Pico Corvil Analytics vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer comparison

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Time-series graphs are very good for performance analysis. We can do comparisons... We can say this is the latency in the last 24 hours, and this was the same 24-hour period a week ago and overlay the two time-series graphs on top of each other, so we can see the difference. That's a really powerful tool for us."

"We like the dashboards because they essentially organize all the sessions into one viewpoint."

"We're able to quickly drill down and find answers to events that are happening in real-time, using Corvil's analytics tools. That's the feature which is most in the spotlight..."

"The program is scalable enough for our usage."

"I rate the support in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer as 10 out of 10 because whenever I open a tech ticket, they respond instantly, and their engineer is well-equipped to resolve the issues."

"The performance analysis is a valuable feature. With the performance analyzer, we can see the realtime monitoring, the realtime performance, and historical performance on specific components like virtualization storage, CPU, servers and network equipment."

"So far, it is a very stable product."

"I would rate NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's stability ten out of ten."

"This tool provides insights into top utilization applications or it identifies which circuit or application is consuming the most on the complete one-gig circuit traffic path."

"The dashboard alerts me when a critical device goes off the network."

"It allows us to pinpoint which protocol is overloading the link."

"Before I got the Corvil training... one thing that was not very efficient was that every time you had to create a new stream or a new session from within Corvil... you had to tell it what protocol the message is going to come through and how to correlate messages, etc... After I went for the training, they had already added these nice features in the 9.4 version where it could do auto-discovery... Based on the traffic that it has already seen, it could create sessions on the fly."

"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."

"It's quite difficult to see, sometimes, how hard your Corvil is working. When we had a very busy feed that chucked out a lot of data it wasn't working very well on Corvil. We had to raise a case for it. It turned out to be that, in fact, we were overloading Corvil."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The analytics feature is very nice, but it's mostly software. We are hoping that it could be embedded in ASICs, so it could be faster."

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

"The solution needs better log management and log coordination with tools."

"The solution should improve its automation feature. It's quite limited compared to other products."

"Deployment needs improvement. The process is complicated, requiring attention to infrastructure settings and installation of components like the origin application server, platform, close storage, and policy agents."

"Technical support could be improved with quicker response times."

"I'm expecting to see a little bit more artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. They need a bit more sophistication in that."

"Currently, it shows only the top ten applications or ports in use, while the remaining data appears as 'remaining traffic,' causing confusion."

"SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve its flexibility and integration with AI to provide analytics beyond just showing up/down statuses and traffic volumes."

"It's scalable, but it could be simplified because it's not completely easy."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"It is pricey versus its competitors."

"I don't have information on the licensing cost for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because it's bundled with another SolarWinds solution. My organization has seven different models and pays for the license yearly. My organization also had to deploy additional pollers, but the cost wasn't very expensive, though I can't give the exact numbers."

"We pay yearly, and we are happy with its price."

"The price of this solution is exceptional."

"SolarWinds' pricing structure is the primary reason why some customers opt for another solution such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. In NTA, you are charged per port, meaning that if you have a 24-port switch you will be charged for 24 individual nodes. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, on the other hand, charges per switch, such that if you add a switch, the entire switch will count as one single node."

"The pricing is really good."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"While the pricing is fair, it could be better."

"For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly."