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SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SolarWinds NPM

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds NPM is a monitoring and performance management platform. It provides performance troubleshooting support, auto network discovery, customizable thresholds, and can be rapidly deployed.

    $1,638

    per year

    Splunk Observability Cloud

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ASplunk Observability Cloud aims to enable operational agility and better customer experience through real-time AI-driven streaming analytics allowing accurate alerts in seconds. It is designed to shorten MTTD and MTTR by providing real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure and services.

    $180

    per year per host

    Pricing
    SolarWinds NPMSplunk Observability Cloud
    Editions & Modules
    NPM
    $1,638
    per year
    Infrastructure
    $15
    per month (billed annually) per host
    App & Infra
    $60
    per month (billed annually) per host
    End-to-End
    $75
    per month (billed annually) per host
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SolarWinds NPMSplunk Observability Cloud
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SolarWinds NPMSplunk Observability Cloud
    Considered Both Products
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    91%
    Would buy again
    32 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    55 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    34 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    57 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    29 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    30 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    45 Answers
    Features
    SolarWinds NPMSplunk Observability Cloud
    Network Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) and Splunk Observability Cloud
    Feature
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
    9.0
    232 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Splunk Observability Cloud
    -
    Ratings
    Automated network device discovery9.0211 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network monitoring10.0232 Ratings00 Ratings
    Baseline threshold calculation9.0202 Ratings00 Ratings
    Alerts9.0229 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network capacity planning7.9188 Ratings00 Ratings
    Packet capture analysis7.2130 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network mapping10.0191 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable reports10.0213 Ratings00 Ratings
    Wireless infrastructure monitoring8.0154 Ratings00 Ratings
    Hardware health monitoring10.0216 Ratings00 Ratings
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    User Ratings
    SolarWinds NPMSplunk Observability Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.7
    (238 ratings)
    7.9
    (59 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (27 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (22 ratings)
    7.6
    (18 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (28 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SolarWinds NPMSplunk Observability Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is excellent on node monitoring, for servers, switches, voice routers, etc. It also provides quick information on the dashboard, so you can take a look an in a few seconds determine is an entire site is down, if portions are down, and what may be causing the issue. We have experienced some difficulty when working with our wireless environment. It is less than natural when attempting to determine if a wireless access point is down itself, or if the switch feeding the access point is down, either port or switch. It does a very good job telling you if a switch is down, but troubleshooting the devices (specifically access points) it struggles.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Its great if you need real-time visibility across complex or regulated environments. Also strong for hybrid or multi-cloud setups where uptime, observability and fast IR are required. It’s probably overkill for smaller teams or environments that don’t have constant changes or compliance reporting needs. It's expensive and has a steep learning curve. Also, in my opinion, do not get yourself into a consumption based model. Costs can certainly get out of control quickly.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    SolarWinds
    • Out of the Monitoring of almost all Network Devices.
    • Build custom pollers to monitor which is not supported out of the box.
    • Further you can alert on these custom metrics and Out of the box metrics.
    • It provides you great dashboards, Reports features.
    • You can integrate it with any MoM layer tools either using its API or sending out traps.
    • Out of the box Integration with Service Now ITSM Tool.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • The first one is its Kubernetes container monitoring.
    • I really like this features because as we know how much K8s is vast and to manually monitor each part of the Kubernetes it takes so much time but Splunk Observability Cloud makes it easier. And even once we integrate K8s with Splunk Observability Cloud it gives us some prebuilt dashboards which gives holistic view of our Cluster and its nodes, pods, etc.
    • The dashbaord feature of Splunk Observability Cloud, it gives us full flexibility to customize our dashboard with a wide range of predefined chart types.
    • Now it also supports OTEL, which is a plus point for observability. As now everyone is moving towards Otel and in current market there are only few tools who supports OTEL based integrations, Splunk Observability Cloud is one out of them.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    SolarWinds
    • The software upgrade process is a little hairy and has caused me trouble on occasion.
    • The server that it needs to run is a bit of a resource hog along with the SQL server.
    • Some additional features like the network map are a bit clunky compared to some other products that we use.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • You can use table-like functionality to generate dashboards, but these queries are heavy on the system.
    • It could be easier to give insight into what type of line parsing is used for specific documents in a company-managed environment and/or show ways to gain the insights needed.
