Cisco ThousandEyes vs. Riverbed Aternity

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco ThousandEyes
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Cisco ThousandEyes empowers organizations to assure every digital experience across every network, everywhere, every time.N/A
Riverbed Aternity
Score 5.0 out of 10
N/A
Riverbed Aternity delivers AI-enabled insights based on real end user experience data and high-fidelity telemetry across endpoints, application, infrastructure and network.N/A
Pricing
Cisco ThousandEyesRiverbed Aternity
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco ThousandEyesRiverbed Aternity
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco ThousandEyesRiverbed Aternity
Considered Both Products
Cisco ThousandEyes
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
LogicMonitor, SolarWinds AppOptics and Zabbix
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
Cisco ThousandEyes offers better compatibility.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
ISP, SDWAN, Cloud, etc. These all can be monitored via thousandEyes. Provide Digital experience Monitoring and have great benefits.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
It is a similar product to Cisco ThousandEyes. Both solutions give good network monitoring and traffic analysis. But Cisco ThousandEyes works better with Cisco devices and has real-time alerts that are very useful. It also helps to see network problems faster and make …
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
This technology helps us and our customers understand the value and importance of our business. Not only for our business but also for Cisco business. We are developing a lot of apps in .net so we will like to have support for that in Cisco products that we and our customers …
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
We did briefly look into DynaTrace, but it was too much product for what we needed though and was much more expensive then just adding the licensing to our Cisco existing licenses.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
Juniper RPM offers device config level sla testing in the service stream layer. Whilst this is good and is monitorable via snmp, the config can be fiddly and needs a Juniper device at the other end as a reply point
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
far superior to other solutions
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
Cisco ThousandEyes has a great "macro" view and gui allowing easy to understand metrics. It also makes it easy to run synthetic application tests to measure reachability between two endpoints.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
Kentik Synthetics is a newer competitor of Cisco ThousandEyes. Both do very similar things but Cisco ThousandEyes currently is the more mature platform. However, the pricing of Synthetics is very attractive. It does not have the robustness of Cisco ThousandEyes or the …
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
It has efficient bgp monitoring.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000) and Cisco Catalyst Center
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
Connected directly to the switch. Other vendors all seem to be add-ons. They claim they are different, but I don't know why I would go spend additional money for another product.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
Better data based analysis and visualization.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
They complement each other and have a good synergy with monitoring across the estate.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes is significantly better for network and infrastructure data. Whereas New Relic is currently better for our laptop/desktop estate.
Chose Cisco ThousandEyes
None were evaluated - we are a Cisco gold partner, we used ThousandEyes as part of our demonstration facilities to upsell the wider Cisco stack.
Riverbed Aternity
Chose Riverbed Aternity
The three tools mentioned above are great too. All deliver and fulfill their functionality well. But we chose Riverbed SteelCentral AppInternals because we received referrals from other friends who work at other major companies around the world and use this solution and have …
Chose Riverbed Aternity
  • Riverbed is on-premise. I don't have to worry about my agents not connecting to the app dynamics cloud or a cloud agent not working and not updating information.
  • Integration with an already-existing Riverbed appliance that was already on-site and operational.
  • The cost was …
Chose Riverbed Aternity
There is a wide variety of APM solutions out there for companies to pick from. Riverbed AppInternals sits near the top of the stack certainly. We already deploy steelhead units across the estate with client licenses, that aided us in our decision to select AppInternals. We …
Chose Riverbed Aternity
AT&T M2M Application Platform
Best Alternatives
Cisco ThousandEyesRiverbed Aternity
Small Businesses
SolarWinds Pingdom
SolarWinds Pingdom
Score 9.7 out of 10
SolarWinds Pingdom
SolarWinds Pingdom
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Catchpoint
Catchpoint
Score 9.2 out of 10
Cisco ThousandEyes
Cisco ThousandEyes
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Nexthink
Nexthink
Score 7.0 out of 10
Nexthink
Nexthink
Score 7.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco ThousandEyesRiverbed Aternity
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco ThousandEyesRiverbed Aternity
Likelihood to Recommend
As a service provider that is in multiple datacenters it's a great tool to use and leverage. Alot of smaller providers are only using NMS nodes that are hosted in their HQ or in spots that aren't where their content is hosted. Being able to run tests directly from your datacenters (between them or to the content provider itself) gives more accurate results. The downside is if you have no server infrastructure you'll have to install servers/machines to utilize it.
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We are a services organization and we use Riverbed SteelCentral AppInternals with our customers. It has allowed us to expand the footprint in the application management business with virtually all of our major accounts. We were able to expand and go into other applications that we weren't in or offering previously. Now, we have a new value proposition for our customer enhanced visibility, enhanced stability, and we can reduce our cost to them because our cost structure is reduced by using Riverbed SteelCentral AppInternals.
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Pros
  • Agent to Agent testing. Full round trip test. Have a customer using a Server Side API that is having an issue. Loan a Nuc, or have them install the ThousandEyes agent in their network. You'll find the issue guaranteed.
  • Device Layer vision - ability to see from the server, through the Firewall, switches Proxy and internet. Measure jitter, latency, response time, load time and see the path your packet takes.
