Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
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…N/A
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
As a cloud-managed network management solution, the Cisco Meraki Dashboard enables users to provision, configure, and troubleshoot global networking and IoT deployments.N/A
Cisco NX-OS
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Cisco NX-OS is a network operating system presented as a solution to help network operations move at the speed of business, with comprehensive automation, extensive visibility, and flexible open architectures for data center networks. NX-OS is the network operating system for all fabric architectures, from traditional L2/L3 to overlay-based fabrics.Cisco NX-OS powers the modern data center.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki DashboardCisco NX-OS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki DashboardCisco NX-OS
Free Trial
NoYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki DashboardCisco NX-OS
Considered Multiple Products
Cisco Catalyst Center
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
As my enterprise is completely on Cisco 9000 series catalyst series switches I preferred Cisco DNA for Unified Network Management so that it Offers end-to-end visibility and control across campus, branch, and WAN networks with a single pane of glass. Also this provides me with …
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
We are still deploying to Meraki. The dashboard does have many similar features but not a 1:1
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Chose Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Closest thing would be Cisco Catalyst Center and we use that for our switch infrastructure. It's mainly configuration backup and firmware updater at this point, like keeping everything provisioned and up to date. We haven't really started pushing configs through there yet, but …
Chose Cisco Meraki Dashboard
The Cisco Meraki Dashboard is of course the most user friendly and the NDFC is being modified to look similar to the Cisco Meraki Dashboard as of today.
Chose Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Meraki Dashboard is a better product but has limits due to being cloud managed. Missing full CLI and config backups
Cisco NX-OS

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki DashboardCisco NX-OS
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Intermapper
Intermapper
Score 8.4 out of 10
Intermapper
Intermapper
Score 8.4 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Score 9.0 out of 10
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
Score 8.1 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki DashboardCisco NX-OS
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(230 ratings)
9.2
(48 ratings)
7.8
(16 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(17 ratings)
9.1
(48 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(32 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(3 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(13 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki DashboardCisco NX-OS
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.
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Cisco
Cisco Meraki is very well-suited for enterprise scenarios with multiple branches distributed across a large geographical area. You need to manage thousands of devices, and Meraki helps you do that in minutes. The cloud dashboard lets you configure and monitor devices, and deploy new devices and policies without being there. Some scenarios where Meraki is not well-suited include situations with limited internet connectivity.
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Cisco
It's definitely very well suited for data center environments and the scale that is sometimes required. We also manage many enterprise environments, and we almost never see Cisco NX-OS or Nexus in an enterprise environment, only specifically on the data center side. Mainly because of the lower bandwidth requirements and so on. But it depends on the hardware, since it's a software product.
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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.
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Cisco
  • DHCP and VLAN scoping is simple and easy to identify problems
  • Consistent firmware updates are pushed to client devices which we can schedule for off hours
  • The user interface is intuitive and easily highlights problem areas
  • Content filtering has been a big bonus to offer our clients, especially within schools
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Cisco
  • Cisco NX-OS does a great job of supporting high dense environments due to Cisco NX-OS based devices having some of the fastest packet switching performance
  • Cisco NX-OS supports high bandwidth environments really well due to the high throughput links that are typically found in Cisco NX-OS network appliances
  • Cisco NX-OS provides some of the best redundancy in the way of "Active-Active redundancy" via it's VPC technology. This is especially desirable in data center environments.
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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.
Read full review
Cisco
  • Cloud communication could be improved
  • Rebooting network switch like an MS120 remotely takes more time vs MX64 for some reason
  • Quicker response time for status updates. Cisco Meraki Dashboard take too long to update sometimes
  • Uptime for all devices not just the switches but firewalls and APs would be great to have
  • Timeline improvements/more detail timeline
Read full review
Cisco
  • I think one thing we'd like to see a bit more in the Nexus space is probably the troubleshooting features. So one would be the I perf feature and being able to test network traffic across links. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really good features in terms of troubleshooting, but one particular one that we like to see is where we can test network traffic. We can make sure that we have good latency, we got good bandwidth utilization as well. For us that's a big one. We've got to use third party tools to do that. So if the NXOS platform can do it, that's one of the thing we've got to do.
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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".
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Cisco
Very pleased with he product overall. it is used as expecting + easy to use and very scalable if we want to add new orgs
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
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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Cisco
The dashboard is easy to navigate and offers many pages that are loaded with information. Cisco Meraki adds new features to the dashboard based on customer feedback and I have seen so many updates and changes that have improved upon the previous version. Most recently they have added Cisco's AI and are looking at an Automation option that will only further improve usability.
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Cisco
NX-OS has many similarities with the traditional IOS which is quite beneficial when it comes to configuration and learning. As a native Linux system, there are a lot of tools and features that can be enabled for any use case.
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Performance
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Excellent and the best Automation capabilities with Cisco NX-OS which effectively allows easy management of different networks across the whole organization keeping all the business data secure and well managed. With its ability to detect any data threat and effectively fix the issue, Cisco NX-OS has extremely powerful options and its process monitoring capabilities are the best.
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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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Cisco
Support seems very knowledgeable and provides detail summary about the call. They even follow up later to check on your case.
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Cisco
Cisco support never fails me. In terms of timely response, no one is on par with them. They really value the impact of having technical issues and potential business stoppage. Also, their support staff are well equipped with knowledge and skills and easily resolve the most common incidents. Most of the time, we can resolve an issue by just calling them once.
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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.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
Cisco
Cisco Meraki Dashboard is more intuitive but does have a cut back feel to it, MistAI does seem to offer more variable to offer, while this is great for initial setup it is more complex for the site tech and service desk to get a high level view, so Cisco Meraki Dashboard has the better support feel.
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Cisco
I am much more familiar with the commands in Cisco IOS as it has been around for many more years. I know why NX-OS is a different system and can see the benefits of the fibre channel integration, but I do not understand why the commands had to use a different syntax. With the Nexus switches you don't get a choice of operating system unfortunately.
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Up to now, we haven't had a major ground-shaking attack on our networks but we take no chances by using NX-OS alongside a SIEM. All endpoints and workloads are secure so I would say we have plenty of trust in their security model.
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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.
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Cisco
  • The dashboard saves literal hours of drive time with its options. Locations that are states apart save actual days worth of travel time just by allowing us to enact simple solutions without needing boots on the ground. This saves manpower and keeps personnel open for more severe situations.
  • The ability to perform most networking operations via the dashboard allows many employees to do their job remotely. This gives them the opportunity to perform non-severe work from their homes and makes it feasible to let employees leave work early to beat traffic without sacrificing company time or efficiency.
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Cisco
  • We do have some implementations on Cisco NX-OS and Nexus hardware, and some of these are already quite old, but they are still running pretty smoothly. So they are super reliable, in my opinion. So that's one of the very positive ways it impacts companies.
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ScreenShots

Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

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

Cisco Meraki Dashboard Screenshots

Screenshot of Connect MS225 24portScreenshot of ConnectMS225 24portScreenshot of SECURITY MX64WScreenshot of SECURITY MX64WScreenshot of Connect MS225 24port