Cisco Catalyst Center vs. NetBrain

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Catalyst Center (formerly Cisco DNA Center) is a network management system that leverages AI to connect, secure, and automate customer’s network operations. It harnesses the Catalyst family of switching and wireless through AI-enabled automation that simplifies the IT experience and streamlines complex network operations. Offering operational flexibility, Cisco Catalyst Center can be deployed on-premises on a physical appliance or in a VMware virtual environment, or in a…N/A
NetBrain
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
NetBrain Technologies in Burlington offers their network automation and management platform, emphasizing dynamic and accurate network mapping and automated troubleshooting and basic security analysis, as well as integration with an existing CMDB.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Catalyst CenterNetBrain
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst CenterNetBrain
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Catalyst CenterNetBrain
Considered Both Products
Cisco Catalyst Center
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
We have checked other solutions like NetBrain, and we discovered that Cisco DNA Center is way simpler to use, and it gives us exactly what we need. Even though it provides much less information, this tool is capable of showing you exactly what you need. Also, in terms of …
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
The software upgrades and ability to integrate with the wireless telemetry data set Cisco DNA Center ahead. However the automation with Change Control, Intent and better path mapping (even across MPLS and WAN Circuits) make NetBrain a needed tool to get that gives you that …
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
DNA Center is superior in that it can perform remote upgrades and stage the upgrades along with automatically identifying products on the network.
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
My advice for anyone who is looking into implementing this solution is to start with Cisco Assurance and do the mapping of the network. I would suggest asking for help from the partners to help with the installation. You can do it on your own but you will easily save the money …
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
DNAC at this time can do much more and really there is nothing similar to SDA that I can fine from other vendors
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
DNA Center is best for Cisco environments and is a more complete management, automation, assurance, and deployment tool.
NetBrain
Chose NetBrain
Best part of NetBrain is that it is customisable ,you can create apps based on your requirement and run them in your environment. Lot of flexibility
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Cisco Catalyst CenterNetBrain
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco ACI
Cisco ACI
Score 8.5 out of 10
Intermapper
Intermapper
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco ACI
Cisco ACI
Score 8.5 out of 10
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
Score 7.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Catalyst CenterNetBrain
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(145 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(16 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(31 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Catalyst CenterNetBrain
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
I think if you have Cisco infrastructure and you are looking to do a big hardware install per se, the plug-and-play feature is really helpful to be able to really quickly push out a config to a bunch of switches. That was really helpful for us. It really sped things up. If you need to push out configuration changes to a bunch of switches at once, it can be helpful, I guess if you plan it out. I guess that's the part I'm struggling with is trying to figure out how to streamline that process, but it has the potential there to be really helpful.
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NetBrain Technologies
Great for our large global environment. Works well with our legacy and newer equipment. Ease of install was exciting compared to other products we POC'd. Less of a learning curve when training Teams on how to monitor and troubleshoot while in production. Service desk were able to capture the logs and load into our ticketing system with ease.
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Pros
Cisco
  • I want to hammer home this swim process. It is amazing how you can upgrade something. It does all the readiness checks for you, does all the compliance checks for you, and it eliminates a lot of potential human error. Maybe you won't copy a file correctly, maybe you didn't check your MD five hash properly. There's a lot of things that if you're doing 50, 60, 70 upgrades over the course of a week or two weeks, you might try to cut corners, or not intentionally, but just human error. You do something repetitive, maybe you skip a step with swim, there is no skipping a step. It checks compliance, it checks your iOS, you download your iOS straight from Cisco from Catalyst Center. It eliminates any fatigue that you might have whenever it comes to doing repetitive things for weeks on end.
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NetBrain Technologies
  • Network Issues Troubleshooting
  • Visualizing the root cause using color coding
  • out of the box runbooks available
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Cons
Cisco
  • We started using the product quite early and as I understand it was quite a new product for Cisco, so it's been developed quite aggressively. So even though we thought we were running the latest recommended version, a month later we realized that we are so much behind that it might take a week to upgrade to the latest recommended versions. In a way, it's good because it's developed so fast, but it's hard to keep up with all the implementations. And last upgrade for us took three weeks because we were so behind and it just takes longer because we've got large-scale deployment.
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NetBrain Technologies
  • Not all devices are integrated with the same quality.
  • Not all steps are self-explaining.
  • The updates were difficult (but thanks to the help of support no real problem).
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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.
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NetBrain Technologies
No answers on this topic
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.
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NetBrain Technologies
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
The software upgrades and ability to integrate with the wireless telemetry data set Cisco DNA Center ahead. However the automation with Change Control, Intent and better path mapping (even across MPLS and WAN Circuits) make NetBrain a needed tool to get that gives you that visibility and flexibility. Solarwinds has the ablity to view Netflow which would be an interesting add to DNA Center or an easier path to get or integrate with Stealthwatch.
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NetBrain Technologies
Best part of NetBrain is that it is customisable ,you can create apps based on your requirement and run them in your environment. Lot of flexibility
Read full review
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Initial cost is pricy, but management needs to understand the value this provides so make them aware
  • Reporting could be improved in more detail in our opinion, but it gives a great overview of your environment. High level overview for managers would be greatly appreciated with as little or much detail as needed for certain Cisco gear.
  • Does not work as well with some older Cisco equipment because they want you to buy new, again the cost impact comes into play.
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NetBrain Technologies
  • Time it takes for Service Desk to identify issues has been cut into 1/2
  • Able to present maps to management for circuit throughput issues and why we need a larger circuit
  • The logs are clear and easy to understand
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