TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    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

    LevelBlue USM Anywhere

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AThe LevelBlue USM Anywhere XDR platform (replacing the former AlienVault USM) delivers threat detection, incident response, and compliance management.

    $1,075

    per month

    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst CenterLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Essentials
    $1,075
    per month
    Standard
    $1,695
    per month
    Premium
    $2,595
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst CenterLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst CenterLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    LevelBlue
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    306 Answers
    86%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    245 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    319 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    195 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    229 Answers
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst CenterLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft Defender XDR
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Meraki Dashboard
    Score9 out of 10
    InsightIDR
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Microsoft Defender XDR
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst CenterLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (343 ratings)
    9.8
    (390 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (9 ratings)
    7.2
    (18 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (19 ratings)
    6.7
    (34 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (33 ratings)
    7.3
    (25 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (38 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.3
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst CenterLevelBlue USM Anywhere
    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
    LevelBlue
    At this point I'm saying a 4. While the marketing material make it appear to be easy to use and it was relatively easy to set up, as previously mentioned, each event description is based upon the individual asset making it nearly impossible for the administrator to be a SME for each asset. For example, if one of the assets reporting is a router, the administrator monitoring alerts would need to know what the various events are that can be triggered as an event for the particular router; however, if the asset is a workstation, the administrator would need to know the various events that are triggered for workstations.
    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
    LevelBlue
    • AlienVault USM is simple and easy to deploy. Sensors can be deployed in as little as 15 minutes through the setup wizard.
    • The USM UI is easy to understand. I've trained multiple analysts who are able to perform their duties on their first day, in part because of USM Anywhere's ease of use.
    • Top-notch built-in compliance templates and reporting features.
    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
    LevelBlue
    • Personally, I've wished I could purchase a service that would configure AV for my environment. I get a lot of traffic on a daily basis and I almost need to hire an analyst that just works on AV.
    • Some of the filters when looking for a specific alert aren't that easy to use.
    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
    LevelBlue
    The centralized logging and retention for PCI compliance was our main driver, and it is meeting that need. Otherwise there has been enough frustration with the lack of documentation and the need to customize through the CLI that I would be open to alternatives.
    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
    LevelBlue
    Once you are able to navigate the different panels, finding what you need is quite easily. Before getting used it it can be a bit of challenge . Each panel is quite well laid out and the filtering search capabilities are quite strong.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    LevelBlue
    We do have issues with maintenance on the AlienVault USM as the disk fills up from time to time with other data sources. Sources for scanning logs and net flow data isn't calculated in regular disk maintenance and can easily fill up our disk if we do not keep an eye on it with some custom Nagios plugins. The system does properly trim logging data from logging sources properly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    LevelBlue
    With the latest release of AlienVault USM overall performance has not been an issue. We have noticed single source events per second does not scale well with the overall system. 2,000eps on a vmware system with a single source produces delays of up to an hour for us. Pages, reporting and even raw log searches are rather quick though.
    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
    LevelBlue
    The support we received from alienvault was excellent. They went above and beyond in making sure everything was working as it needed to be. They REALLY want their product implementation to be a success and our security goals be achieved. They are like a member of our security team.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    LevelBlue
    I did not have any experience with "in person" training directly. The free online classes offered for a half a day are based on the actual training offered. These little teasers are very good and well worth your time to learn a few quick and dirty ways of getting more information from your SIEM
    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
    LevelBlue
    It was very well organized and helpful in using the product to the fullest extent. The instructor allowed time for folks who were involved with managed services to receive tuning tips in order to better support their customers. In addition, the course materials were automatically updated when the new version came out.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    LevelBlue
    AlienVault USM was a very simple to implement and get up and running. We started with a trial version and had that up and going within an hour of receiving email instructions from the sales engineer. We never had to contact support to get the system up and going. It was extremely easy to convert over to a full license once we started with a paid version.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    LevelBlue
    Splunk's ES is a paid add-on on top of an already pricey product. Finding a MSSP that supports Splunk and isn't a 6 figure annual commitment seems unlikely. LogRhythm did not have a cloud-based solution when we were considering SIEMs. Fantastic product though and have a good MSSP base. Devo did not have a MSSP partner base when we looked. Their product is fantastic too. AlienVault USM has good partners to choose from as well as an affordable cloud model, that's why we chose it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    LevelBlue
    The AlienVault USM is not very scalable. Some scalability can be achieved by installing additional sensors, but this only offers 500eps per sensor and is still overall limited by the installation type of VM or physical. We have also noticed the EPS (events per second) is rated overall and not towards a single source. A single source on a very healthy VMware partition tops out at 2,000eps for us, no matter how we configure it. Maybe this is a problem of the 5.2 release?
    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
    LevelBlue
    • Once you hit the 150 asset mark, you have to jump to their unlimited license. There is no middle ground. We were only 10 or so assets above the 150 so we had to chose to either not monitor those assets or pay the price of the upgrade.
    • AlienVault brings all the information to one place which makes it much quicker to track down problems.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

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