Pico Corvil Analytics vs SolarWinds ipMonitor comparison

"What is most valuable is the ability to troubleshoot when a client complains of spikes in latencies. It gives us the ability to go granular, all the way down to looking at the network packets and analyze them."

"As part of my role in monitoring multiple client connections, I would use Pico Corvil Analytics to set up alerts for performance issues, such as TCP resends and dropped packets. These alerts would trigger when the volume was low and performance was poor, allowing me to work with our trading partners to find a resolution. I would present them with the statistics I had and together, we would identify the source of the issue. This collaboration resulted in the client often reconfiguring their systems. For example, we may find that a network connection needed to be made. Overall, this proactive approach helped to maintain strong connections with our clients and minimize disruptions to trading revenue."

"We can use CLI with the UI for configuring the new monitoring system, which is good."

"With the Corvil Stored Data Analyzer module, we can use it for test data or a set of production data to set up the configuration for latency setup, so we can use the fields to correlate messages."

"We use the data to analyze how much time we spend within the applications. Then, based on that, we are doing multiple analyses and types of investigations to work on reducing the amount of time spent on the latency, which helps our applications."

"The analytics features of Corvil are really good... As long as you know what the field is in the message, you can build your metrics based on that field... It means you can do the analytics that you actually care for. You can customize it..."

"It allows us to trace the flow. The logic is built sufficiently for us to be able to break down clients' orders, underlying child orders, and execution. Thus, it's a good way for us to trace client flow through a myriad of different internal systems."

"The performance metrics are pretty good. We've got everything from the network layer to the actual application layer. We can see what's going on with things like sending time and batching."

"IPAM is used for IP address reservation and tracking, helping us easily identify live IP addresses."

"IPAM is used for IP address reservation and tracking, helping us easily identify live IP addresses."

"The most valuable feature is the availability of end devices."

"Alerting isn't great... you can only put in one email address in. And that's for all kinds of alerting on the box."

"For FIX protocol, maybe we could have built-in configurations for signatures and decoders. Also, for certain protocols, which are newer, we would like to just add the signatures within the decoders itself."

"I have seen errors where the CNE and the CMC haven't synced because of something missing in the CMC, which was there in the CNE. We would get some type of error, but it doesn't actually say what exactly was missing in the CNE."

"While the product is scalable, it's not easy to scale. It needs investment hardware and network bandwidth consideration. It's not something you can just do overnight."

"Overall, the Corvil device needs a little bit of training for people to handle it. If that could be reduced and made more user-friendly, more intuitive, it would be better."

"In terms of performance analysis, if you really want to dig down into the minutiae and get statistics on the important things... that would be the only piece lacking because, in our environment, we have thousands and thousands of symbols. With the architecture that Corvil is built on, it's cumbersome."

"There is definitely room for improvement in the reporting. We've tried to use the reporting in Corvil but, to me, it feels like a bolt-on, like not a lot of thought has gone into it. The whole interface where you build reports and schedule them is very clunky."

"The creation of charts and real-time windows was somewhat cumbersome. The vendor's website had an application called App Agent that required improvement. This API was designed to track message rates between microservers ingested into a microservice memory map. It allowed users to monitor the number of transactions that occurred at specific points within the application, and it was quite impressive. However, it had some limitations, and it mainly served as a tool for basic tracking. The protocols it employed could reveal the type of server-to-server communication and the specific order types, but it was not able to provide a more in-depth analysis of the application. The vendor has the potential to integrate application metrics more extensively into their product suite."

"The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools."

"The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools."

"The solution does not include enough features and has some performance issues."

"I like the way they've decoupled the hardware now... Everything's based on the licensing side now. The way they do the packs is fair. It's very flexible in that we're not charged per decoder, we're charged for a certain pack. Whether we use one decoder or 20 decoders, as long as they're in the same pack, there's no extra charge. Expensive but fair is how I'd summarize it."

"It is pricey versus its competitors."

"We bought a box from Corvil and it was $200,000 for one big CNE. Then there are obviously the recurring maintenance fees. The licensing is perpetual but the maintenance fees are not."

"As I am working more with Corvil, it looks like it is improving diagnostic times."

"Pico Corvil Analytics is expensive. There are several competitors in the market. Selling this solution to a trading firm might be challenging as there are several other solutions available that can perform basic similar operations, such as using Wireshark and Python scripts to obtain the required values. However, that does not nearly approach the comprehensive end-2-end automated depth of metrics and their correlations that Pico Corvil Analytics provides."

"The pricing is very expensive. Corvil could work on the pricing."

"Corvil has reduced the time it takes us to isolate root causes."

"The solution is a bit expensive because the annual license does not include new features that are priced as add-ons."