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DX Spectrum vs IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs OPS/MVS Automation Intelligence comparison

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

DX NetOps
Event Monitoring
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

DickBaker - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-inclusive monitoring solution that adapts to emerging technologies
The product helps to correlate events.  The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability. DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.  I have been using the product since 2005.  I rate DX Spectrum's stability an eight point five…
Ahmed Salman - PeerSpot reviewer
Aids in network performance monitoring and management
I am working as a customer, mainly using IntelliQ and another product, IBM NetCool, Watson AI. These products are used for monitoring network performance and management.  The primary use case involves network performance monitoring, and it is compatible only with IBM DB2 IBM Tivoli NetCool…
GP
It automates responses, preventing issues from becoming more severe
I just installed version 12.3, which actually already has a number of new features. It's going to make it easier for some of our new users. I'm old-school, I learned it the old way. I actually want to go back and implement it and start doing things the new way. As I need to train people, it's going to make it easier for them and make the learning curve much shorter. The new release addressed some shortcomings of the product. It was old-school. The learning curve was a little bit long in the beginning, but it's really come a long way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to put health checks in place not only for the infrastructure but for some of the services that are on top of the infrastructure."
"Scalability is a highly rated feature of this solution. It is better than some of the other tools that I've used in terms of scalability. We scaled it to tens of thousands of devices."
"The Spectrum tool improved our network assurance levels for our business units."
"The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability."
"It does correlation so instead of producing 20 alarms if a site goes down, it only creates one."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component."
"We were able to standardize the internal processes across all internal departments, resulting in almost an elimination of non-standard process flows through our organization."
"The granular access control that it provided so that you could only see devices that were related to what you were working on was great. I couldn't see the entire inventory of devices. I could only see the ones that were related to my work. It has got a very granular access control component."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"OMNIbus is valuable for its compatibility and performance, as I haven't encountered any performance issues."
"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"It is customer-centric. Customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event. There is no need to go and connect to any other server and run events to have a view of all the events happening in the environment. We get a good response from customers about this feature and the main architecture of NetCool. Its processing is very good. Deduplication and correlation functionalities are good in this solution as compared to other solutions. A big advantage of NetCool is that it also supports multi-layered protocols. We can receive multiple events from different protocols like UDP, HTTP, and those events can be captured in NetCool."
"The most valuable feature is the event management capability."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"It's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."
"​The follow-up surprised me. Making sure that I am happy with what I have gone to them on. They will call after I have made changes and verify that I am happy with the changes that I did have to make. If it did not fix the complete problem, they go back over it until I am satisfied.​"
"It alerts the operators when it is time to repair the communications and the IPLs."
"With the automation pieces we can bring this region up or take this region down, and it allows us to always meet our time critical requirements."
"It's very secure, because it's a legacy application."
"It reduces the number of repetitive motions required by a human to respond to the system."
"I do not have to keep recordings. It is there and is proactive. It helps the operators, human editors, and me."
"The documentation is simple, easy to follow, and use. A limited, first-time systems programmer can do it, in that it is out-of-the-box almost functional."
"It allows us to respond faster to issues. If there are issues that come out, we're able to capture a message and alert somebody about it."
 

Cons

"I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"A better integration with the UIM, as far as being able to do root cause analysis and that type of analytics."
"If they could interact with the MIBs of vendors better, and have a lot more pre-loaded ones, that would be amazing for us right now."
"The solution could improve by allowing the ability to monitor the network shortly after installing the software and adding an auto-discovery function."
"Needs better integration with all the other products in the Agile suite of tools; anything they could do to make that less complex, would be great."
"Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols."
"Its visualization can be improved. It doesn't have a very advanced GUI. It is very basic and simple, but it does work."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"Areas that could be better include the fact that the solution is only on-premises, lacks AI capabilities, and support response times could be quicker."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"Its integration could be better. They should provide an easier integration for all the monitoring stuff, and it will make things easier for us. Currently, there is a complexity in integrating it with a vendor application, and we have to use another tool to integrate it with a vendor application. To integrate some applications with NetCool, I need to install an IBM tool on top of it. It would be good if they can provide an API or any kind of interface that we can leverage while developing a new protocol interface or application. We should be able to use an API or interface with NetCool. Its GUI can also be better. As compared to other tools, it is not user friendly, and it is not easy to do stuff through GUI. Whenever we do anything on the GUI, it takes time. They need to focus on the GUI part, especially the dashboard. They should focus on how users can effectively drill down from one box to another. The visual appeal of the dashboard is as important as the data and functionality."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"Some of the command sequences are too long."
"Scalability is zero. It cannot be scaled because of its age."
"The further expansion of the mainframe teamcenter interface. Also, the web services support is something that I am looking into."
"The reason sometimes it is not stable, we do not have the expertise to write the script.​"
"Performing a stop/restart of OPS/MVS could be a little smoother. Without special coding, some undesired tasks will be started and some necessary tasks will be stopped if we have to bounce OPS/MVS during the day."
"The GUI interface could be improved, but that is coming. They are working on that."
"Because of its age, it's a little bit difficult to modernize some of the integrations and some of the functions."
"It definitely needs more web-based interface, to be more mobile-open. More APIs, more open source to it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"It is a costly solution."
"Its license cost is a little bit more than other solutions. Our customers expect a standard market price that is comparative to other products. For each and every NetCool OMNIbus component, we have to purchase a separate license. These components are not free with the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
16%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Logistics Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has ...
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. O...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
If the various HW elements are from the same vendor, a monitoring solution provided by that vendor or its partners wi...
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
IBM is working on converting NetCool to NetCool Operations Insight, which runs on Watson AI. There were areas needing...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
OMNIbus is used for alert processing and deduplication of alarms. It is used for performing certain actions on any al...
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Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
CA OPS MVS Event Management and Automation, CA OPS/MVS Event Management and Automation, Unicenter CA-OPS/MVS Event Management and Automation
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
Tieto