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Cisco Catalyst Center vs. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst Center

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ACisco Catalyst Center provides an intent-based platform for managing enterprise networks across campus, branch, and edge environments. It combines automation, analytics, and assurance to streamline IT operations, improve security posture, and reduce manual tasks. With integratedAI/ML-driven insights, policy-based controls, and end-to-end visibility across wired and wireless infrastructures, Catalyst Center empowers IT teams toproactively detect issues, enforce compliance, and accelerate…N/A

    SolarWinds NPM

    Score7 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds NPM is a monitoring and performance management platform. It provides performance troubleshooting support, auto network discovery, customizable thresholds, and can be rapidly deployed.

    $1,638

    per year

    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds NPM
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    NPM
    $1,638
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds NPM
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds NPM
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    Cisco is still the top of its class in switching/routing even with an increase in competition over the years. Support is great but more documentation is needed so we can find information for ourselves and not always open a TAC case.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    We have evaluated SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (npm) for some time in the past and found that, while it has its merits (cost-effectiveness amongst others), the Cisco DNA Center is a more robust product overall, and is better suited for a primarily Cisco-based network …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    There are some other products that provide some of the benefits that Cisco DNA center offers, but I haven't found one solution that matches up against Cisco DNA Center. Our organization prefers Cisco products over others due to their resiliency. Since we have Cisco products, …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    I have not used any other products like Cisco DNA Center, as this was really the only SDN product we thought would be worthwhile since we are almost a 100% Cisco shop.
    Incentivized
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds NPM
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is dedicated to network devices so it's really efficient, Zabbix or PRTG are trying to do too many things and it's very complicated to achieve same things as with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    206 Answers
    91%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    161 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    32 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    214 Answers
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    33 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    84%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    136 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    28 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    79%
    Implementation went as expected
    151 Answers
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    29 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds NPM
    Network Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Cisco Catalyst Center and SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
    Feature
    Cisco Catalyst Center
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
    8.2
    231 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Automated network device discovery00 Ratings7.8210 Ratings
    Network monitoring00 Ratings8.8231 Ratings
    Baseline threshold calculation00 Ratings8.6201 Ratings
    Alerts00 Ratings9.4228 Ratings
    Network capacity planning00 Ratings7.9188 Ratings
    Packet capture analysis00 Ratings7.2130 Ratings
    Network mapping00 Ratings7.1190 Ratings
    Customizable reports00 Ratings7.9212 Ratings
    Wireless infrastructure monitoring00 Ratings7.6153 Ratings
    Hardware health monitoring00 Ratings9.4215 Ratings
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    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds NPM
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    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds NPM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (186 ratings)
    10.0
    (237 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.4
    (27 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (16 ratings)
    9.1
    (21 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (31 ratings)
    8.0
    (28 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds NPM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Security with identity-based access control and segmentation via integration with Cisco ISE, supporting zero-trust architectures. Centralized Management for a large campus environment with centralized management of wired and wireless equipment. Automation of tasks like: provisioning, configuration, and software upgrade, reducing manual effort of those tasks. It could be improved to Multi-Vendor Support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Solarwinds NPM is well suited for medium to large networks, it may be a bit heavy for the SOHO environment as most of the tools and reports are designed for monitoring KPIs which may not be critical for a small shop. NPM can handle large networks with several sites and mixed technologies ranging from networks, server systems, storage devices and SLA reporting.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • I enjoy having a more modern tool for viewing PSIRTs and CVEs on our catalyst devices.
    • I enjoy all the different views I have for my inventory.
    • I think templates work well for zero day configuration.
    • I love the newer features for showing what configuration is going to be changed and deployed before you deploy it.
    • I like that I can see in-band and out-of-band configuration history.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Out of the Monitoring of almost all Network Devices.
    • Build custom pollers to monitor which is not supported out of the box.
    • Further you can alert on these custom metrics and Out of the box metrics.
    • It provides you great dashboards, Reports features.
    • You can integrate it with any MoM layer tools either using its API or sending out traps.
    • Out of the box Integration with Service Now ITSM Tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • Granularity. And so for us, and our use case might not be the same as a majority of customers, but we have a environment which frequently changes. So we're not a traditional corporate environment which stays relatively static or still reprovision. We want to reconfigure our environment to meet whatever the needs of our customers are. And at the moment it's like for some of the ways that we have to configure it, we just want to give something a little tap, but we have to hit it with a sledgehammer, which then often has knock on impacts other services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • The software upgrade process is a little hairy and has caused me trouble on occasion.
