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Cisco Catalyst Center vs. SolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst Center

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ACisco 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

    SolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)

    Score6.9 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds ipMonitor was a lightweight performance monitoring tool that enabled monitoring from a single console and out-of-the-box visibility, with some automation available. The product is discontinued, and no longer available for sale.

    $1,570

    installation

    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    ipMonitor - 500 Monitors
    $1570
    installation
    ipMonitor - 1000 Monitors
    $2620
    installation
    ipMonitor -2500 Monitors
    $5770
    installation
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    Way more advanced and simpler to use.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
    Cisco DNA Center was easier to deploy, and of course, having all Cisco hardware integrated made it faster. The newer GUI seems to operate smoother than older java based web GUIs.
    Incentivized
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    306 Answers
    73%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    245 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    319 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    195 Answers
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    229 Answers
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Network Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Cisco Catalyst Center and SolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Feature
    Cisco Catalyst Center
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    6.7
    24 Ratings
    17% below category average
    Automated network device discovery00 Ratings6.710 Ratings
    Network monitoring00 Ratings8.024 Ratings
    Alerts00 Ratings8.223 Ratings
    Network mapping00 Ratings6.619 Ratings
    Customizable reports00 Ratings4.223 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Auvik
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Meraki Dashboard
    Score9 out of 10
    PingPlotter
    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Nmap
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (343 ratings)
    9.0
    (24 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (9 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (19 ratings)
    8.2
    (6 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (33 ratings)
    8.8
    (7 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst CenterSolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    SolarWinds ipMonitor is well suited in situation where customer do not wants to hold the responsibility of underlying monitoring infrastructure management such as Servers, Database, website and their high availability. And of course when you need Network, Servers, Services fault and performance monitoring. When you have specialized network monitoring requirement such as Configuration backup, netflow traffic analysis then this is not the right tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Both network devices and servers may be easily located on the network.
    • It notifies the user whenever any network device undergoes a change in status.
    • Powerful reporting capabilities that provide vital data about your network's devices (uptime, space, utilization of resources on your devices)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • It is a very complete and versatile software, but its price can be somewhat high for small companies.
    • During the analysis of the collected data the process can be somewhat slow, so it takes more time than expected.
    • Its configuration process can be somewhat complex since it requires several configurations so having prior knowledge is helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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".
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    I have very few pieces of software, that are specific to IT and IT services, that just work. Honestly, I don't need the support as it never breaks, but I believe in rewarding vendors that make valuable products
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    SolarWinds ipMonitor is a perfectly decent network mapper and performance metric gatherer, but it is held back by the UI, which can be hard to navigate once you have more than a couple dozen assets in there. It is fairly priced, but it also sometimes takes a really long time before results come in.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Although I had not much support ticket with ipMonitor support team but I can share my overall experience with SolarWinds products and support team. I am working with SolarWinds support team since last 7 years and in last 2-3 years I have seen a significant improvement in knowledge documentation which is helping end users to troubleshoot problems by themselves. Apart from this SolarWinds phone call based support is very nice as tickets and emails might take some time but a direct phone call can get your job done quickly comparatively.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    We were trying to evaluate different providers and ipMonitor suited us because we had on-prem and cloud instances and management decided to check the paid tool. The ipMonitor is a very responsive tool and it served the purpose well but as IT is evolving and needs are changing, we discontinued the ipMonitor and shifted to Zabbix due to the customization which was the need at the time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • 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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • We currently use an outside service to monitor critical network nodes. We will do away with that service shortly.
    • We no longer have to wait to hear from our users if there is a network device down. We will be proactively alerted and we can begin to remediate immediately helping to limit downtime.
    • After initial setup and some tweaking, it requires little to no time to maintain.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

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

    SolarWinds ipMonitor (discontinued) Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotScreenshot of Easy to navigate GUI interfaceScreenshot of Remediation FunctionalityScreenshot of Network Discovery Wizard