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Azure Monitor vs Microsoft System Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
7.0
Azure Monitor offers cost-effectiveness and proactive visibility, with pay-as-you-go flexibility and potential savings despite mixed ROI feedback.
Sentiment score
8.6
Organizations reaped over 50% ROI with Microsoft System Center, automating tasks and enhancing efficiency while reducing costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Azure Monitor support is generally positive, with high-priority users obtaining quicker responses, while others report variable experiences.
Sentiment score
5.0
Microsoft System Center's support is inconsistent, with mixed reviews on response times, cost, and users preferring self-resolution.
Users end up getting no resolution from their team because they're outsourced vendors, and they don't have deeper expertise over any of the products they are referring to.
However, the second-line support is good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Azure Monitor efficiently scales across industries, integrating well with services, and reliably supports growing infrastructure and application needs.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft System Center is praised for its strong scalability, efficiently managing environments from small setups to large infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Azure Monitor is stable and reliable with high ratings, but could improve in alerting compared to competitors.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft System Center is stable, reliable, and users rate its stability 8/10, with minimal issues in virtualized environments.
Azure Monitor is working fine, yet I face a costing issue as if there are a lot of logs collected in the workspace or in the center, it becomes very costly.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Monitor requires better integration, user experience, automation, alerting, support, cost clarity, and improved interface and performance monitoring.
Microsoft System Center struggles with integration, complexity, performance issues, and requires enhancements in interface, documentation, and cloud capabilities.
The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that the actual cost of the Kubernetes cluster was less than the cost they were incurring for Azure Monitor.
If Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at least to log storage, I can fix the logs without syncing with Log Analytics Workspace and Sentinel.
 

Setup Cost

Azure Monitor's flexible pricing is generally competitive, but costs can rise due to storage and integration needs.
Microsoft System Center costs $25,000 annually, requiring yearly licensing, rated mid-high in expense, with no extra charges.
When I export logs into the application, workspace, log analytic workspace, and into Sentinel to read reports, I need to add storage, which increases the cost.
 

Valuable Features

Azure Monitor provides seamless integration, robust security, dynamic alerting, and efficient reporting, enhancing user satisfaction with scalability and cost-effectiveness.
Microsoft System Center offers seamless integration, automation, intuitive GUI, third-party management, and efficient reporting, enhancing system control and functionality.
The ease of access in Azure is significant because it's native to the platform and easy to integrate.
Resource monitoring is essential.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (4th)
Microsoft System Center
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 5.9%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft System Center is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Khawar - PeerSpot reviewer
Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed
The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.
Ajinkya Mohod - PeerSpot reviewer
Makes user management and application management easy for users
Speaking about the impact of the automation feature that impacted our company's operational efficiency, I can say that the complete tool works on automation. You just have to configure it, and it works, especially in areas like auto-patching updates. I suggest that others can definitely go ahead with Microsoft System Center, especially beginners who choose it, can get hands-on experience with it, and acquire a good understanding of how things work. In terms of the value and benefits derived from the use of the solution, I can say that my company's operations have been made simpler because of the product, especially in areas like user management and application management where we have been benefited a lot. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
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860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...
What needs improvement with Microsoft System Center?
Microsoft System Center should be easier to manage. However, it is complex to deploy, so people hesitate to use it. Though it has many features, such as licensing, asset tracking, and software depl...
 

Also Known As

No data available
MS System Center
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Kassen_rztliche Vereinigung Nordrhein, Magyar Telekom Nyrt., Adeka, QualCare, Aeriandi, UniCredit Bank d.d., Mostar, Allianz Australia Ltd., Grupo Familia
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Microsoft System Center and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.