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DX Spectrum vs IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus comparison

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

DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

DX Spectrum and IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. DX Spectrum is designed for DX NetOps and holds a mindshare of 30.4%, up 28.6% compared to last year.
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus, on the other hand, focuses on Event Monitoring, holds 7.8% mindshare, down 8.0% since last year.
DX NetOps Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DX Spectrum30.4%
DX Performance Management34.8%
AppNeta by Broadcom28.3%
Other6.500000000000014%
DX NetOps
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus7.8%
ServiceNow IT Operations Management12.8%
OpsRamp10.7%
Other68.7%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Balabrahmam_Chakka - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
Comprehensive device monitoring enhances operational efficiency
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches through SNMP without an agent, which is good, but it should also have event management. Its LDAP authentication is fine. However, event management is not available, which is a concern. Not much else. If they can add event management, it would help. The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow. If a previous ticket is open and the same alert is generated, there's no need to create another ticket; updating the work notes would suffice. It should help reduce noise in alerting.
SS
Senior Consultant AWS at Cognizant
Good GUI and accuracy in processing but needs automated incident management
There is a complex setup and configuration process. It requires experience. We've had integration capabilities. We have to assess the specific needs or objectives of the organization, including scaling of deployment, and integration points, before implementation. Then, we need to design the architecture, including server specification networks, configuration, and storage requirements. We also need to consider the environment setup, hardware, projecting, and virtual machines. We need to ensure that network settings, firewalls, and security protocols are configured to allow communication between the components. Once you have all of the requirements laid out, it will only take five to six hours to set up. It does depend on the level of connectivity. If you are connecting remotely, it may take a bit longer. I set it up for three environments: development, testing, and production. One person can set up the solution themselves. If you are doing a NetCool suite of products, it may take two to three resources. You may need to do some maintenance in terms of additional patching or upgrading.

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 auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component."
"Generally, I would recommend DX Spectrum because, despite its pricing issue, it is a valuable solution."
"Spectrum does such a great job of discovering our network that we have a high confidence in what our inventory is."
"The most valuable features of DX Spectrum are the comprehensive alerts."
"The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability."
"Discovery: Scheduled, on-demand, synchronized with eHealth."
"It is easy to understand and determine when and/or where the network is failing."
"It does correlation so instead of producing 20 alarms if a site goes down, it only creates one."
"The most useful functions for monitoring purposes with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus are that it can be automated in many ways, and most importantly, it can communicate with many network components without requiring any medium connectors."
"Probes are the best feature because they are well written which rarely requires you to write additional rules. These probes monitor activity within your environment."
"OMNIbus is valuable for its compatibility and performance, as I haven't encountered any performance issues."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"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."
"It's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."
"It is an easy-to-use solution."
 

Cons

"It needs better integration with other CA products."
"If nobody else has said the documentation needs improvement, let's go there. I understand, you can either write about it or you can do it. And most of us would rather they do it, but now that they've done it, those of us that didn't do it, we need to go and find: "Where did they write about this to tell us how to do it?" That's always lacking."
"Make it easier to certify devices."
"I would like to see better scalability, and maybe, a more intuitive user interface. ​"
"It was somewhat complex to implement."
"For us, the implementation was quite complex but it's because of the large number of different environments we're dealing with."
"For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts."
"The platform is complicated to use."
"I would like for the next release to be more user-friendly and out of date. The next release should focus on the cloud, AI, and ML technologies."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"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."
"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"Spectrum is expensive."
"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"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."
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"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."
"It is a costly solution."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
 

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 caused us to lose many deals.
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. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
I would rate the pricing for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus as three, where one is a high price and ten is a low price.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
Based on my experience and my colleagues' feedback, IBM can improve IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus in automation with respect to using AI, as it lacks considerably compared to other tools. The integrat...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
My current use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is for monitoring the networks.
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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