Why our customers choose Plixer’s Scrutinizer over Cisco’s Stealthwatch (formerly by Lancope) for NetFlow collection, storage and analysis
When it comes to network-related products, you can’t go wrong with Cisco, right? But is it always the best choice?
Hundreds of organisations have opted to purchase Plixer’s Scrutinizer from us for their flow collection, storage and analysis, rather than going for Cisco’s Stealthwatch. These include some of the world’s largest.
Most of them had carried out careful market research and testing before committing, to identify the right product for their needs. If only their results could be made public in a central, independently-managed repository to save others from having to repeat the same work! (Sadly, as Gartner are paid by the vendors who appear in their charts, their analysis is not totally impartial.)
At Info Stor we’re fans of Scrutinizer for good reason. Here are just a few of the reasons why many medium and large organisations choose Scrutinizer rather than the leading rival product…
Why Scrutinizer wins out over Stealthwatch for our customers
Stealthwatch is a great product and is very capable when it comes to NetFlow collection for security analysis. However, our customers consistently tell us that Scrutinizer is a far better product, for the following reasons:
Flexibility
Scrutinizer’s user interface is incredibly flexible and allows users to view information from NetFlow in the way they want to view it. This is particularly important when responding to incidents under high pressure.
Scrutinizer includes a comprehensive selection of pre-built reports, however it’s quick and easy for users to build their own reports on the fly.
In addition to having all the security analytics functionality of Stealthwatch and more, Scrutinizer is also a good choice for network performance monitoring (NPM). This is a major plus point for Scrutinizer, and many of our customers are able to draw on separate security operations (SecOps) and network operations (NetOps) budgets to fund their purchase.
Flow focus
Plixer was founded in 1999. Their product, Scrutinizer, quickly became established as the market-leading tool for the collection and analysis of metadata used for monitoring network traffic.
Their three product lines Scrutinizer, FlowPro and Replicator, are all flow-based, so they are 100% focused on this field.
They are continually honing the tools. The pace of development at Plixer is rapid and the quality always high. Whether you go for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription or host the application on-premise or in a private cloud, you will benefit from frequent updates.
Independence
Most medium and large organisations have network infrastructure manufactured by Cisco. If that’s the case for your business too, whose product would you rather use to monitor the security and performance of that equipment? Cisco’s or a trusted third party’s?
In conclusion…
We agree with our customers that Scrutinizer by Plixer is the clear winner. Next time you’re evaluating network monitoring technologies, we hope you will include it in the shortlist.
