Cisco Catalyst Center vs. Pulseway

Security with identity-based access control and segmentation via integration with Cisco ISE, supporting zero-trust architectures. Centralized Management for a large campus environment with centralized management of wired and wireless equipment. Automation of tasks like: provisioning, configuration, and software upgrade, reducing manual effort of those tasks. It could be improved to Multi-Vendor Support.

Incentivized

Pulseway is well suited for just about any situation where there is a need to remotely monitor and manage computers. The most basic features are available to anyone with a free account, so even a home user can set it up and use to keep an eye on computers. The more sophisticated features require a fairly inexpensive subscription, but are well worth the cost for a business wanting to monitor the health of their servers, etc. My experience with Pulseway is limited to using it in situations where there are fewer than a dozen or so computers/servers being monitored. I'm not really sure how well it scales up, so I can't say if it is a good solution for a large corporation with hundreds or thousands of machines that need to be monitored.

Incentivized

• I really like the assurance. I like that I can go through and find problems on the network that could be a mismatch VLAN between two interfaces, port errors, like physical errors that we otherwise probably would need to wait for a customer to complain or we have that we can see that ahead of time and be proactive and say, Hey, I'm noticing that this port is having some errors on it. We might want to check that out ahead of time before it becomes an issue. So that's really useful. And then also being able to configure the network. I think that the programmability part of it, I think I have, I've been having some struggle with that initially, just having to apply. So I have my script, my template that I want to deploy, but in order to deploy it, I have to apply it to a template or a profile and then I have to assign that profile to a group of switches that I want to program. I think it gets a little bit messy and a little bit convoluted, but other than that, I mean it's really helpful. It does automate right now, I think it seems a little convoluted with the process.

Incentivized

• Running windows updates: Pulseway really helps us keep our end-user devices up to date, without the need to handle each device individually.
• Sending notifications on our servers really helps with taking care of issues before they cause downtime.
• Pulseway's remote desktop client works very well, even over slower internet connections.

Incentivized

• The one thing that we had to get used to was really breaking down our wireless. We integrated our 9800 controllers into it, and the breakdown of our tags being floor specific and not just being campus specific was a challenge for us. And so we had to create all new tags and it wasn't necessarily a problem, it just required a little bit redesign on our wireless. And so it would've been nice for us to be able to assign a tag to an entire campus versus a floor, but that's a small complaint.

Incentivized

• File transfer
• There are a couple of computers that I keep ScreenConnect around for - as I lose connection with Pulseway and have to reestablish with ScreenConnect. I can't seem to get tech support interested in resolving this issue and it cost's me many $$ just to keep ScreenConnect running.
• There is an issue with Webroot, their new endpoint solution. I can't get it to work - again, no help from Pulseway - they ignore my emails.

Incentivized

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

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.

The tool is easy to use however it is can be daunting with the amount of features available in it. Last I checked, their knowledge base was not very expansive and they relied a lot on the changelog for how to do some stuff. This can make it hard to learn how to do some more advanced things like the automation.

Incentivized

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

I have never had to use the support for Pulseway. However, when initially starting out, we would receive emails every so often asking how we are doing and if there is any support that they can provide. I would imagine that any request would be supplied with the same great support!

Incentivized

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

We went with Cisco Catalyst Center, we evaluated, I think it was called Rainbow from Altel, Lucent Enterprise because we were an Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise customer. But since we seeded with Cisco DNA Center and SD Access back in 2019, we haven't been out to evaluate anything which is a direct competitor. There are tools which we are looking to purchase and implement to provide functionality which Cisco Catalyst Center can't, but they're more value add tools, not to necessarily directly drive the capability of our infrastructure.

Incentivized

The 2 major factors were: 1. The fact there was no contract, we believe vendors should have to validate the usefulness of their product and their support to their customers every day, not just 1 or 2 months every few years. This is the same reason we allow our clients to leave at any time if we fail to meet their standards. 2. The ease of managing the product, we demoed other products that would have almost required a full time employee just to manage the RMM tool itself. The ease of use of Pulseway meant a tech could manage it as part of their other duties much improving the ROI. Note: We also felt NinjaOne met these same conditions but we evaluated it after having used Pulseway for a few years and while we found it a great product, possibly even superior, we didn't find enough reason to go through all the work and retraining to change over.

Incentivized

• 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

• Problems can be dealt with more rapidly because I have access to systems from anywhere. I don't have to carry a computer with me nor do I have to find a location with potentially non-secure wifi to gain access to my systems.
• I can handle 99% of my system admin tasks using Pulseway and never have to touch a system or connect to the console.
• Pulseway gives so much control over a system that I don't need to spend extra money on other software to perform management tasks.

Incentivized