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SCOM vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

SCOM
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (5th), Network Monitoring Software (15th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

SCOM and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SCOM is designed for Event Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 9.0%, up 7.6% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, on the other hand, focuses on Server Monitoring, holds 2.7% mindshare, down 3.2% since last year.
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SCOM9.0%
ServiceNow IT Operations Management17.8%
OpsRamp14.5%
Other58.7%
Event Monitoring
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.7%
Zabbix25.9%
Checkmk10.5%
Other60.900000000000006%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

MarcMermuys - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient monitoring with robust integration capabilities
We use SCOM to configure different monitors using several management packs. It integrates systems like Active Directory and correlates them, and it is used for monitoring and managing systems SCOM allows integration of several systems, providing correlation between different systems such as…
VIVEK PATHAK - PeerSpot reviewer
Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring
My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is used for monitoring the hardware inventory. For instance, it helps with the whole operational monitoring view for the company's infrastructure."
"This is a product that does more generally than any of the competing solutions."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool."
"SCOM has helped us to monitor all the VMs in our environment, especially the Windows servers."
"The ease of deployment, especially on Windows platforms, is valuable."
"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system.​"
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
 

Cons

"Direct integration with third-party tools, like ticketing systems, is lacking but would be beneficial."
"The solution can be improved by expanding to cloud usage."
"The configurations could be better. There are multiple tests where you can do something, but they can be a trigger as well. The overriding methodologies are not that easy. The configurations are difficult. The configuration and thorough day-to-day operations to get them to the level you want takes some time. It's very difficult."
"The solution should be more user-friendly and offer a better user interface."
"The initial setup should be easier to complete."
"I would like more customized reports. People should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it. Beyond customizing the content, there should be the ability to customize the colors so that they can engage some priority and mark challenges separately."
"It'll help if they can provide real-time or closer to real-time monitoring."
"Stability and some performance issues exist and they need improvement."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise20
 

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 needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
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