NETSCOUT nGeniusONE and Kentik are key competitors in the network performance monitoring and management markets. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE appears to have the upper hand in deep packet inspection while Kentik offers superior flexibility in reporting and user friendliness.
Features: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE offers detailed traffic analysis through packet inspection, NetFlow traffic analysis, and application-specific monitoring. Deep packet inspection is particularly crucial for identifying network issues. Kentik provides user-friendly features, including a Data Explorer for traffic analysis, DDoS alarming, and flexible reporting. Network flow insights and anomaly detection are appreciated for traffic optimization and real-time visibility.
Room for Improvement: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE faces criticism for its complex user interface and a need for a more modular payment approach to manage costs related to unused features. Getting away from reliance on physical appliances and simplifying the GUI could benefit users. Kentik's API usability and actionable insights from network anomalies could be improved. Better integration with existing network tools and a simpler GUI are also desired improvements.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE provides diverse deployment options, including on-premises and hybrid cloud, but often requires dedicated engineers due to complexity. Customer service is rated high, although the price for support services is considered steep. Kentik offers both on-premises and private cloud deployments, noted for ease of use. However, technical support is satisfactory but could be more flexible and proactive.
Pricing and ROI: NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is perceived as costly, with concerns about paying for unused features. Licensing flexibility is available, but overall expenses can be a burden, especially for smaller enterprises. Despite costs, quick troubleshooting provides a notable ROI. Kentik is priced by device and flow, offering more flexible burstable licenses. Although its pricing is seen as expensive, its cost-effectiveness is acknowledged due to improvements in troubleshooting efficiency.
In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.
I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.
The distributor's support is rated an eight out of ten, indicating room for improvement in SLA handling.
They need to work on their response time and overall competence.
Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.
The solution is highly scalable and accommodates the growth needs effectively.
In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.
I rate the stability of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE as ten out of ten since we have not experienced any escalations or downtime issues from the end user's side.
Datadog is more stable than NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, being a SaaS-based solution compared to on-prem solutions like NETSCOUT.
More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.
Customers want to have service assurance, including NPM and APM, from one vendor.
It would be beneficial to see more AI capabilities included in nGeniusONE to further streamline processes.
Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
The cost depends on the size of the customer, as sizing controls the pricing.
The most important feature is cybersecurity.
One of the most valuable features of Kentik, especially for service providers, is its ability to visualize all the BGP peering and the status of the BGP peering platform.
The capability of real-time traffic intelligence is also very useful because it allows for the comparison between real-time and historical packet levels.
Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.
With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.
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