IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Nmap comparison

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Nmap and IBM SevOne NPM compete in the network tool category. IBM SevOne NPM appears to have the upper hand with its advanced features for comprehensive network management.

Features: Nmap offers scanning capabilities, detection of network devices, and services, along with security auditing and vulnerability detection features. IBM SevOne NPM provides performance monitoring, scalable architecture, and detailed analytics for large network environments.

Room for Improvement: Nmap could improve its interface to be more user-friendly, integrate more automation options, and expand its reporting features. IBM SevOne NPM could enhance its pricing model to be more accessible, streamline its deployment process, and offer more customizable reporting options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SevOne NPM offers a structured deployment process and reliable customer support, ideal for complex IT setups. Nmap's ease of deployment suits users with technical skills seeking hands-on control, with less emphasis on customer service reliance.

Pricing and ROI: Nmap's open-source nature leads to minimal setup costs, providing a high ROI for small networks and individual projects. IBM SevOne NPM, while requiring significant initial investment, offers extensive monitoring capabilities, potentially yielding higher ROI for enterprises needing detailed insights.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. Nmap Report (Updated: September 2025).

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. Nmap

September 2025

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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

IBM SevOne Network Performa...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

45th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (19th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (43rd), Log Management (42nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (30th)

Nmap

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nmap is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nmap	0.6%
IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)	1.0%
Other	98.4%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Grzegorz Nowak

Solution Architect at Wingu

Improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic

We use SevOne to collect and report on network flows SevOne improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic. We can look at bandwidth for specific endpoints on the customer's network and analyze traffic to identify issues. For example, maybe some connectors are unavailable.…

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AntoSebastin

Cyber Security Consultant - APAC at Logon Software

Scans the network and identifies vulnerabilities on each machine

Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to scan our network and identify devices that aren't connected properly. This helps us detect any issues related to the operating systems of these devices. The tool's most valuable feature is its vulnerability scanning. It allows us to scan a specific range of IP addresses and discover devices within that range. This makes it easy to identify devices and view their details. Port scanning is crucial for network management tasks. It helps us identify vulnerabilities by finding open ports that may be unused or misconfigured. This tool makes it easy to detect such issues. The OS detection feature is great. Unlike other tools, Nmap provides accurate information about asset vulnerabilities, helping us easily detect and address them. Using Nmap provides value to the company, especially during compliance audits. It helps generate reports on assets, updates on workstations, and insights into network activities and potential attacks. Additionally, Nmap detects vulnerabilities and provides port details, allowing us to close unused ports on the client machines.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a great solution for highlighting and discovering useful information regarding our network's elements."

"We have benefited mainly from the use of the dashboard interface. It makes the network visually interesting for other people who are not in the network. A lot of people are not network techies who understand streams in the network. Based on location, we have streams coming in and out. They can see visually when there is some problem. They don't need to understand all the network technology behind it to be able to understand if everything is working well or if there is a problem."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is the scale-up and scale-down. The scale-up is an operation where the CPU boosts-up and then the memory will boost-up. That works awesomely."

"Data Insight reporting tool is the most valuable feature. They came up with it a couple of years ago. The most pleasing factor is the dark theme. You don't have a white background. It has templates that you can create for all kinds of reports that you can hit on the fly. It's much better printing of the reports. If you want to send PDFs to people, the reports are actually decent. Whereas for years, the old architecture of the PDFs was rubbish and even our customers said, "We have to manipulate your PDFs because they all have bad margin breaks. SevOne fixed that a couple of years ago with the new Data Insight. It's fantastic."

"SevOne provides support for all universal connectors. They internally work with other data sources to get features implemented. We have an SD-WAN implementation and use other app data to monitor performance. If you pull that data into one centralized location, that is very useful for management."

"One of the solution's biggest strengths is its capacity management performance, with out-of-the-box reports through NMS, as well as its ability to collect NetFlow-related data from devices. The collection of network performance and flow data is important because we have many critical business applications."

"The monitoring of the network is very customizable. That is its unique feature."

"Flexible architecture: You can extend the system and its capacity by attaching another cluster pair."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pros

"The scanning procedure includes UDP ports which sets it apart from competitors."

"The solution detects the operating systems, which makes testing the software much easier before making the payload."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its scripts. These scripts prove beneficial when security features may obscure or block connections. Nmap helps identify vulnerabilities across different systems, including web servers and various server types."

"The best feature of Nmap is that it lets me see useful information about each endpoint in my entire network environment. For example, I can see every single connection of the network as well as each and every port."

"The initial setup was simple."

"The most valuable feature of the solution for security audits stems from the fact that it serves as a powerful tool with the ability to scan a large number of ports."

"Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to scan our network and identify devices that aren't connected properly. This helps us detect any issues related to the operating systems of these devices."

