Nlyte DCIM

Take the Time to Make Your Job Easier

Comments: Nlyte has revolutionized my day to day work and made communications and simple data requests so much easier. The efforts to load the Nlyte with data was a significant challenge, but was absolutely worth every moment spent. Training is recommended for effective use, because Nlyte in not immediately intuitive to use in all its modules. While some may consider this a con, I considerate it a feature as protecting the integrity of the Nlyte database is a major concern and Nlyte walks a line between ease of use protecting data from changes by a novice.

Pros:

Nlyte provides a comprehensive source to help me answer all of the questions that customers ask involving data center services. Mundane asset information is easily searchable, while diagrams and pictures are immediately available to facilitate descriptions to customers who may never actually set foot in the data center. Nlyte is a resources that has improved the communication of my enterprise for every person that needs to know anything about physical hardware to get a task done.

Cons:

Loading the data that Nlyte will use is a significant undertaking. While Nlyte provides this as a service, security concerns kept my enterprise from taking advantage. At least 1200 hundred man-hours were spent to load the information from 10,000 assets, just to give an idea of the scope of implementing this solution.

Alternatives Considered: Sunbird DCIM and Cormant-CS DCIM

Reasons for Choosing Nlyte DCIM: The homemade java-script program that was previously used proved the facility of a comprehensive data base of the data center, so that my bosses would pay for a professional tool.

Reasons for Switching to Nlyte DCIM: Research and peer reviews were the biggest contributors to choosing Nlyte, but the addition modules that will link VMware and Remedy put Nlyte over the top.

DCIM, Promices kept and a quatum increase in removing the curtains of data center mysteries.

Comments: The level of data collection required is a few orders of magnitude higher and the effort to collect was anticipated and has greatly improved our current processes in going to a digital development posture versus having to make trips into the hosting centers and reduced our associated risk.

Pros:

once acclimated, you can see through the various tables how your hosting center is built from a micro level. Power from the Utility down to the switched outlet with audit trails, to all the interdependencies of the loaded software, data connections and management with move plan-o-grams to give the techs.

Cons:

As with most of these applications it is very cerebral in being able to visualize your environment in the forms presented, initial user training is a real paradigm shift for those who don't live in the cabinets. If it had a graphical drag and drop creation methodology that would help a lot toward user intuitiveness of operation. Wish list? direct DWG import for rooms would be nice.

Alternatives Considered: Trellis Site Manager, Hyperview and Simplicity

Reasons for Choosing Nlyte DCIM: We outgrew the capabilities and did not want to invest in the development and continued maintenance to better match our changing needs.

Reasons for Switching to Nlyte DCIM: it was the most mature of those we looked at and also best matched our needs from a floor modeling and business operations with the least amount of current process interdiction

Overpriced, mediocre product with poor support

Comments: This software is overpriced. Nice idea, poorly implemented and even more poorly supported.

Pros:

Very customizable, however you have to customize about everything. Nice idea for a product, but poorly implemented, worsely supported and highly over priced

Cons:

Support has a slow response time. Everything has to be customized and support is not much help. Manuals are poorly written. If you have a problem, they might call it a feature request and it will never get looked at again. If you see something in their demos, it will probably cost another 50k. They like to charge and overcharge for everything. If you make the mistake of buying this product, you will need an internal team to support it for all the "tweaking" and verifying that will need to be done to actually use the product. Highly NOT recommended

Brought us into the light

Comments: The system our service provider uses to track our data center assets is very antiquated and poorly built in-house. Adopting Nlyte brought us into the 21st-century by giving us the tools and capabilities that should be standard across the industry for all data center service providers and colocation customers.

Pros:

The ease of visualizing our data center assets to customers and administrators offsite, and tracking our cabling configuration between the assets.

Cons:

Either there’s no ability to open a new service request through Nlyte directly from the asset page, or it’s not intuitive to see how that could be enabled.

Alternatives Considered: Sunbird DCIM

Reasons for Choosing Nlyte DCIM: Nlyte gave us essential capabilities and tools that weren’t available but desperately needed from our in-house solution.

Reasons for Switching to Nlyte DCIM: Instead of providing an API to build our own connectors between applications, Nlyte offered the software solutions themselves.

Best DCIM tools on the market.

Comments: I would recommend this tools to any company interested in getting a complete CMDB tool. I would suggest that they speak to other customers using the product to get a real view on what Nlyte can provide. I seen the other negative review and I am not sure they received the good review of the product line. I also would like to say that Nlyte is not like the big players offering the same solutions. They are able to provide better support and updates quicker than the larger player in the industry. I like that I can speak to the CTO of the company at any time and share my ideas and feedback.

Pros:

I have been a Nlyte customer for over 5 years and I am using it's asset management and environmental monitoring tools (NAO & NEO). I have both integrated into my CMBD allowing me to pass CI data and providing updated records for ticket resolution. I like the easy of use related to customizing the applications. I also find the support to be very responsive and knowledgeable.

Cons:

Would like to see easier integration related to API configuration. I have seen other apps and they also have the same challenge.