  • Share your tests live. Provide the customer a link to a live test, they can see what you do, review your metrics and verify your tests. They can also use it as a tool to better their service. Build the trust and stickiness with your customers' most difficult users - the IT Operations team.
  • Validate your QOS and routes for VOIP, video conferences, and data traffic. Highly flexible and configurable complete with transaction-based testing, custom headers, calls and tools to mimic any scenario you need.
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  • Root cause finding/remediation (it goes beyond analysis).
  • Shows latency between applications and servers.
  • Identifies long-running SQL queries, and puts the onus back on developers to clean up their SQL code.
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Cons
  • We have the product, we have a fair amount of wireless issues. You have to go through so many hoops, links and selections that I would think would've been impossible. Maybe if you have a specialized engineer, you would be able to use the thousandeyes product to troubleshoot a problem. But if I want to share with our knock, for example, would be very challenging because there is so many paths that you have to go and there is so many assumptions you have to do to actually find the root cause of the problem. What I would expect is maybe what they can do is implementing some AI today on this product to give some hints, "hey, this might be the problem because the data is there but it's difficult to find." We need an easier way to find how we can use the platform to point out where's the root cause of those problems.
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  • We found the platform slightly costly for the return. Having tried multiple products this was the best of the lot.
  • We did find a few applications where the diagnostic data wasn't overly insightful.
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Likelihood to Renew
We will definitely renew and maybe even extend our usage of ThousandEyes. We have been using ThousandEyes now for a couple of years and it has shown us major benefits. With the new options it offers for SD-WAN for us it is a no brainer to renew our current licenses
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No answers on this topic
Usability
There is definitely a learning curve to ThousandEyes, but once you understand how the client deployment works and how to set up monitoring, things go pretty smoothly. I think the initial setting up of clients on endpoints can be a little tricky though.
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No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Being cloud hosted means that you are at the mercy of Cisco web services, but we've had absolutely no issues with its availability.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
The client is very lightweight on endpoints and the user interface is very fast and fluid.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
You have online support from the tool itself 24/7 and they are very responsive. We also have a specific account manager and specific engineer assigned to help us with very specific questions for our environment. The level of response to our requirements is always super high. We have requested specific features to be added and these have been developed and introduced very quick tot he product (within weeks). Their DevOps and agile approach seems to pay off.
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The support I give the highest rating because it is really amazing. Every time we triggered the tool support, we were very well served very quickly and efficiently. The problems were solved quickly and without stress. The staff helped us within minutes and had a lot of patience with us
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In-Person Training
Our Cisco reps actually had someone teach us a few things about the functionality of ThousandEyes, and it helped a lot. The training was good and we had follow-up assistance as well when we had questions about the monitoring and reporting functions. Overall, we were satisfied with the training and support.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Our implementation was pretty straightforward, with some issues loading clients on endpoints. We didn't have any notable issues, and I don't really have any additional insights.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
It is a similar product to Cisco ThousandEyes. Both solutions give good network monitoring and traffic analysis. But Cisco ThousandEyes works better with Cisco devices and has real-time alerts that are very useful. It also helps to see network problems faster and make troubleshooting easier. Cisco ThousandEyes is also better for checking SaaS and cloud apps like Azure, AWS, Webex, etc. It has endpoint agents that show network quality directly from user devices. The web interface is simple to use, so the learning curve is not too steep. Also, it has many monitoring points around the world, making it easy to check performance outside the company network.
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The three tools mentioned above are great too. All deliver and fulfill their functionality well. But we chose Riverbed SteelCentral AppInternals because we received referrals from other friends who work at other major companies around the world and use this solution and have never had any problems. So for reliability we chose this one
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Scalability
I think this product would be infinitely scalable since it's all cloud hosted and can support thousands of endpoints if needed. We are only using it for a limited number of endpoints, so we never really considered scalability.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • ThousandEyes has helped us quickly isolate issues on some high-profile (within the organization) incidents and whether the network (internally or on the Internet) is at fault. If it is, it becomes easier to see the "where" of the issues quicker so we can move onto what the issue is faster. In the case of non-network related issues, it helps us get the appropriate teams or individuals involved sooner.
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  • Helped us drive automation for the client
  • Generation of detailed reports for monitoring activity performed
  • Overall improvement in compliance and risk management for servers
  • Drive operational efficiency across the project
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ScreenShots

Cisco ThousandEyes Screenshots

Screenshot of global availability issues for users trying to use Slack application.Screenshot of the path visibility feature pinpointing where in the transit path an outage or event is occurring.Screenshot of ThousandEyes Internet Insights™, which combines a massive data set with algorithmic outage detection to provide near real-time insights into a business's SaaS applications.  and networks. Internet Insights can be used to manage digital experience at Internet scale.Screenshot of ThousandEyes Event Detection diagnosing events as server or network issue.