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Aruba Airwave vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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

Aruba Airwave
Ranking in Network Management Applications
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Aruba Airwave is 3.3%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Aruba Airwave3.3%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.7%
Other93.0%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmet Bulbul - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Consultant at Data Market
Reports generation remains efficient while support and updates require attention
The biggest problem for not using Aruba Airwave extensively now is that HP is not upgrading this tool. They're not investing money and time into it, which is why we're not using it. I find the price of Aruba Central compared to Aruba Airwave to be more expensive. Customers start to complain and get annoyed about the license price. For example, when customers have 500 access points and features about access point licenses, moving to Central requires purchasing new licenses. This makes customers annoyed and complaining about this situation. It's hard to move from on-premises to Central because they always compare costs. If Aruba gave free licenses, they could move. But going to cloud and Central means more investment, and their budget doesn't cover the new investment. This creates problems for local partner companies.
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can interact with other vendors better than Cisco, which is a good point of AirWave. It is easy to use, and its reporting is good."
"The monitoring and administration allow configurations for checking the association of the user to the network, then to the AP, then to the switch, and back to the controller."
"This solution is definitely stable."
"I would rate the overall solution nine out of ten."
"This solution gives you a lot of reporting capabilities, and it has a very good interface."
"Aruba Airwave provides a robust solution for monitoring and configuring Wi-Fi networks."
"I think everybody needs this solution; it helps a lot with technical troubleshooting and no matter what end products you have, Airwave is a good solution for everybody."
"The feature that proved most beneficial for our organization's network monitoring is the virtual four, which we use frequently when working with Aruba."
"It's very easy to use."
"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"The solution is a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
"Full featured - event/fault management, performance management, topology map, discovery, RCA, event enrichment, Proviso will chart data from almost any source with a variety of aggregation options."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution. NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility. There are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite. Whenever an issue happens, rather than going to technical support, if you find the exact issue in Google, you can get tech notes for that particular issue."
 

Cons

"Pricing for Aruba Airwave could be cheaper, which is an area for improvement in the solution."
"The integration with other platforms like Cisco needs to be improved."
"I would try to integrate more products from different vendors in future releases. Because that's really good features that Aruba Airway has, but it's so limited."
"Stability of GUI Stability of instant access point management"
"Whenever you get an error it doesn't immediately tell you what the thing is that is causing the error. You have to sit down and research it. If it could say what error is causing the issue, it would make my troubleshooting a lot quicker."
"My general opinion on Aruba Airwave is that it's acceptable, but it's not ideal because we are accustomed to Cisco."
"When upgrading hardware, there were technical issues with network interfaces and Red Hat, which required escalation to developers."
"We're looking for more device compatibility. Like compatibility with third-party devices."
"It was a bit expensive to purchase but the benefits outweigh all the cons by far."
"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"I think the UI should be updated and made more presentable and eye-catching. Compared to NCE in Huawei, NSN in Nokia, the UiPath and Ubiquiti, it feels very old legacy."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"This is another one of those suites glued together from a myriad of acquisitions and it shows once you get under the hood."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is perfect because the devices have a lifetime warranty, and the licensing is good as well."
"The licensing is on an yearly basis."
"It's device-based licensing. One device requires one license."
"I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten."
"Run a 90 day free Proof of Concept (PoC) for each product by implementing and using it fully in your environment. This way you will be educated on its features, functionality, and manageability."
"The tool is expensive. If one is bad or expensive, and ten is very good or cheap, I rate the product's price as a six."
"Aruba Airwave's licensing cost is not that expensive."
"The licensing cost for Aruba Airwave increased from $72 to $210 within a few months. It would be better if the pricing for the solution were cheaper."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aruba Airwave?
They have other sensors which can manage and control all the sites. There is an IoT component where we can restrict internet services such as Facebook and YouTube. These things can also be managed....
What is your primary use case for Aruba Airwave?
For Aruba Airwave, I am using the wireless devices for the Wi-Fi for the full company with access points. This is the top product I feel, and I see in the Gartner also. It is a good product and eas...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The main challenge is its licensing model, which is very complicated.
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool?
NetCool is the manager of managers in the stack. It basically combines the devices of the whole network. We are the mobile network operator, so we use it to assist us in cross-domain correlations a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Henkel, University of Findlay, University of Minnesota Duluth, University of Iowa
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Airwave vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.