    • I would like to see ways to anonymize specific data for shared reports without pre-formatting this in a dashboard on which reports could be based.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    SolarWinds
    The entire IT staff relies on NPM in its daily operations. It would be impossible for us to maintain our level of service without it. If SolarWinds gets to proud of their product and begins to over charge for it, we would be forced to reconsider and use a different product. But as it stands it is worth the price to renew it.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Good: Stable system with low error rate Easy to use for simple use cases Bad: UI is not very clear for complex usage Mobile view (when logged in from phone) is bad No library for .net
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is quite an extensive product, covering all our bases and requirements. There are a lot of customizable options and features which you can work with for their alerting which is really useful. I haven't found anything yet which I thought SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) could do, but it actually couldn't so overall it works nicely and does the job.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    When there is an issue, it’s a win if one can easily identify the root cause. To do the same, it should allow the user to dig deep with multiple data points and compare the data and identify the anomaly. In this use case, it’s good to drive from Splunk 011y.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    SolarWinds
    Always available. Always is important to plan the software available during the machine/application setup.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    SolarWinds
    Pages load slow, especially the bettors map. Could be that my server is old.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    SolarWinds
    In all of the times that we called support, someone at SolarWinds had the answer for us in a timely manner. Through thwack and other internet searching, we have been able to resolve all of our issues that arose to our satisfaction. The support staff have always been knowledgeable of their products or had a fellow support staff member to rely on to get the needed answers.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Splunk support is very quick and efficient. Pre-sale specialists are very skilled and available.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    SolarWinds
    The training is good but during the implementation, you can get situations not learned during the training. The trainer was very open to hearing the questions about use cases and always sharing his experience. I really recommend having official training to take advantage of all features that the NPM can bring.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    SolarWinds
    Make sure your inventory is accurate. Stand up some virtual machines for testing prior to installation. Make sure your database and its credentials are setup. Think about things you want to monitor that may not be obvious - UPS units, Door hardware, PBX systems, Fabric Channel switches, firewalls, routers, switches. Try to setup SNMP on these devices and have an IP that you will assign to the new server. If you do that it will go well.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Follow a training before starting.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    SolarWinds
    We use NPM along with PRTG Network Monitor. While NPM is great at monitoring network devices and network links and some aspects of the servers, PRTG provides more in-depth monitoring for Server systems, applications and application ports such as Web Ports etc. PRTG also provides a more comprehensive Root cause analysis.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring provides far superior options for anybody using a complex hybrid multi-cloud environment and allows both your SOC and NOC to work together on the same data while driving their own insights. We found other products are still in the old world view of servers and agents residing together within a single data centre, but modern apps are no longer like this.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    SolarWinds
    From the direction and information I have been given it is very flexible and scalelable
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    SolarWinds
    • SolarWinds allows us to proactively address hardware issues before they impact the business. We recently had a server that was experiencing issues sporadically and we were able to use the data from SolarWinds to track down and correct the issue before it tanked the server.
    • SolarWinds gives our IT department some piece of mind knowing that they'll be alerted of any issues real time.
    • We can use SolarWinds data to justify needed to replace or upgrade certain equipment that is key to our core business.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • Significantly reduced the MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), which in turn has improved the end-user experience tremendously.
    • Meets compliance requirements of security policies, audit, regulation, and forensics.
    • Helps us to track/manage the resource usage on our cloud instances which has a direct implication on the recurring cost.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds NPM Screenshots

    Screenshot of Network monitoring software used to reduce network outages and detect, diagnose, and resolve multi-vendor network performance issues.Screenshot of See relationships for routers, switches, interfaces, volumes, and groups, updated automatically without user intervention to maintain the network, not network maps.Screenshot of Reduce visibility gaps into critical network switches, firewalls, and load balancers with Network Insight for Cisco Nexus, Cisco ASA, and F5 BIG-IP.Screenshot of Reduce the flood of unnecessary network alerts. Create alerts based on simple or complex nested trigger conditions, defined parent/child dependencies, and network topology.Screenshot of Identify dead zones and improve wireless coverage. With its network monitoring tool, users can access out-of-the-box wireless reports, including wireless availability and rogue access points.Screenshot of Configure alerts by calculating dynamic baseline threshold data with network performance monitoring software.

    Splunk Observability Cloud Screenshots

    Screenshot of Real-time monitoring for public, private and hybrid cloud