to pinpoint causes of outages and performance issues and identify the specific component responsible for an issue, thus accelerating problem and issue resolution."
"The integration point."
"The valuable features of this tool are its scalability and ability to automate inputs and outputs of a closed system."
"The fault management is perfect."
"It has really helped to create a complete solution so that clients can see their whole IT network in one complete console/solution."
"We have visibility on all our network devices, through this tool, which gives me immediate alerts or notifications when some devices fail."
"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

"While deploying the tool, there were space and storage issues since the application loads for a long period each time there is an update."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow."
"Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols."
"A lot of the filtering and orchestration of the background takes a lot of manual work."
"No good technical support from CA."
"I'd like to see cross-landscape correlation."
"DX Spectrum is stable. However, now and then there are some issues, but overall it is good."
"From the users perspective the look and feel of dashboards of Spectrum would be easier to use and for understanding as APM will be in 10.5 version which we saw in CA World."
"The only thing I can say needs improvement is in how they present the data to the end-users."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"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."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"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."
"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)."
"The price is very high."
"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
17%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.