Cisco Catalyst Center vs. FortiMonitor

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.6 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
FortiMonitor
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
FortiMonitor is a comprehensive, SaaS-based digital experience monitoring (DEM) platform that helps organizations modernize their performance-monitoring tools. It provides visibility into endpoint application performance and digital experience—no matter where the user resides or where the application is hosted. It is based on Panopta, which was acquired by Fortinet in late 2020.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Catalyst CenterFortiMonitor
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst CenterFortiMonitor
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsOur simple, usage-based pricing model is ideal whether you have five servers, or 500 hundred. You’ll be charged monthly per the number of instances monitored, and any additional features you’re using, such as CounterMeasures and synthetic checks. Standard Instances - $6/Instance Network Devices - $9/Device Containers - $2/Container
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Catalyst CenterFortiMonitor
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
Cisco Catalyst CenterFortiMonitor
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

SolarWinds Pingdom
SolarWinds Pingdom
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco ACI
Cisco ACI
Score 8.1 out of 10
Cisco ThousandEyes
Cisco ThousandEyes
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco ACI
Cisco ACI
Score 8.1 out of 10
Nexthink
Nexthink
Score 7.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Catalyst CenterFortiMonitor
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(188 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(17 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(32 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Catalyst CenterFortiMonitor
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
If it met their requirements, I'd say it's probably a 10. If they could go down with Cisco route, especially driving software defined access, then it's the only show in town for that. If they didn't want to go down the software defined access route and the more traditional side, there might be other tools that they might want to consider just because of a flexibility which other tools might allow them to have.
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Fortinet
It is great for monitoring internet connections.
The agent installed on Windows works efficiently and takes up little resources. The method of settling costs is not very clear.
There should also be a table with the current list of costs visible.
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Pros
Cisco
  • I really like the assurance. I like that I can go through and find problems on the network that could be a mismatch VLAN between two interfaces, port errors, like physical errors that we otherwise probably would need to wait for a customer to complain or we have that we can see that ahead of time and be proactive and say, Hey, I'm noticing that this port is having some errors on it. We might want to check that out ahead of time before it becomes an issue. So that's really useful. And then also being able to configure the network. I think that the programmability part of it, I think I have, I've been having some struggle with that initially, just having to apply. So I have my script, my template that I want to deploy, but in order to deploy it, I have to apply it to a template or a profile and then I have to assign that profile to a group of switches that I want to program. I think it gets a little bit messy and a little bit convoluted, but other than that, I mean it's really helpful. It does automate right now, I think it seems a little convoluted with the process.
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Fortinet
  • Monitoring from several locations
  • Fast notification
  • Push notifications, SMS and calling
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Cons
Cisco
  • The one thing that we had to get used to was really breaking down our wireless. We integrated our 9800 controllers into it, and the breakdown of our tags being floor specific and not just being campus specific was a challenge for us. And so we had to create all new tags and it wasn't necessarily a problem, it just required a little bit redesign on our wireless. And so it would've been nice for us to be able to assign a tag to an entire campus versus a floor, but that's a small complaint.
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Fortinet
  • Simplifying the interface
  • Simplification of the process, e.g. notifications to Slack
  • Dark mode for panel and dashboard
  • Push notification - should contain more detailed information
  • A nicer looking dashboard
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
The first impressions using the tool, led us to believe that it will be very helpful going forward. There's a lot of potential to implement other features in the network
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Fortinet
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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Fortinet
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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Fortinet
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We haven't used anything like this. We looked at the competitors. I think we are quite early in their products, so I think now Cisco DNA center is quite mature, still in heavy development, but compared to the competitors, we think that there is nothing like it out there.
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Fortinet
Panopta management from the cloud (remote panel).
Easy work on installation.
To monitor servers, it is enough for the server to have contact only with the Internet.

Multiple channels for sending notifications.
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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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Fortinet
  • Provides high availability of services
Read full review
ScreenShots

FortiMonitor Screenshots

Screenshot of Customizable dashboards offer a wide variety of widgets so you can easily adjust them to your workflow and track the health and performance of your deployments.Screenshot of Automate diagnostics and remediation. Whether it’s running a complex synthetic test or automatically restarting a system so that it will come back online, leave those tasks to us while your team gets back to what matters.Screenshot of Incidents include metrics and meta-data so engineers can begin working on the incident as soon as they’ve received an alert.

Integrating your alerting and and incident management creates a seamless, easy-to-use experience.  

Engineers can quickly acknowledge alerts, both from Panopta and the mobile app, making it easy for their teammates to see which incidents still need to be addressed. 

With customizable alerting workflows, creating alert policies which suit your team is simple and intuitiveScreenshot of Alert Timelines automatically escalate incidents if they remain open.

Assign leads to incidents, making delegation and keeping team members in the loop easy.

By running diagnostics using CounterMeasures, teams can quickly determine whether an admin is necessary to resolve the issue
Review and approve CounterMeasures to enrich incidents with more context.Screenshot of Know which incidents are being worked on at-a-glance.

Engineers can easily escalate an incident if they need a senior team member to resolve the issue.

Integrates with popular communication and ticketing tools like Slack and JIRA.

Stay connected with your team using the mobile app, or take quick actions like acknowledging, scheduling maintenance, or approve a CounterMeasure so your team knows you’re on it.Screenshot of Incidents are enriched with diagnostics and metrics, and include streamlined views of all related events that make it easier to diagnose and resolve incidents.

Engineers are able to see the full context of an incident before logging into any systems.

CounterMeasures provide an automated way to diagnose and resolve incidents, allowing engineers to focus on more valuable activities.

Metrics and data from incidents can be elevated to the incident summary, providing an easy way for teams to reference what they’d done to fix similar problems in the past.