Expert Insights: Rethinking Your Network Operations Toolset as Cisco Prime End of Life Arrives

The typical network operations teams use four to 15 tools to manage and monitor infrastructure. This fractured approach to operations often leads to inefficiencies and errors. With Cisco Prime exiting the industry, network managers should look for ways to consolidate and optimize their entire toolset.

Check out these slides from EMA Research and OpenText to discover:

- Why you need to take a new approach to network tools
- Insights from your network management peers who are planning a Cisco Prime replacement
- What features and functionality you should look for in your next network management solution

1. | @ema_research
Expert Insights: Rethinking your
Network Operations Toolset as
Cisco Prime End of Life Arrives
Jon Kies
Team Leader, ITOM Cloud Product Marketing
OpenText
Shamus McGillicuddy
VP of Research
Network Infrastructure Management
Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

2. | @ema_research 2
Watch the On-Demand Webinar
•Rethinking Your Network Operations Toolset as Cisco Prime End of Life
Arrives On-Demand Webinar:
https://info.enterprisemanagement.com/network-ops-as-cisco-prime-
end-of-life-arrives-webinar-ss
•Check out upcoming webinars from EMA here:
https://www.enterprisemanagement.com/freeResearch
© 2023 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

3. | @ema_research| @ema_research
Featured Speakers
Shamus is a Vice President of Research at EMA,
where he leads the network infrastructure and
operations practice. He has nearly two decades of
experience in the IT industry. His research focuses on
all aspects of managing enterprise networks,
including network automation, AIOps-driven network
operations, multi-cloud networking, and WAN
transformation.
Jon leads the product marketing teams for Network
Operations Management and Operations Bridge at
OpenText and brings more than 20 years of product
management and marketing experience with
hardware and software products. Prior to OpenText,
he started in Application Performance Management
with Optimal Networks (later acquired by
Compuware) and launched their first synthetic
monitoring solution and followed that up with
marketing management roles at both Check Point
and Symantec.
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 3
Shamus McGillicuddy
Vice President of Research
EMA
Jon Kies
Team Leader,
ITOM Cloud Product Marketing
OpenText

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Cisco Prime: The
Clock is Ticking

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What is Cisco Prime Infrastructure?
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 5
Suite of network
management products
designed for managing
Cisco-based campus
and branch networks
Introduced in 2011
Replaced CiscoWorks
Appliance-based
Primarily supports Cisco infrastructure
Manages Cisco routers, switches, and Wi-Fi access points
Offers application-centric workflows

6. | @ema_research| @ema_research
Cisco Announced End of Life for Cisco Prime
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 6
Cisco No Longer Sells Cisco Prime
Sept. 28, 2024:
Ongoing
maintenance of
the product (bug
fixes, etc.) ends
Sept. 28, 2025:
Security fixes and
patches end
Sept. 30, 2028:
All customer
support ends

7. | @ema_research| @ema_research
Cisco Prime Capabilities You Need to Replace
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 7
Network discovery
Discover network elements
Inventory device info
Collect configs
Discover/map topologies/dependencies
Automated provisioning
Design network configs and services
Auto-provision devices when they connect
Fault management
Alerts on events/thresholds
Classify alerts by severity
Ack/assign/clear
Network monitoring
Config management
Write new configs
Review/commit changes
Set golden configs Audit actual configs Remediate standards violations
Compliance management
Collect, report, analyze
network telemetry
SNMP Flows

8. | @ema_research| @ema_research
Cisco Recommends Migration to DNA Center
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 8
Hybrid on-
premises and
cloud-based
network
management
platform
Primarily
manages Cisco
networks
Recently
rebranded as
“Cisco Catalyst
Center”
General feature
parity, with
some newer
capabilities
(extensibility to
SD-WAN), more
modern
Multiple subscription tiers
Essentials: Primarily network element management
Advantage: Adds policy-based automation, monitoring, analytics,
and AI/ML features
Expansion Packs: Add-on integrations with Cisco ISE,
ThousandEyes, etc.

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Before You Decide, Know That Most NetOps Teams are Struggling
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 9
Source: EMA, ”Network Management Megatrends,” April 2022
At least 1 in 5 NetOps teams
struggle significantly with:
•Tool sprawl
•Network data quality issues
•Lack of end-to-end network visibility
•Lack of change management controls
HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR NETWORK
OPERATIONS ORGANIZATION OVER THE PAST YEAR?

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Now is the Time to
Rethink Your NetOps
Toolset

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What Should You Do?
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 11
Contextualize this transition with your entire toolset
How will it impact processes and workflows?
Consider multi-vendor management requirements
* Switching, Wi-Fi, SD-WAN, routing, firewalls, WAN optimization
Think about network data
Silos?
Quality?
Retention?
Integrations?

12. | @ema_research| @ema_research
Tool Sprawl is Rampant
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 12
Typical IT team uses 4 to 15
network management tools
Large toolsets lead to higher
percentages of downtime that
manual errors caused
“We’re close to 20 tools from six or eight vendors. Some
of those tools don’t have a lot of people using them
because they are specialized for a specific vendor.”
IT operations manager, very large government agency
“We would like to have as few tools as possible. If one tool
could do all the jobs that [our current set of 12 tools] does, it
would be easier in terms of integration and maintenance.
But no one tool can do everything we need.”
Network engineer, Fortune 500 manufacturer

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“
| @ema_research
Multi-Vendor Support Impacts Most Network Teams
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 13
We’re looking for a config management tool that is
multi-vendor. We have Palo Alto Networks and
Riverbed WAN optimization, and third-party support
of config management in Prime is not done well.
Network engineer
government contractor

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Not All Tools Are Created the Same
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 14
Top challenges with network monitoring tools:
26% Scope is too narrow
21% Alarm noise
53% of alerts coming out of network monitoring tools are
false alarms
21% Lack of insights
21% Poor data quality
Data quality issues:
46% Conflicts between tools
45% Collection problems
44% Data storage limits
36% Data silos within a tool
Source: EMA, “Network Observability: Delivering Actionable Insights to Network Operations,” October 2022

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What to Look for
in Your Prime
Replacement

16. | @ema_research| @ema_research
Adopt a Unified Network Management Platform
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 16
Not easy to find
“We would prefer to use just one
tool and deal with just one vendor,
but I don’t see that happening. We
can’t find a company that can do
that kind of consolidation for us.”
Network engineer
government contractor
NetOps teams that adopt unified,
multifunction network management
platforms are more successful
Correlate insights across metrics, flows, config
changes, etc.
Integrate workflows and processes across features
and functionality
Improve collaboration within and across groups

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Establish a Network Data Lake
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 17
87% of network teams
report that the volume
and variety of data they
collect are growing
Network management tools that have a
modern data lake architecture can:
Scale capacity and retention
Collect and store diverse classes of data
83% of network teams
would like to stream data
to a network data lake
Data lakes can enable:
58% Collaboration
55% Data retention
48% Data correlation across tool siloes
43% Audits

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Identify Your Critical Network Tool Capabilities
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 18
Top Feature requirementsTop Platform Requirements
Integrations with other ITOM systems
Ease of use
Low maintenance and support costs
Rapid ROI
Data visualization
Traffic analysis
Change detection and validation
Alert management
Network discovery and dependency mapping
Data searchability

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Final Thoughts
© 2024 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. 19
Cisco Prime is history
Now is the time to rethink network management
Tool consolidation and multi-vendor support should guide you
Look for unified multifunction platforms
Establish a network data lake
Know the requirements of your people