Cisco Catalyst Center

Score8.6 out of 10

442 Reviews and Ratings

What is Cisco Catalyst Center?

Cisco 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 troubleshooting from a centralized interface. Designed for scalability and agility, it enables organizations to simplify complex network management inhybrid and multicloud deployments.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of C9200CX-8PT-2G Catalyst Switch

Screenshot of Cisco C9200CX-12P-2XGH Switch

Screenshot of Cisco Catalyst 3650 4x10Gig 48-Port PoE

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Screenshot of AIOps

Naldo Pinheiro

Master Specialist in Sales at Telebit Brasil (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At our Engineering team, we adopted Cisco Catalyst Center as the central platform to help us in the task of network management. This solution has helped us in automating operational processes, ensuring end-to-end security, and enhancing user experience across our corporate environments. Before implementing Cisco Catalyst Center, we faced challenges such as manual device configuration, limited visibility into network health, and very long resolution times for incidents which extra hours of work was wasted. With Cisco Catalyst Center, we’ve been able to reduce troubleshooting time and monitor network and application performance in almost real time.

Pros

On the process of automate provisioning of switches and access points
On the process of enforcing identity-based access policies
Reducing troubleshooting time with AI-powered diagnostic tools

Cons

Could be possible, activate or deactivate features on the templates wizard
Improve documentation, like for templates deployment and creation
Improve the backup related tasks, for example more options for cleanup

Return on Investment

Configuration changes that took days can now be implemented in minutes or hours, which saves money
Improved troubleshooting and root cause analysis fast with online solutions
Access policies and segmentation makes network more secure

Other Software Used

Cisco Meraki Dashboard, Cisco ThousandEyes, Microsoft Teams

Dominic Romandi

Senior Network Engineer in Information Technology at HCA (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are trying to level up our use of CatC more and more. Currently we are using it for network maps and AP placements, basic assurance, and troubleshooting. I am currently in the process of trying to get our alerting setup to run completely through CatC over to Webex. We eventually want to use it for dashboards for each facility we support (hospitals).

Pros

Device issue logging and tracking
AP mapping
Template editing
Access management for different categories of users

Cons

IPAM! This is sorely needed. The basic IPAM interface is terrible, seems like an oversight to simply have an IPAM UI similar to Solarwinds' basic tree. I cannot stress this one enough.
Event alert customization to really tweak and tailor how alerts are sent and when and with which frequency.
Training for CatC. It isnt particularly new user friendly or organized or comprehensive. A lot of marketing terms and not necessarily real world application or use cases.
Some of the menu layouts in the UI are not always as intuitive as one would expect. Sometimes they are counter intuitive.

Return on Investment

Not a ton yet to be honest. The AP mapping and integration with 9800 WLC's has been nice but a minor ROI change. Still a positive change.
Network scaling
Centralization of management
Countless hours saved with configuration templating for several large batch projects we have had. Not to mention the potential mitigation of problems related to typos.

Other Software Used

OneDrive, Atlassian Confluence, PyCharm

Andrew Dima

Network Engineer in Information Technology at City of Carlsbad (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Cisco Catalyst Center to manage our network environment, provision switches using Plug and Play, provision sites, access points. We also use it to provision our Wifi, and it does a great job. It cuts down the time that it takes to provision a device once it's fresh out of the box from a couple of hours to 20 minutes. I would say that it's got an unlimited use of potential, especially when you start getting into templated CLI. That cuts down on tedious tasks that we have to do, leaving us time to go and deal with more layer 8 issues.

Pros

Provisions SD-Access really well
Heat maps for wifi are really useful
Keeps a tab on device reachability

Cons

Bugs. Cisco always rushes to get out features and ends up creating bugs. For example, we had a stack that we added a switch to temporarily and removed and now that switch won't get out. TAC was not able to help.
Scalability. Currently we have an appliance for running DNA Center. I think that it could be virtualized.
Integration with Nexus switches

Return on Investment

Positive impact on team collaboration
Cut down time by automating repetitious tasks
Helpful insight into what is going on around the network

Alternatives Considered

Juniper SecIntel Threat Intelligence

Other Software Used

Cisco Spaces, Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers, Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

Tony Page

manager network infrastructure in Information Technology at sacred heart university (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the Cisco Catalyst Center for assurance, troublesooting and to program our switches We are also intgrating it with our WLC-9800-80. We have about 600 switch stacjs and about 3500 AP's Our campus includes about 100 buildings that have network coverage as well as multiple remote sites. We have a DR configuration with 2 units - located in different campuses

Pros

Baseline loading of new switches
Control of Multiple WLC's allowing sync of configs between them
Problem identifcation
network hardware idenification

Cons

Network Mapping functons
Trunk traffic identifacrtion
dashboards for multiple views

Return on Investment

reduce downtime by providing problem identification
Version control and automated loading of images
Initial configuration templates

Alternatives Considered

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

Jennifer Crowder

Network Analyst in Information Technology at Hazelwood Schools (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it every day to monitor whether our switches are working or not to know if our buildings are connected to the network, if the students have connectivity, and if their devices are able to connect to our networks. It tells us if our access points are up or down. It basically monitors all data coming in and out of our district. If we have any outages, I am able to discern where our outages are, what buildings are out, anything that's up or down through this program.

Pros

My favorite is that I am able to enter commands on the program itself without having to access another program. So I can actually enter into the switches from the program itself and enter commands into the actual switches without having to exit the program to go to another program to access the switches.

Cons

Probably training ability. There has not been a lot of access to training. So for example, my backup in the district, we have been looking for options to get her training and there hasn't been a lot of areas where we can reach out to get training for her other than to get certifications. So training would be nice for just on the specific program.

Return on Investment

We used to have to, with our old program, it was a program that we had to pay for in addition to the switches and the firmware and the upgrade software that we had. Now it can all be done just from the one catalyst center, which is nice to not have to pay for an additional program.

HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC)

Juniper Mist AI

ExtremeCloud IQ

Cisco Catalyst Center

What is Cisco Catalyst Center?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Reviews

Digital Transformation See my review of Cisco Catalyst Center

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Other Software Used

Catalyst Center DNAC

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Cons

Return on Investment

Other Software Used