    • The server that it needs to run is a bit of a resource hog along with the SQL server.
    • Some additional features like the network map are a bit clunky compared to some other products that we use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    I think new products are often "half-baked" or over hyped when they release, as was the case with DNAC. We were well ahead of the curve in acquiring it. But as it has matured it is now a fantastic addition to our infrastructure. I think we are easing into a stage where it is hard to envision a large organization NOT having Catalyst Center in place. If for nothing outside of the mapping and troubleshooting aspects; using it as a "source of truth".
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    The entire IT staff relies on NPM in its daily operations. It would be impossible for us to maintain our level of service without it. If SolarWinds gets to proud of their product and begins to over charge for it, we would be forced to reconsider and use a different product. But as it stands it is worth the price to renew it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    Cisco DNA Center is going to help us in security, simplicity and ease of administration. Cisco DNA Center is complete management and control platform that simplifies and streamlines network operations. Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is quite an extensive product, covering all our bases and requirements. There are a lot of customizable options and features which you can work with for their alerting which is really useful. I haven't found anything yet which I thought SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) could do, but it actually couldn't so overall it works nicely and does the job.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Always available. Always is important to plan the software available during the machine/application setup.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Pages load slow, especially the bettors map. Could be that my server is old.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    El soporte de CISCO DNA Center es muy bueno, responden a mis dudas pero no he tenido oportunidad de reportar un incidente o determinar un tiempo de respuesta critico. The support of CISCO DNA Center is very good, they answer my questions, but I have not had the opportunity to report an incident or determine a critical response time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    In all of the times that we called support, someone at SolarWinds had the answer for us in a timely manner. Through thwack and other internet searching, we have been able to resolve all of our issues that arose to our satisfaction. The support staff have always been knowledgeable of their products or had a fellow support staff member to rely on to get the needed answers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Cisco
    It was informative, but the labs were not available long enough for us to get intimately familiar with CCNA before it was closed. The course instructor was well informed and got us as close to ready as she could.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    The training is good but during the implementation, you can get situations not learned during the training. The trainer was very open to hearing the questions about use cases and always sharing his experience. I really recommend having official training to take advantage of all features that the NPM can bring.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Make sure your inventory is accurate. Stand up some virtual machines for testing prior to installation. Make sure your database and its credentials are setup. Think about things you want to monitor that may not be obvious - UPS units, Door hardware, PBX systems, Fabric Channel switches, firewalls, routers, switches. Try to setup SNMP on these devices and have an IP that you will assign to the new server. If you do that it will go well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    We started out with using Cisco Prime infrastructure and we migrated to DNA center or Catalyst Center from Prime Infrastructure. We found that it wasn't apples to Apples migration. It wasn't exactly, it wasn't a direct upgrade. There were a lot of key differences, but yeah, I think that that was probably the most similar thing
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    We selected SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor because of the capabilities of the product versus the price. The tools also work well with their other products and support is fairly good. We have never had a problem when we needed to make a call.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    From the direction and information I have been given it is very flexible and scalelable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Yeah, I mean that last one for sure. The software independent of the hardware, I mean, it's just easy. They made it so easy to just, and fast and efficient to upgrade your entire organization within days, weeks, months. And you're not spending, your maintenance windows get a lot shorter. You can schedule more maintenance windows just because you know there's going to be some type of consistency with it and there's just, I'm sure there will be a hiccup one day, but there just hasn't really been too many issues with us using that product, especially for maintenance, window upgrades, things like that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • SolarWinds allows us to proactively address hardware issues before they impact the business. We recently had a server that was experiencing issues sporadically and we were able to use the data from SolarWinds to track down and correct the issue before it tanked the server.
    • SolarWinds gives our IT department some piece of mind knowing that they'll be alerted of any issues real time.
    • We can use SolarWinds data to justify needed to replace or upgrade certain equipment that is key to our core business.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

    Screenshot of AIOpsScreenshot of BaselinesScreenshot of PoliciesScreenshot of HealthScreenshot of Network HierarchyScreenshot of PoE

    SolarWinds NPM Screenshots

    Screenshot of Network monitoring software used to reduce network outages and detect, diagnose, and resolve multi-vendor network performance issues.Screenshot of See relationships for routers, switches, interfaces, volumes, and groups, updated automatically without user intervention to maintain the network, not network maps.Screenshot of Reduce visibility gaps into critical network switches, firewalls, and load balancers with Network Insight for Cisco Nexus, Cisco ASA, and F5 BIG-IP.Screenshot of Reduce the flood of unnecessary network alerts. Create alerts based on simple or complex nested trigger conditions, defined parent/child dependencies, and network topology.Screenshot of Identify dead zones and improve wireless coverage. With its network monitoring tool, users can access out-of-the-box wireless reports, including wireless availability and rogue access points.Screenshot of Configure alerts by calculating dynamic baseline threshold data with network performance monitoring software.