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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AThe Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers a network-based approach for adaptable, trusted access everywhere, based on context. It gives the user intelligent, integrated protection through intent-based policy and compliance solutions.N/A

    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer is a network monitoring tool within the broader SolarWinds ecosystem. It includes core traffic monitoring features, as well as customizable traffic reports and alerts.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    144 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    42 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    128 Answers
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    37 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    142 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    99 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    84%
    Implementation went as expected
    115 Answers
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    37 Answers
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    User Ratings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (146 ratings)
    9.0
    (62 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    Availability
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (7 ratings)
    8.0
    (49 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.4
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.2
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Well suited... I've used it for both wired and wireless access, and it's perfect for that. In addition to enforcing security on the port, you can also lock down east-west traffic. When you get to the point where you're configuring secure group tags and things like that, you can keep people from getting to places they shouldn't. Basically, you could turn your entire network into a firewall if you wanted to. You can secure access based on the identity of any given user through role-based authentication. For example, if you have salespeople and you don't want them accessing your financial or PCI environment, they authenticate as a salesperson and you can completely stop them from getting to any of that. That's really important, especially for us. Our payment card infrastructure servers are heavily locked down. Granted, in our situation, we firewall all that off anyway, but you still don't want some random individual to be able to even attempt that sort of thing. That's what it's really good for. I'm trying to think of a weakness. I don't know. We don't really struggle with it. There's nothing that I use it for where I wish it were better, at least not that I can think of offhand. I'm sure there are things, I just can't think of anything off the top of my head.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    We use and depend on it for status state of our network gear, switches and routers. It does an excellent job of getting you the details you need to confirm all devices and products are working at the level needed. At times, it does tend to flag network switch ports and/or switches themselves as exceeding their rated capacity when frequently it was a quick blip of high traffic due to downloads, or uploads causing the max'ing of the device. Again, you can adjust the settings but then you adjust it too high and miss real activity. It can become nuisance alerting when you tend to then ignore
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Cisco
    • manageable scaled administrative access to network devices as needed
    • Great use as a radius server which allows proper authentication and authorization into the network
    • Multiple conditions that can be utilized to grant users access based on their role in the organization
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • The level of customization possible with Network Bandwidth Analyzer is very valuable. Rather than being stuck with a "one-size-fits-all" presentation, an administrator can easily create customized views, reports, and alerts so that users can have a more tailored view of the data provided by Network Bandwidth Analyzer. This has the effect of making the tool more attractive to the end user.
    • The NetFlow Traffic Analyzer piece of Network Bandwidth Analyzer provides the details on bandwidth usage on the network. More than knowing how much bandwidth is being used, one is provided with detailed information on how that bandwidth is being used. This provides invaluable information for capacity planning and even certain forensic tasks faced by the network engineer.
    • The ability to produce network maps provides an easy way to create an attractive and functional NOC/SOC view of the entire network. Both technician and the occasional passerby can quickly determine if there are issues to be addressed. The ability to customize a map with background images and custom icons and stencils can make these maps really pop.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Cisco
    • Trustsec needs more documentation and configuration best practice examples
    • The licensing model can be difficult to explain and understand for customers
    • Difficult to get an accurate benchmark to know exactly how many Cisco Identity Services Engine nodes and the size of the deployment should be
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • The ability to intuitively and quickly serve up specified information up to a dashboard for general “public” consumption, that cycles through several pages of information.
    • The ability to intuitively set up alerting on bandwidth levels, instead of having to dig through all types of alerts available to find the one needed.
    • Provide a pricing model based on different support levels: if I want only available update installations, don’t make me pay the same amount as those wanting full support.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    We are so very reliant on Cisco Identity Services Engine at this point that finding another solution would be a big hassle for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    For us the solution is very easily useable on its own. Perhaps that has to do because we started using ISE in the 1.2 days and have seen it grow during the years. Policy creation, etc. is all very visible and thus easy to use. Deployment of multiple nodes is also incredibly easy and flexible. You can easily add or remove nodes as you wish.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    As far as rating for usability is concerned I would give 10/10 as NTA is very easy to use. All you need to do is install that module and ask network Team to configure the Netflow towards Server IP. [The] rest is pre-configured and reports are pre-built. Moment you receive the flows from Network all you will have is information about traffic.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    We do have to occasionally reboot the servers when they get low on memory, but we're also a few versions behind. Availability has generally been pretty good though with no major outages in the time that we've had it implemented.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cisco
    yes it does. depending on where you coming from. Logs are pretty busy same as report. it also depending on devices count and design.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Cisco support is second to none, both in terms of how you access support but also the knowledge of the individual support teams. If you focus on one technology and provide "manufacturer support" then you can rest assured that you are accessing Cisco's top individuals. I feel like this is a USP for Cisco support.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    I know we could probably pay for it, but it would be nice if we could get to a tier 2 technician faster. Spending a couple of hours on the phone with the level 1 technician, when we have already tried the troubleshooting they are walking us through, is just a waste of time.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Cisco
    Training can only cover certain areas, there are a lot of areas training just can't cover. You have to learn by doing it.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    The training offered by SolarWinds is some of the best out there. They have several different videos that go into great detail from initial setup to advanced configurations. In addition to the view at your own pace video, they also have live training for customers that focus on a single product and you can ask questions with the folks who develop the software. I have had good success with their live sessions and getting questions answered.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    I think our system integrators lacks some competencies and this has led to an implementation that is still perfectible. (i.e. dedicating an interface for intra-cluster communication)
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    I think all give some visibility of device monitoring and management, but Cisco Identity Services Engine gives a good way to manage more details about the device in a centralized way that gives a wider range of monitoring and control than the other softwares individually. I don't think Cisco Identity Services Engine eliminates the need for these other software as of now, but there is potential for Cisco Identity Services Engine to be able to take over more of these roles.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer compared to Wireshark and PRTG Network Monitor beats it by just the simple interface. Though all are manual setup, NTA takes it a step further with graphs and reports that analyze the data for you. In comparing to Extrahop from a bandwidth comparison, Extrahop wins but Extrahop is a lot more than just a bandwidth monitoring and cost.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Cisco
    Cisco ISE was competitively priced and Cisco was able to leverage some of our existing contracts to help ease the purchase.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Cisco
    It's fully customised and comprehensive. only thing is you need to know what you want. Proper research and planning would save lots of time and effort .
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • I don't know about negatives because we haven't seen it right now, but positive impact is one is the roadmap we have. And now since we are going ahead with doing the deployment of Cisco ISE, we see that we are getting closure to, so at the end of the day, we have to make sure that operationally we stay excellent. So that's where operational excellence comes in. Cisco ISE is basically addressing that for us. Right now we are in a situation if there is a WIFI issue or if there is an authentication issue, it gets really difficult to isolate the problem. But with Cisco ISE , this functionality is going to come in. So we believe that it would be a good ROI.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • Be prepared to answer lots of questions. When people see the data in NTA they are going to want to know why App A is talking to App B. Be ready to explain!
    • Hand the keys to the NTA kingdom to the network team. They will thank you. Everyone wants to have friends on the network team, right?
    • Be prepared to invest in some significant compute and storage performance to keep up with your NTA monitoring
    • Running the latest firmware for your network gear is (often) required to take advantage of all the flow-monitoring. You upgrade regularly, right??
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)