Forescout Platform vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

I strongly recommend using it in networks where many machines enter, it is essential to have a capture of all ids, mac etc to prevent and detect unauthorized machines.We are in the technological era and there is a lot of technological robotization looking for weak systems to enter.Invest in greater security and that does not happen to you.

Incentivized

If your IT team isn't proficient in automation and scripting, Solarwinds NCM can fill that gap (assuming your company's security team signs off on approving SW in your environment given the hack.) Basic device configuration, pushing mass changes reliably and backups are NCM's strong suites. If you have a complex scenario where if/then cases are needed, NCM is a bit lack luster. Auto discovery isn't as easy either as certain parameters need to be met for that feature to work 100% of the time

Incentivized

• Network Access Control does a great job of identifying unmanaged devices on the network and "quarantining" them.
• The inventory feature of CounterAct is a handy place to see what version of applications are running on which machines on our network.
• Policies can be very intricate.

Incentivized

• Integrates with Network Performance Management for Alerting and Reporting.
• NetPath and detects issues due to Configuration Change.
• Keeps a record of which user made the change.
• Which devices are not being backed up, devices where backups are failing, dashboard and alerting available.

Incentivized

• They should have more training for the versions of applications they update.
• It would be great if the GUI would be more aesthetic in appearance.
• Nothing else as the application is amazing.

Incentivized

• For our use case, it does everything great and some of the features we underutilize but I would like to be able to set a configuration baseline when initially adding a node instead of after the configuration is pulled but it's not a particularly big deal to let it pull the configuration then set it as the baseline.

Incentivized

Medium complexity to set up in the beginning if using any non-standard devices or configurations, else fairly easy (e.g. Cisco Nexus or IOS-based devices). Reports are fairly straightforward to set up. Updates to the platform are fairly straightforward and don't take a major effort. Easy to add or remove devices.

Incentivized

The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.

Incentivized

They are prompt in their response with a complete resolution once they have identified the problem. Other OEM's generally give stop-gap arrangements and then later come with new upgrade versions. This gives downtime tasks to customers often, which isn't appreciated. Given the criticality of this software, their support is prompt.

Incentivized

To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.

Incentivized

Solarwinds has actually produced new training since I last used it that is available on their site at any time. Their previous training was more than enough to get us started but now there is significantly more content. Since I'm comfortable with the Orion platform and the products we use I haven't checked the new training out yet but we have new staff go through portions of that training and they always come away with an understanding of the platform and ready to use it

Incentivized

it was a fairly easy implementation and everything was pretty straightforward. only challenge we had was getting all the snmp communities updated on the networking equipment

Incentivized

Better intergration with patch management tools. Forescount Platfform (CounterAct) is easily compatible with diverse network infrastructure to offer better service and efficiently ensure seamless operations. Its automation capabilities have also enabled us to depend less on the operations teams hence saving time as it's faster and also saving the operational cost of having people around in case of threats.

Incentivized

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a great tool and matches much of the functionality of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. Nothing about Ansible will likely be overwhelming to an engineer with a little time to spare, but that spare time combined with SolarWinds already being our monitoring tool made the decision easy. Time is at a premium in small teams and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is very easy to use right out of the box without all the tweaking required by powerful command line driven tools like Ansible.

Incentivized

• We've managed to automate our cybersecurity to impressive extents, now the IT security team puts focus on more important things.
• We've attained successful assets risk mitigation for our clients.

Incentivized

• The time savings from automatic daily backups is significant
• The compare configuration tool is super helpful at spotting errors when small changes occur that are hard to detect otherwise.
• The compliance check tool saves countless hours going through configurations for errors.

Incentivized