"It enables us to delve deeper and identify the services and open ports on the system and visualize this information on a dashboard automatically."

More Nmap pros

Cons

"We need to be thinking about streaming telemetry protocols. They already have the port for enhanced visualization, which they already have through Data Insight."

"We previously have had discussions on some reporting enhancements. So, we raised a feature request, which was delivered from SevOne."

"I'm not really sure if this was the software's fault or a server issue, but a couple of years back the disks were failing on our SevOne physical server every month and the server would go down. The secondary server took over from the primary until the disk issue was resolved. That was annoying."

"Telemetry is hot these days, and IBM can improve SevOne's support for telemetry correction. Reporting is another feature that could be better. It provides the bare minimum functionality, which is good enough for most engineers, but the management isn't advanced. The new portal provides a much lighter view and better visualization, but the management is not so good."

"User-friendly, multi-tenancy."

"One area that requires a little bit of improvement is the topology of visualization and being able to map out connections, end-to-end. It's able to do that, but it's not as impressive as we would like it to be. We would like to understand the different interface types and the connection points better, through the visualization. Heatmaps also need further development."

"There are some tweaks and enhancements that I've already requested. One is to be able to make changes per device rather than as a global setting. That has to do with naming. It's minor."

"Software upgrades can be tricky is not easy."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) cons

"One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap."

"Customization is not very user-friendly in Nmap."

"Nmap needs to improve its scanning speed."

"The solution's initial setup could be better."

"The price is high and could be cheaper."

"It takes a bit of time to get familiar with the solution and its options."

"There are concerns with the stability of the product, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The solution is not that easy for a beginner to learn."

More Nmap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has been fair."

"Although I don't have exact details in terms of cost, my experience has been that SevOne is willing to make a deal with the customer."

"Prices per license are not huge, but they exist."

"There are cheaper solutions available."

"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."

"Many tools price things based on the number of KPIs that you're collecting around a device. In many cases, there could be hundreds of metrics that you need to collect. SevOne provides device-level pricing. That gives us the flexibility to turn on, and expand on, the metrics that we're collecting around those devices, without taking a financial hit."

"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."

"A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved."

More IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) pricing and cost advice

"It's an open-source product, and I haven't seen any premiums. Options are available for those who purchase, but for my use case, everything I need is available in the community and forums."

"The product's pricing is fine. The licensing options for Nmap include perpetual licenses and volume-based licenses. For perpetual licenses, once you purchase it, there's no need to invest in renewals. And for volume-based licenses, enterprise companies can use it multiple times based on the number of users or devices they need to scan. It's a pay-as-you-go model, similar to how you pay for what you use."

"The solution is open source so it is free."

"I am using the standard free version of Nmap."

"The solution is free of cost."

"Nmap is open source software, which suits us well because we are a manufacturing company and not an IT company, for example. If we were an IT company, we would probably need to pay for extra support or instead go for another software solution. But as it is, we don't have any need for high-end troubleshooting tools."

"I am using the free version of Nmap."

"It's an open-source solution. Commerically, only the support service is available."

More Nmap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Legal Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

10%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	45

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SevOne Network Data Platform?

There is room for improvement in the integration with different vendors and the reporting capabilities. It would be beneficial to have out-of-the-box integration with third-party vendors and improv...

What is your primary use case for SevOne Network Data Platform?

The primary use case of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) ( /products/ibm-sevone-network-performance-management-npm-reviews ) is network monitoring. It helps to maintain the infrastru...

What advice do you have for others considering SevOne Network Data Platform?

To compete with custom-built tools, IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) should accommodate the desired features and be timely in the delivery of feature updates. I would rate the overal...

What do you like most about Nmap?

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nmap?

I am using the free version of Nmap.

What is your primary use case for Nmap?

Nmap is used for network scanning to map the network, identify devices, and assess their status. It helps determine open ports and services running on a particular endpoint or server within an ente...

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Product Reports

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM)

October 2025

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) report

Download IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) product report

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September 2025

Also Known As

SevOne

No data available

Overview

The IBM® SevOne Network Performance Management (IBM SevOne NPM) solution helps you spot, address, and prevent network performance issues early with machine learning-powered analytics from a single source. Boost network performance and improve your user application experience by proactively monitoring your multivendor end-to-end network across enterprise, communication, and managed service provider networks.

Transform raw network performance data into intelligent and actionable insights. The IBM SevOne NPM solution goes beyond detection, combining industry-leading expertise and advanced technology to help your IT team plan and optimize your network and act on what matters: improving network performance to provide an exceptional customer experience.

For further information, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud/sevo...

IBM

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. In addition to the classic command-line Nmap executable, the Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap), a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).

Sample Customers

ATOS, Devereux, Spark New Zealand, Access4, Rogers Communication, Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink)

Lockheed Martin, Eastern Bank Boston, Perspecta, Harris Corporation, Discovery Communication