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BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs SolarWinds NPM 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
45th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (38th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

VB
Helps design blueprints in a cloud environment but the support is a major problem
One of the major problems is that support is not so good. I used to have a support expert in Spain but they left two years ago. BMC doesn't invest a lot in network automation but network automation is a major point in CLM. There aren't any experts here in Europe, maybe they have in America, I don't know. The main problem is the support in Europe. We had a lot of problems with the people who got put on our cases. The agents that we were assigned to were not so capable. They wanted to replicate the problem. If you have an incident, it takes a lot of time to troubleshoot the problem. The incident support is not so good. The technicians don't know the platform well. BMC doesn't want to invest in CLM. Two years ago we had a lot of problems. Maybe BMC realized that CLM is an end of life product.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can tie together your public and private cloud infrastructure into a "single pane of glass"."
"By allowing end users to request their own services, the request process for systems is much quicker and more accurate."
"Assesses change impact or completes an audit using multiple dashboard views."
"Supports unattended installs and image-based, script-based, or template-based provisioning."
"Integrates role-based access control with pre-configured policies for CIS, DISA, HIPAA, PCI, SOX, NIST, and SCAP documentation and remediation."
"Automates Java EE Application Deployment from an SCM system."
"CLM has a multi-cloud portal because they have the resources to implement in various environments in various ports."
"I love the GUI. Almost everything is accessible through the web interface. It is very user-friendly. It is easy to drag and drop resources wherever you want them."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"The biggest thing for me is that it provided enough information for me to monitor. It alerts and provides you with the information you need."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
"This solution offers a very good view of our network and allows us to effectively monitor performance."
"What I've found most valuable about the solution is that it's scalable."
 

Cons

"Needs integrations with other providers to provide a custom public cloud environment."
"The installation and configuration can be tricky due to it being built on Remedy."
"One of the major problems is that support is not so good."
"Technical support can be slow to respond."
"The solution could be more secure."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"There needs to be more integration of widgets, especially for reporting purposes."
"The scalability can be better."
"Scalability is a bit tricky because it requires more gateways in order to get the performance you may need. It also requires a lot of licensing."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"There is a permanent license and also a subscription level which has annual fees. The price of the solution is fair."
"Price could be improved on"
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

BMC CLM
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JDA Software, Morningstar, Orange Business Services, Wipro
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.