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Fortinet FortiManager 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

Fortinet FortiManager
Ranking in Network Management Applications
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
73
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
10th
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 June 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiManager is 4.2%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiManager4.2%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.7%
Other92.1%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

SudeepMaydeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Head of IT Infrastructure at EPL Americas
Ensures seamless integration and centralized visibility for network security operations
The version upgrade from a single dashboard for all the firewalls in one click is the beauty of Fortinet FortiManager as the most impactful feature in managing our network security. Fortinet FortiManager's policy management enhances our security protocols by enabling us and giving integrated centralized visibility, which has proven to be very healthy. Because of this, we have identified some of the vulnerabilities in our systems, and we mitigated them through Fortinet FortiManager. The central dashboards and the visibility are what appealed to us to go with Fortinet FortiManager. Fortinet FortiManager has adapted to changes in our network scale and complexity as we have geographically 18 international locations, all equipped with firewalls and some cybersecurity initiatives and IT infrastructure initiatives.
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

"Fortinet FortiManager is effective and helpful for VPN management, such as deployment VPN management."
"FortiManager offers a full zero-touch provisioning feature that allows us to create a template of our devices and onboard them remotely without visiting the site."
"The product is easy to use and manage."
"It makes management very easy."
"Even without the security orchestration, just the fact that the customer could request the firewall team to configure a job that would roll out a configuration on the firewalls and it could be deployed across all the firewalls through the FortiManager was a big improvement compared to deploying the new firewall rule on each firewall sequentially."
"Stability is good within the product."
"It is easy to deploy to licenses."
"Everybody is quite happy with the way that the graphical user interface works."
"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 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."
"The solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"It's very easy to use."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"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."
 

Cons

"Issues arise when customers experience unstable electricity or poor grounding conditions."
"Configuring Fortinet without internet access is challenging."
"There may be a communication issue. However, other items may be the culprit, such as network connectivity. It depends on the customer's network."
"Setting up FortiManager can be complex because it involves changes from other devices and a lot of configuration."
"The GUI could be updated. It's not as good as it could be and is something the solution should improve in an upcoming release."
"There are a lot of bugs that need to be fixed, for example, the ZTP."
"The solution requires you to have a license for every device, as well as for any advanced features being used, which makes it costly for high-volume users."
"The GUI is not ideal."
"Customization and integration that you need to do to make the product fit your needs is very complex. It is not a product that somebody could easily pick up without any prior training or experience."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"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."
"IBM's technical support takes a long time to do root cause analysis, and we have to go through several levels of help before getting a solution."
"This is another one of those suites glued together from a myriad of acquisitions and it shows once you get under the hood."
"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."
"It was a bit expensive to purchase but the benefits outweigh all the cons by far."
"The solution is too expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten with one being the highest price and ten being the lowest price, I would rate FortiManager's price at three."
"Pricing could improve a little bit so I rate it a seven out of ten."
"For the licensing fee, we paid around 10,000 to 15,000 euros."
"Fortinet FortiManager operates on a licensing system that is dependent on the number of devices being managed. Yearly subscription renewal is necessary to continue using the service. Although there is a cost associated with Fortinet FortiManager, its price is undoubtedly justified by the value it provides in terms of the purpose it serves."
"The price of Fortinet FortiManager is inexpensive."
"Fortinet FortiManager is a low-priced product."
"Fortinet FortiManager is not expensive at all if you compare it with other vendors like Check Point and Cisco. Fortinet products are the least expensive on the market in the category of firewalls."
"The pricing model is affordable."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiManager?
I am satisfied with the licensing cost, and I would rate it an 8.5.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiManager?
I would like to see functionality that simplifies my life. I understand that adding new devices should be simplified.
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiManager?
I am using FortiGate 200E. I am mostly working with Fortinet FortiManager. Overall, I am using Fortinet FortiManager for everything. The dashboard is used frequently. I use Fortinet FortiManager mo...
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

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiManager vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.