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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

"If we use the Fortinet FortiManager to replicate the configuration and want to install ten FortiGate on ten sites, you don't have to set configuration on all ten because you can configure one FortiGate and the Fortinet FortiManager will replicate the configuration on all FortiGate devices."
"It is stable."
"FortiManager's most valuable feature is central management."
"It can scale well."
"My advice to anybody who is researching this product is that it is quite easy to use and the learning curve is not steep."
"The solution is very stable."
"Technical support is great. When we have sent urgent tickets and they do reply back within fifteen minutes."
"Technical support was excellent."
"It's very easy to use."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"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."
"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."
"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
"The solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
 

Cons

"Regional support in African countries needs to be improved."
"The SD-WAN solution is difficult to manage on FortiManager because you need to share some configurations on the firewall side. Sometimes you lose all connectivity with the firewall, so it is challenging to apply the default configuration to the SD-WAN solution."
"FortiManager could improve by making it easier to port larger policy packages to the FortiGate firewalls. Sometimes, there's an issue when we install a big package of policies. If you have a couple thousand policies for FortiGate firewalls, it can take a few minutes to receive a response from the remote devices. It's only an issue when you're dealing with thousands of policies and installing them on a large number of devices."
"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 is room for improvement in Fortinet FortiManager because there is no option for roaming profiles, and the cloud console is not available, which is different compared to Cisco Meraki, and the cloud connectivity is not sufficiently good."
"The solution should be more open to other products."
"The user interface can feel clunky, especially for more complex tasks such as managing large-scale policy packages or custom scripts."
"In future updates, I would like to see more customization and AI integration."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"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's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For us, it is a little bit expensive."
"Fortinet FortiManager is a low-priced product."
"The pricing is based on a licensing model by feature."
"The licensing costs depend on how many devices you want to use."
"For the licensing fee, we paid around 10,000 to 15,000 euros."
"The price point is very good."
"In comparison with other products, the price of FortiManager is reasonable."
"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."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
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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.