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SCOM vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
SCOM users experience varied ROI, with advantages in monitoring and management offset by potential licensing costs and latency issues.
Sentiment score
5.6
ServiceNow IT Operations Management enhances efficiency and ROI, covering costs quickly while boosting workflow speed and asset management.
It reduced staffing needs from four full-time staff to fewer due to automation.
Account Manager at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft customer service is generally viewed positively, with efficient assistance and experienced staff, despite occasional consistency issues.
Sentiment score
6.2
ServiceNow IT Operations Management support is generally responsive but inconsistent, necessitating better training and process clarity.
They often treat issues in isolation, not considering how one problem might relate to another.
Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company
When I was working directly with Microsoft at TCS, my first company, the support experience was quite smooth, and we received solutions promptly.
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
They respond promptly when we call to open a ticket.
Chief Information Officer at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
For minor issues, the team takes a month's time to provide a fix.
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The response time of technical support could be improved.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
SCOM offers scalable management, efficient load balancing, and high availability but faces challenges with non-Microsoft integration and diverse device monitoring.
Sentiment score
7.3
ServiceNow IT Operations Management is highly praised for scalable solutions and strong performance, especially in medium to large enterprises.
The scalability of SCOM, meaning its ability to adapt to our needs, is excellent because we are working with SQL systems and multiple servers.
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
ServiceNow ITOM scales very well to small and medium businesses.
Account Manager at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
It integrates with every single tool, even external tools.
Business analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
SCOM's stability has improved significantly, especially in newer versions like 2019, with proper configuration and resource allocation.
Sentiment score
7.6
ServiceNow IT Operations Management is stable and reliable, with high ratings but occasional performance issues in complex deployments.
I have not seen many errors or frequent data loss because once we have installed the agent on the system and have the details, not much manual intervention is required.
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
SCOM is a bit unstable lately, primarily due to a lack of resources.
Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company
Since it is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, I consider the stability to be very high, rating it ten out of ten.
Business analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It helps us create custom dashboards and provides excellent search functionality where we can search for any issues or errors that have occurred and take corrective action before it impacts the users.
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

SCOM needs better dashboards, lower licensing costs, easier integration, improved reporting, enhanced support, and efficient alert management.
ServiceNow IT Operations Management faces cost, complexity, UI, integration, efficiency, and performance challenges, needing enhancements and customizations.
I would like to see a software-as-a-service version in Azure to eliminate the need for on-premise infrastructure.
ICT System Administrator at College of Europe
SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure.
Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company
It would be beneficial to have a summary on one single dashboard, as there are many more possibilities available.
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
A more streamlined configuration process tailored to use cases and industry would be beneficial.
Chief Information Officer at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
It provides many out-of-the-box functionalities along with customization options.
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not very affordable for SMB customers.
Manager, Solution/Service Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

SCOM pricing varies with agreements, often part of cost-effective Microsoft packages, though licensing can be complex initially.
ServiceNow IT Operations Management offers costly, customizable yearly licenses, seen as valuable for its comprehensive features despite high pricing.
The pricing model offers scaling where not everything consumes a license equally, providing more value across different business areas.
Account Manager at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
ServiceNow's pricing is expensive.
Chief Information Officer at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
It is definitely high-priced compared to other products available in the same domain in the market.
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

SCOM efficiently monitors Microsoft environments with integration, customizable dashboards, real-time reporting, and automated alerts for proactive management.
ServiceNow IT Operations Management streamlines ITSM with intuitive design, efficient process integration, real-time tracking, and seamless task management.
It assists me in detecting server downtime and delivers basic performance monitoring right out of the box.
Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool.
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS.
ICT System Administrator at College of Europe
The performance analytics of ServiceNow was especially beneficial for setting thresholds, aggregating, and correlating infrastructure data.
Account Manager at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
ServiceNow IT Operations Management influences ITSM processes by automating them and aiding in detecting and resolving IT issues to improve performance, reliability, and uptime.
Business analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
They provide seamless integration of ITOM with their other modules such as ITSM, where we can leverage the AIs for discovery, perform impact analysis, which essentially helps to enhance the overall IT operations and reduce the downtime and MTTR.
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (15th)
ServiceNow IT Operations Ma...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (10th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of SCOM is 9.1%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 12.8%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow IT Operations Management12.8%
SCOM9.1%
Other78.1%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.
reviewer2755671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Significant enhancement in operations with powerful discovery and analytics, yet pricing structure poses challenges
ServiceNow IT Operations Management provides out-of-the-box dashboards. Along with the dashboard, it also provides the Operations Workspace, which is very useful for operations teams. There is a functionality called Performance Analytics, which we are also using to develop some dashboards for the senior leadership and operations team where they can perform trend analysis of alerts and events happening across the infrastructure and application landscape. These dashboards are really useful here. ServiceNow IT Operations Management's biggest plus point is that it is a platform. ITOM is just one module that ServiceNow IT Operations Management offers, but they provide seamless integration of ITOM with their other modules such as ITSM, where we can leverage the AIs for discovery, perform impact analysis, which essentially helps to enhance the overall IT operations and reduce the downtime and MTTR.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
What do you like most about ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
From my perspective as an asset manager, the most valuable feature of the solution is the configuration management portion, where I can actively add something to the database.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
It is definitely high-priced compared to other products available in the same domain in the market.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
ServiceNow IT Operations Management has not been very popular in these regions for multiple reasons. One is that for SMB customers, ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not very affordable. It is...
 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about SCOM vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,315 professionals have used our research since 2012.