AlgoSec vs SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for firewall security optimisation, tuning, change management and application discovery.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

If you need to know exactly what changed in a switch or router, immediately, this product shines. Having multiple versions of backups is also a major source of confidence in operations. It does not configure things, it just tracks changes in configurations. After using it for a while, I can recommend having every admin use their own account (rather than a generic admin account) to help identify *who* made the changes.

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Scott Reese

Information Technology Specialist

Michigan Supreme CourtGovernment Administration, 201-500 employees

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Pros

Firewall rule optimization
Regulatory and baseline compliance analysis/mapping
Policy tuning
Application discovery
Automated Change management

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Configuration Comparison Tool is great since you can quickly compare configs in a single pane of glass. To make things easier to identify, NCM will highlight the differences.
Vulnerability reporting on all current versions of Cisco IOS/NXOS software. NCM will identify the version of firmware you are using and also list the most well known CVE vulnerabilities that are associated with each version.
I appreciate NCM is vendor agnostic. It will consume configs from any network device. It can also be customized to look for certain strings that are missing or to look for certain strings that are present. Very flexible and since it isn't vendor specific, I don't feel like I'm being forced to buy a certain manufacturer to obtain all of the 'features' like I do with other products.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Retail Company, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Enhanced integration via API (typically, this is only known by few Algosec users)

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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The NCM does not work particularly well out of the box on some not so popular network hardware like Ubiquiti, Fluid Mesh and others
The auto-select device does not always work and sometimes you have to modify a template to get the full backup to work. SolarWinds tech support can help with this if you are not familiar
The email notifications of the backups and the deltas are very simple html. It would be nice to see some improvement on the output there. Looks about 10 years old...

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Michael Haberkern

Network Engineer Supervisor

City of Santa MariaGovernment Administration, 501-1000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) 8.1

Based on 4 answers

I simply love this product for what it does. it backups our configs and stores them so i don't have to worry about if we have current configs. It allows me to recover from a cisco failure in a matter of minutes rather than hours. I only have to copy and paste instead of recreate. so the maximum downtime we have is the time it takes to get the physical hardware replaced

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Aaron Coody

Systems Administrator

Scott Equipment Company, LLCConstruction, 501-1000 employees

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) 7.3

Based on 8 answers

The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Design Company, 51-200 employees

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Support Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) 7.0

Based on 13 answers

To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.

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Wyant Niswonger

Network Engineer

AAICInsurance, 51-200 employees

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Implementation Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) 9.1

Based on 6 answers

Change management played a key role in our organisation. We didn't have any major downtime but it was crucial for us to get his product.

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Nandini pallipamu

Network Engineer

Commonwealth of MAInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Alternatives Considered

User friendliness of Algosec is great!

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

We have a very diverse IT environment (Cisco/Palo Alto, VMWare, Cisco UC, SD-WAN, Windows Servers) and we wanted to have one suite of software that we could manage as many of our different areas in one single pane of glass. SolarWinds allows the network team, VOIP team, Storage and Systems teams to all use the same platform to get their monitoring, alerting and reporting.

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Verified User

Supervisor in Information Technology

Banking Company, 501-1000 employees

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Return on Investment

Increased employee efficiency
Application auto-mapping
Enhanced change control management

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Prior to breaking the baseline function, NCM was considered our most valuable network tool. Without adding any additional FTEs, we could ensure we maintained current backups, ensured consistent application of security settings and can monitor for unauthorized changes.
For a very little additional cost, we vastly improved our network security and availability.

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Graham Clarkson

Team Lead, Network Services

ATCO ElectricUtilities, 1001-5000 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

AlgoSec vs SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

AlgoSec

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

Pros

Cons

Likelihood to Renew

Usability

Support Rating

Implementation Rating

Alternatives Considered

Return on Investment

Screenshots

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

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