SolarWinds NPM and Meraki Dashboard compete in network management. SolarWinds NPM excels in environments needing comprehensive management while Meraki Dashboard is favored for ease of use in SMB environments.
Features: SolarWinds NPM provides robust real-time visibility, extensive customization options, and supports multiple vendors. Meraki Dashboard offers simplicity, centralized multisite management, and integration of network management features including SD-WAN and wireless LAN control.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM could enhance its interface simplicity and accuracy in network discovery. Users also experience high resource utilization. Meraki Dashboard could improve VPN client capabilities, port configuration intuitiveness, and offer more flexible pricing. Additional API functionalities and better tracking could enrich its offerings.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM deployment generally requires complex setup due to on-premises reliance but is praised for technical robustness. Meraki Dashboard, being cloud-based, simplifies deployment and is known for responsive customer service, although some users find its pricing model inflexible.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM's tiered licensing is often costly for large enterprises but delivers significant ROI by reducing support costs. Meraki Dashboard, while initially expensive, offers value through ease of management and a simpler licensing model beneficial for small businesses.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
When our site went down, Cisco's technical support was very responsive and effective, so I would rate them nine out of ten for their support.
The support response time can be slow, sometimes taking up to fifteen hours.
They are instantly available for technical support from Meraki Dashboard.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
We have not encountered any downtime related to the Meraki cloud feature in the last five years.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
Improving AI could be a significant role-changer for many aspects.
The cameras are not connected through Meraki, but all other devices are on Meraki networks.
I would like to enhance my expertise on Cisco Umbrella and Cisco M, which is an endpoint security management tool.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Features such as taking backup of the devices or configurations of the devices can be included in further versions of SolarWinds NPM.
The cost of the Meraki solution is high, which may not be affordable for smaller companies, especially in developing countries.
If we involve a third-party vendor, the price will definitely go up.
PRTG's package offers all features in one bundle, which is cost-effective.
The solution is considered expensive.
With the detailed visibility feature of Meraki Dashboard, I get connected clients information, including how much data each client downloaded and what applications they accessed.
Meraki Dashboard offers an exceptional centralized management solution that allows easy updates and monitoring of various network features, including bandwidth usage and content filtering.
You can also implement some security measures over Meraki Dashboard, such as Cisco Umbrella, which is a powerful DNS security tool, and you can manage FTD firewalls through Meraki Dashboard, making it very beneficial.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
Product | Market Share (%) |
---|---|
SolarWinds NPM | 4.5% |
Meraki Dashboard | 1.1% |
Other | 94.4% |
Company Size | Count |
---|---|
Small Business | 22 |
Midsize Enterprise | 13 |
Large Enterprise | 25 |
Company Size | Count |
---|---|
Small Business | 59 |
Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
Large Enterprise | 84 |
Meraki Dashboard is a comprehensive cloud-based platform that offers centralized management and control for all Meraki networking and security products. It provides a user-friendly interface, allowing administrators to easily monitor and configure their network infrastructure from anywhere. With real-time visibility, troubleshooting becomes effortless, ensuring optimal performance and minimizing downtime.
The intuitive dashboard offers a holistic view of the network, enabling quick identification of potential issues and proactive measures. It simplifies network deployment and scaling, with zero-touch provisioning and automatic firmware updates. The robust security features include advanced threat protection, content filtering, and VPN connectivity.
Meraki Dashboard also offers powerful analytics and reporting capabilities, providing valuable insights into network usage, application performance, and user behavior. With its seamless integration and scalability,
Meraki Dashboard is the ideal solution for organizations of all sizes, ensuring efficient network management and enhanced productivity.
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
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