Likelihood to Recommend Overall, management is not terrible if you have a stable network that is not overly complex. If you don't, this product will take considerable time to plan for an effective solution. I will say support is not very helpful, so if you need assistance after the initial sales rep assisted setup, good luck and be prepared to spend hours on the phone.
Read full review Due to the high price that SolarWinds has, I do not recommend it for small companies. And if I recommend SolarWinds in large companies with complex infrastructures where constant monitoring and review of the network is required, this system is very complete and helps everyone in the technology team, both network administrators, database administrators, Security Administrators, and Server Administrators are all very happy with this system.
Read full review Pros Manage high-privilege access to communications equipment. It allows to be granular in the permissions, to have it integrated with the LDAP users and, most importantly, to audit what tasks each user performed. Profile users and devices and assign privileges and access levels based on that combination. It greatly improves the user experience, since it does not depend on the network it is in, but on the access levels it has depending on the device. It also allows self-managed guest access with approval flow, which is essential for our business. It has also allowed us to automate actions based on findings from StealWatch, Umbrella, AMP, etc. Read full review monitoring notification systems virus attack monitoring ability to shut down systems when it senses an imminent threat Read full review Cons I guess the user experience itself, it's sometimes a little bit slow, but this is also dependent on the platform and the scale of the deployment of course. But actually functionality-wise it's really, really good. But yeah, it could sometimes be a little quicker to react on the good front. Read full review Steep learning curve. Usually takes a bit to get the scans to run easily in a new environment. Could have more reporting options. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are so very reliant on Cisco Identity Services Engine at this point that finding another solution would be a big hassle for us.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Performance ISE performance has never been an issue for us. The system doesn't tend to slow down at all.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review SolarWinds offers live chat support for all its products built-in. So if you are working on something you can just reach out to someone at that time, and usually get an answer pretty quick. If you are trying to get something done it's a lot better than submitting a ticket and waiting for the email response.
Read full review Implementation Rating I did participate in the implementation of Cisco ISE and while there were times when it was confusing and we had a lot of trial and error, overall the experience was fine.
Read full review Alternatives Considered So the security team selected Forescout because of its inventory functionality. We have had to utilize Cisco ISE though to actually push the SGT Policies as well as the SGACL mappings and the SXP Propagation across the switch infrastructure. There is a lot more configuration that has to happen in Forescout in order for it to manage the switches.
Read full review Threat Monitor is very new on the scene. Its obviously not at the same level as some of the established vendors yet. We also deploy Alienvault for example and its nowhere near the same level as this, however the cost model between these two products reflects that. Alienvault however does have a physical footprint on the environment, whereas Threat Monitor doesnt. If you have the paitence to wait, Threat Monitor will surely only improve over time.
Rob Bates Public & Private Cloud Senior Engineer
Read full review Scalability Yes, we have the ability to scale ISE to however many nodes and clusters we want, but of course this takes time and money for licenses.
Read full review Return on Investment Cisco ISE is fairly expensive, but I feel that the time it saves our team is well worth it. We have been able to roll this our to all of our teams, and they can each manage their own device and it is really convenient to have each team mange their own devices Once it is deployed and configured, it seems like there isn't much upkeep, so we don't have to hire someone to manage it we do it by committee. Read full review The positive impact that this system has on our company is that it has saved us a lot of expenses when it comes to investigating what the bank's network and systems are. This saving translates into administrators' time when it comes to finding the problem quickly, expeditiously, and effectively. It has helped us a lot and we have even required fewer hours from external providers when it comes to solving a problem. Read full review ScreenShots SolarWinds Threat Monitor Screenshots