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DX Spectrum vs OptiView XG [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
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (20th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (19th), Network Troubleshooting (6th), DX NetOps (1st)
OptiView XG [EOL]
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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…
MW
A valuable, impressive, and portable product that saves time and has great scalability and stability
It just saves time. We have run into situations where contractors come in, and they plug in a WiFi device that is handing out DHCP addresses, which affects the rest of the network. To be able to quickly identify from where the problem is originating, you need a network tool that can identify the device that is doing this. It just brings into clear focus the exact issue when there is a problem or outage. When there is a crisis and you've several people wanting to know an estimate of when things are going to be back up and running again, you need to have answers. I have been at places that didn't have a tool like that. I know one place that had an outage for almost a week, and it was craziness. It turned out to be just a bad cable. That's all it was. They were having trouble with their email server, which was an on-premise email server, but emails were taking six hours to appear. The whole problem was because of a bad network cable. When I plugged in the Fluke analyzer, it analyzed and told me immediately that there were transmission errors on this one port from one switch. It told me this within 10 minutes. It is an incredible product.

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 the ability to put health checks in place not only for the infrastructure but for some of the services that are on top of the infrastructure."
"The capability of handling and monitoring with SNMP and working with the SNMP traps is much better than other products."
"The monitoring just comes to us: "Oh, there's something wrong with that machine." It tells us. There are some 50,000 machines or so, all doing different things. And if they go down we hear about it."
"​Stability has been good. We really have not had any issues.​"
"I have found the cross analysis feature to be the most valuable."
"I can use it to detect whenever things go wrong on my network."
"It is very stable. We have not had any major issues in over 10 years."
"The fault management is perfect."
"It is a very valuable tool. It goes out and does a discovery, which is a great process of it. You could have something like a rogue DHCP server, and it will identify it, and then you can see to which switch port it is connected. It is quite an impressive tool. I really liked it because you didn't have to install an agent on anything. It would just go out and do its discovery. For me, that's great."
"Gives us the ability to see our network."
 

Cons

"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."
"DX Spectrum needs to incorporate faster support."
"I would like to see better scalability, and maybe, a more intuitive user interface. ​"
"From a functionality perspective, the product is not doing what it should. Also, there are some concerns about the accessibility. I would appreciate additional out-of-the-box troubleshooting scripts, like templates for addressing various issues. Currently, when troubleshooting online, I need to create my scripts. It would be beneficial if the platform could provide pre-built scripts or templates to help automate certain troubleshooting tasks."
"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."
"​I would like to see them eliminate the Java console. The user interface for this is a Java applet that runs on your desktop, and it is very problematic for us."
"I would suggest improving the web GUI to improve the device monitor configuration and to improve or to integrate the new tool for reporting."
"The upgrade process could be smoother. More of the steps around upgrading could be automated."
"Its price can be improved. Their support can also be improved a little bit. In terms of features, it did everything I wanted it to do. With more features, I would have to start installing network agents or something else, and I don't want to have to install anything. This was the value for me about this device."
"I would like a built-in tap feature which doesn't interfere with the network, and it allows you to see what is happening there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"The price is very high."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"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."
"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."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"Its price was a bit excessive. The device that I had died. It is under warranty, and they want $20,000 for another one. I just don't want to spend that kind of money, so I'm trying to find an alternate solution. They have annual maintenance on it, which probably was 10% a year, so it all starts to add up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
14%
Non Profit
13%
Educational Organization
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
 

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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
 

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...
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Also Known As

CA Spectrum
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
XG is used in all industries. Example customers include: Republic National Distributing Company, Titelive, CitiGroup, Los Angeles Unified School District, Saudi German Hospital, DeKalb County Schools, Valdosta State University, The Everett Clinic, Bio-Reference, Miami-Dade Library, Mitel, Borsa Istanbul, Cimarex, Air National Guard Lowndes County, High Point City, Carrollton City Schools, Kern County, Pruitt Communications and Bosch Group.
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: October 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.