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Government · head to head

CentralSquare Asset Management vs IBM QRadar

CentralSquare Asset Management logo

CentralSquare Asset Management

Government

Public sector enterprise asset management, sold for years as Lucity

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
IBM QRadar logo

IBM QRadar

Cybersecurity

Enterprise SIEM licensed by events per second, whose cloud business IBM sold to Palo Alto Networks in 2024.

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: CentralSquare Asset Management the Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.; IBM QRadar iBM sold the QRadar SaaS business to Palo Alto Networks in 2024 and those customers are being moved to Cortex XSIAM, so anyone buying today is choosing an on-premises product whose vendor has publicly moved the cloud future to a competitor, and the support horizon becomes a contract negotiation rather than an assumption.
  • They diverge on capability: CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration, IBM QRadar covers Offence model.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which CentralSquare Asset Management and IBM QRadar actually diverge.

Attributes where CentralSquare Asset Management and IBM QRadar differ
AttributeCentralSquare Asset ManagementIBM QRadar
Pricing modelquotesubscription
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premiseWeb, Api
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity
FoundedUnknown1911

Identical on both: starting price (On request), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in CentralSquare Asset Management

  • Esri ArcGIS integration
  • Public works asset breadth
  • Citizen request intake
  • Condition assessment
  • Inspections
  • Suite integration

Only in IBM QRadar

  • Offence model
  • Network flow analysis
  • Device Support Modules
  • Ariel query language
  • Rules and building blocks
  • Deployment topology
  • App Exchange
  • Use Case Manager

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • A city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheetsnot IBM QRadar
  • A county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programmenot IBM QRadar
  • A public works department wanting citizen-reported potholes and blocked drains to become work orders without manual re-keyingnot IBM QRadar
  • A municipality already running CentralSquare finance that wants asset and work costs to land in the general ledger without an integration projectnot IBM QRadar

IBM QRadar

  • A regulated enterprise that must keep log data on premises or in a specific jurisdiction and cannot use a shared SaaS SIEMnot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • A SOC that wants log correlation and network flow analysis in one platform rather than buying an NDR product separatelynot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • An existing QRadar estate deciding whether to stay on premises or accept the migration path to a different vendor's platformnot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • Compliance-driven log retention and reporting where the audit requirement is specific about collection, retention and reportingnot CentralSquare Asset Management

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • The Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.
  • CentralSquare is private-equity owned and grew by acquisition, so asset management competes for development attention against public safety and finance products with larger revenue, and its roadmap is not independently controlled.
  • Pricing is unpublished and quoted per municipality, and asset management is often presented alongside other suite modules, so a department must work to get a clean, unbundled number it can defend at council.
  • Esri ArcGIS is effectively a prerequisite for the spatial capability that makes the product worth buying, and that licence is a separate cost the software quote will not include.
  • It is North America focused, aligned to United States municipal practice, funding structures and regulatory programmes, which limits its fit for local authorities elsewhere.

IBM QRadar

  • IBM sold the QRadar SaaS business to Palo Alto Networks in 2024 and those customers are being moved to Cortex XSIAM, so anyone buying today is choosing an on-premises product whose vendor has publicly moved the cloud future to a competitor, and the support horizon becomes a contract negotiation rather than an assumption.
  • Licensing is by events per second and flows per minute, so every additional log source raises the cost directly and teams routinely exclude verbose sources such as DNS, proxy, endpoint and cloud audit logs to stay under the licence, which strips out exactly the data an investigation later needs.
  • It needs a dedicated operator: rule tuning, parser work and offence triage are continuous jobs, and an organisation that deploys QRadar without at least one named engineer accumulates thousands of unreviewed offences and a false sense of coverage.
  • A log source without a matching Device Support Module arrives unparsed, and writing a custom parser with regular expressions against an unfamiliar payload format is specialist work that can take days per source, which quietly determines which systems ever get monitored.
  • On-premises capacity is planned across consoles, processors, collectors and data nodes, so outgrowing the sizing means procuring and racking more appliances rather than changing a subscription tier, and growth becomes a purchasing cycle measured in months.

Pricing, plan by plan

CentralSquare Asset Management

On request
  • CentralSquare Asset Management$undefined/year
    • Subscription or on-premise licensing, quoted per municipality
    • Priced on population, module selection and user counts
    • Esri ArcGIS licensing purchased separately

IBM QRadar

On request
  • QRadar SIEMFree
    • Event and flow processing
    • Offense management
    • Threat intelligence
  • QRadar CloudFree
    • Cloud-native deployment
    • Elastic scaling
    • Managed infrastructure
  • QRadar SuiteFree
    • SIEM + SOAR + XDR
    • Unified analyst experience
    • Federated search

Which should you pick?

Choose CentralSquare Asset Management if

  • You need esri arcgis integration.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise.
  • You also want public works asset breadth.
CentralSquare Asset Management review

Choose IBM QRadar if

  • You need offence model.
  • You work on Web, Api.
  • You also want network flow analysis.
IBM QRadar review

Questions people ask

Is CentralSquare Asset Management or IBM QRadar better?
Neither clearly leads. CentralSquare Asset Management starts at On request and IBM QRadar at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, CentralSquare Asset Management or IBM QRadar?
CentralSquare Asset Management starts at On request and IBM QRadar at On request.
Does CentralSquare Asset Management or IBM QRadar run on more platforms?
CentralSquare Asset Management runs on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise. IBM QRadar runs on Web, Api.
What is CentralSquare Asset Management best used for?
CentralSquare Asset Management is most often used for a city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheets, a county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programme, a public works department wanting citizen-reported potholes and blocked drains to become work orders without manual re-keying, a municipality already running centralsquare finance that wants asset and work costs to land in the general ledger without an integration project. Of those, a city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheets and a county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programme are not what IBM QRadar is typically brought in for.
What can CentralSquare Asset Management do that IBM QRadar cannot?
CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration, Public works asset breadth, Citizen request intake, Condition assessment. IBM QRadar covers Offence model, Network flow analysis, Device Support Modules, Ariel query language.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

CentralSquare Asset Management: Can I still buy Lucity?

Not under that name alone. It is sold as CentralSquare Asset Management powered by Lucity, and quotes and contracts will use the CentralSquare name.

IBM QRadar: Who owns QRadar now?

It is split. IBM sold the QRadar SaaS assets to Palo Alto Networks in a deal announced in May 2024 and closed that September, and those customers are being migrated to Cortex XSIAM. IBM retains and supports the on-premises product.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Do I need Esri?

In practice yes. The spatial asset handling that distinguishes the product depends on ArcGIS, licensed separately from Esri.

IBM QRadar: Is QRadar being discontinued?

IBM has committed to continuing support for on-premises customers, including security updates, while offering migration assistance. The cloud product's future belongs to Palo Alto. If you are signing a multi-year term, get the support horizon written into the contract.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is it cloud only?

No. Both hosted subscription and on-premise deployment are available, which matters for municipalities with data residency or network policy constraints.

IBM QRadar: How is it licensed?

By events per second for logs and flows per minute for network data, with the software or appliance sized to that rate. Add-on modules in the suite are licensed separately.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is pricing published?

No. It is quoted per municipality based on population, modules and users, usually through a public procurement process.

IBM QRadar: What is an offence?

QRadar's term for a correlated case. Rules group related events and flows against a common indicator such as a host or user, so an analyst reviews one offence rather than the hundreds of events behind it.

IBM QRadar: Do I need a full-time engineer?

In practice yes for anything beyond a small deployment. Parser development, rule tuning and offence triage do not stop, and the most common failure mode is a well-installed QRadar that nobody has tuned since go-live.

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