Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dynatrace vs IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dynatrace6.3%
Datadog5.3%
New Relic4.0%
Other84.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager0.6%
Dynatrace6.3%
Datadog5.3%
Other87.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SCOM9.0%
ServiceNow IT Operations Management11.7%
OpsRamp9.6%
Other69.7%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.
CC
Sales manager at Prodeo Innovation
Integrates well with IBM technologies, but it's outdated and lacks essential features
Implementing synthetic monitoring for our Internet banking site has been challenging. The installation process is difficult, requiring continuous support and specialist expertise due to our limited knowledge of managing it effectively. I have concerns about the complexity of the tool and the challenges in managing it effectively. The support provided is not satisfactory, and the specialists available lack sufficient training and expertise in using the tool.
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Simplified the way to monitor a medium to big environment."
"One thing it helped with: We should never get traffic from outside the U.S. and we were getting traffic from Europe, and that was a problem. We found out what caused it. Dynatrace helped us find that information out. We wouldn't have found it otherwise."
"Dynatrace provides probable root cause for any issues which assists our support team to quickly address issues identified by Dynatrace."
"The web dashboards are quite useful, good looking, and easy to use."
"Great tool for deep diving into performance data and tracking issues through all the connected systems to better diagnose and pinpoint the real issues."
"For me the service workflow and the dashboards are the most valuable features, simply because I can know what’s going on in my infrastructure within five minutes, versus two hours."
"It helps DevOps find all its problems easily and analyzes performance problems."
"The stuff that's coming with the new pieces around the Dynatrace Managed SaaS implementation. The ease of implementation there is significant. We've spent a lot of time with AppMon and DC RUM - that's a lot of time to set up, configure. With Managed solution, you just drop it in and everything pretty much auto-instruments."
"The solution is very stable. We never had any issues with stability."
"IBM's main value lies in its integration with its own technologies, which can be seen as a benefit in environments where IBM products are extensively used."
"It is a user-friendly product that requires almost no maintenance."
"We have found the scalability capabilities to be okay."
"It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not."
"The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped."
"The advantages of SCOM are that it is definitely user friendly and a more appropriate solution for what we need."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location."
"SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS."
 

Cons

"Cloud monitoring and reporting need improvement, as well as how to manipulate data and export it to share with business executives."
"The messaging layer is not really capturable and measurable right now."
"The AI is not that intelligent and there are different places where it could be even more automated."
"The flexibility when it comes to integrating with other tools is very low."
"I would like to see dashboards included, and maybe more possibilities in terms of customization."
"There were a number of marketing promises that were made, which we do not see it in the tool yet. ​"
"​We are waiting on the new features to see how they perform."
"To improve in Dynatrace the log analytics, this is the first thing that has to be enabled."
"The user interface was not good."
"The installation process is difficult, requiring continuous support and specialist expertise due to our limited knowledge of managing it effectively."
"Direct integration with third-party tools, like ticketing systems, is lacking but would be beneficial."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"The management of the servers could be better."
"SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product."
"The interface is a little bit cumbersome and certain actions could be simplified."
"We didn't know the solution enough, and therefore, it took a while to set everything up correctly. There was a learning curve."
"It could use some system enhancements, such as better dashboards."
"I would like more customized reports. People should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it. Beyond customizing the content, there should be the ability to customize the colors so that they can engage some priority and mark challenges separately."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price range is quite high."
"Dynatrace is the most expensive APM that we sell, compared to competitors' products. The license pricing could be improved. My customers pay for licensing yearly."
"The licensing for Dynatrace is high. If you want to go for monitoring solutions, then why Dynatrace? If you have a particular budget, you can go for many other monitoring tools - apart from Dynatrace - and they can help you more and give more data than Dynatrace can. It's not worth the money that you spend for Dynatrace."
"Its licensing is complicated or not transparent."
"From what I have heard in the company, Dynatrace is expensive."
"The only limitation with scaling to cloud-native environments is licensing. It all depends on how many DEM units you're willing to license. The more of DEM units that you purchase, the more user data you can collect."
"Dynatrace is bit costly and not easily affordable."
"I have not been able to observe more than 1% overhead, despite Dynatrace saying that it can be slightly higher in some situations."
"I would rate the pricing a nine to ten. It is very expensive."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Non Profit
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise298
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if yo...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire sta...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems,...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substan...
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporti...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tivoli Composite Application Manager
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Michelin Tire Corp
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: February 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.