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ExtremeManagement 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

ExtremeManagement
Ranking in Network Management Applications
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
14th
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 July 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of ExtremeManagement is 2.7%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.9%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.9%
ExtremeManagement2.7%
Other93.4%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1319712 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Centralized switch management has streamlined daily operations but reporting still needs improvement
The reason clients select ExtremeManagement is because we have existing Extreme customers who are looking for a centralized management solution to manage their Extreme Switches. ExtremeManagement is not only for managing Extreme Switches; it can also manage other third-party solutions such as Cisco or Juniper or any other third party. This provides good flexibility for managing even third-party solutions. ExtremeManagement offers a lot of management options, including the ability to back up the configuration on a scheduled basis and to upgrade the switches' firmwares on a scheduled basis. There is a workflow feature similar to orchestration, which is related to automation. Regarding threat detection with ExtremeManagement, there is no specific feature, but in case of any failure detection or network issues, ExtremeManagement can send a notification to the users and to the admin. ExtremeManagement itself does not include a security or cybersecurity feature; however, there is an additional module called ExtremeControl that you can add, which is a network access control or NAC solution. ExtremeAnalytics is also a very good add-on to ExtremeManagement that can analyze all the traffic coming to the switch for incoming and outgoing traffic. It checks everything even up to Layer 7, the application layer, which I believe maybe some other switches management solutions do not have. This feature is fully compatible with Extreme Switches because the switches can show the application layer traffic. The reporting capabilities of ExtremeManagement are good, but I cannot say they are perfect. Everybody can read it, but in our region, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Arab universe, some customers are requesting Arabic results, which makes it somewhat challenging for us and the vendor. Not all vendors have that capability, and sometimes the vendor asks for adding a feature request, which may take time. I cannot say this is something negative, but in our region, some customers, especially non-English speakers, require that. In general, reporting is good, though not perfect. The integration of ExtremeManagement with other Extreme products and third-party solutions is easy. It does not require specific requirements for integration with other third-party switches. However, there are limitations for integration with other third-party products, especially with firewalls from security companies. When it comes to network devices, it is very easy to integrate with.
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

"ExtremeManagement is excellent; it is a very mature platform and robust in that it covers most of the functionality of the devices."
"Overall, I believe the GUI has already improved significantly, making it easier to manage than other management tools, and the most important thing is that our customers are happy with it."
"The technical support services are good."
"The report model is one of the valuable models. We are able to see all the information concentrated in reports, which is very useful. We are able to get the information about the performance of the equipment and check that everything is okay. You can get very useful information across applications, so we have very good experience with their management solutions. It has many functionalities to simplify the administration and monitor the development of the switches or AP. It is easy to deploy, easy to configure. and easy to develop. Its price is also good."
"It is a good solution; our experience has been good, it is easy to deploy, configure, and develop, and its performance is good; in general, we are satisfied with Extreme."
"Using this solution has made our job more efficient. We need fewer people to do implementation and support, and we don't have to go on-site to change the configuration or otherwise support the switch."
"ExtremeManagement brings in the most value by reducing the technical debt to the organization in terms of having to hire personnel to maintain it or contract it."
"The best thing about the solution is that it is all managed from just a single application window, a single pane of glass where almost all the features are managed within a single application or browser, so you don’t have to switch between different applications or windows."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's very easy to use."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if this solution had support for configuring and managing third-party hardware devices."
"There could be better integration with third-party equipment and vendors."
"The reporting capabilities of ExtremeManagement are good, but I cannot say they are perfect."
"Some features are quite difficult to configure and they are very complicated to figure out. Maybe the vendors should introduce a more driven configuration that can clarify the processes a bit more to make the processes more clearly defined."
"They can improve the information period. Currently, we are able to have information for only 14 or 15 days, but we would like to have information for an extended period of maybe 30 days. Their technical support can also be improved in terms of the response time to the tickets."
"It would be great to not need an on-premises SiteIQ license for running a Fabric OS cloud or managing third-party devices."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
"The solution is too expensive."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a good price. There is a good relationship between the cost and the performance."
"The support is billed on a yearly basis, and there are no additional costs."
"While they don't consider it affordable, they don't find it overly expensive."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExtremeManagement?
I would rate the pricing of ExtremeManagement as five out of ten; it is somewhat neutral, not cheap and not expensive. I might consider it a four out of ten now due to the global hardware economic ...
What needs improvement with ExtremeManagement?
The reporting part definitely requires improvement.
What is your primary use case for ExtremeManagement?
We have been reselling ExtremeManagement for 13 years.
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

Henry Ford Health System, Baltimore Ravens, Brandili, Federal University of Alagoas, CEDAE, Caxias do Sul, UNISC Concurrency, CenturyLink Field, Louisiana College, Cricket Tasmania Stadium, Moscow Internet Exchange
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about ExtremeManagement vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.