Abstract: Systems and methods which provide an adaptive unified performance management (AUPM) framework for interacting with disparate network elements using techniques adaptive to operational conditions to provide network performance adaptive root cause analysis (ARCA) are shown. An AUPM framework of embodiments of the invention implements a proxy based architecture in which a plurality of proxies are utilized to connect to and perform data communication with the disparate network elements. Centralized performance management is in communication with the proxies to obtain and unify network element data for performance monitoring, alarm reporting, and/or root cause analysis. The performance monitoring, alarm reporting, and root cause analysis provided by centralized performance management of embodiments herein implements adaptive cluster-based analysis to provide robust operation adapted to accommodate various operational scenarios, such as may include time varying conditions and learning based configuration.