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…
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Cradlepoint NetCloud Engine
Score 6.5 out of 10
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Cradlepoint in Boise offers the all-inclusive NetCloud Solution Packages for branch, mobile, and IoT networks combine tailored NetCloud services with fit-for-purpose hardware and a comprehensive support plan. NetCloud Solution Packages are cloud-managed and deployable anywhere in days, not months. Cradlepoint acquired the NetCloud technology with original developer Pertino in December 2015, and integrated the platform into their own services by early 2016.
Would recommend Cisco Catalyst Center to medium to large scale organizations that have many cookie-cutter sites and the resources to properly provision all their devices. I would not recommend to teams that do not have a strong network engineering team that can navigate the various intricacies of the platform.
The platform and product selection as a whole covers a lot of range. The pricing is low enough and the levels granular enough that even customers that only need the use of a few features of the product can buy into the ecosystem with reasonable investment and grow with confidence without having paid too much. One thing that this enterprise company gets is this: Many small companies need enterprise-class features but don't have the user count to justify purchasing enterprise-class solutions. It is not that they don't need advanced features, it's just that enterprise vendors assume that small companies only have basic needs. It is not true, but you can't buy a solution that is only sold in hundreds of seats if you have 25 users in your company. Cradlepoint NetCloud does a good job of getting this right. You can buy a single seat or hundreds of seats, and the price is truly commensurate with your seat count. Everyone gets the enterprise features, you only pay for the seats you need.
Again, the ease of use of the APIs and the API Explorer provides the tools needed to write these custom workflows that allow us to do a lot of the automation we’re doing now, saving hundreds of hours by using those tools.
The product is very intuitive, and there is a lot of support out there in the DevNet community to help with that.
Within its Tasks - Audit, it can sometimes allow plaintext data, including passwords, to be seen. There should be functionality to detect password usage and appropriately obfuscate the data.
Occasionally, Catalyst Center does not sync changes properly within templates, which requires deleting and reconfiguring the template version. Better processes here would be beneficial.
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".
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.
Device management is nearly the same as if you logged in locally, giving a familiar feel to the interface. Device group management can be cumbersome when pushing firmware updates.
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.
Every time I have engaged support, it has been a satisfying experience. Because they cover such a wide range of applications, I do have to spend more time explaining our intended results and rationale than I would have to do with a more focused vendor, but it's a minor tradeoff for the value of saved time in every other aspect of the solution.
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.
It is much easier to group your devices within NetCloud prior to deployment. We ran into issues of lost/changed settings when grouping devices that had already been deployed
Cisco Catalyst Centeris basic zero-touch provisioning out of the box. You just rack and stack the switches, patch 'em in, and the controller pushes the config automatically. No need to console into every single box or spend hours script-running over CLI.The AI-driven assurance and telemetry are top-tier. Instead of getting flooded with useless syslog alerts when a link drops, it correlates the telemetry data to give you proactive health checks. It literally pinpoints wireless anomalies and bandwidth chokepoints before the users even start opening tickets.It handles fabric microsegmentation like a boss through SD-Access and TrustSec. You can easily enforce group-based policies right at the hardware level. It drops IoT gear, guests, and corporate traffic into their own secure buckets dynamically, without you having to manage a trillion messy VLANs and ACLs.
The cost of equipment, lines, and services was over 1,000 times the five year cost of Cradlepoint (formerly Pertino) when looking for a complete WAN replacement. Using small Linux devices (Intel NUCs) instead of expensive networking hardware provided equal service levels when we needed passthrough site-based access, rather than buying specific hardware from a vendor (including even Cradlepoint, though the integration is great and I do recommend their devices - especially for their cellular data redundancy features)
I have used it for upgrading devices, and it's does a great job at that, however out operations team for whatever reason has not adopted the feature.
Overall it feels like Cisco Catalyst Center has been huge waste of time. I feel like my time would be better spent on other projects and looking at other products and tools
