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IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 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

IBM Tivoli Business Service...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager is 4.9%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 4.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server4.9%
IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager4.9%
Other90.2%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer847356 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good technical support, and efficient for working with business data
We use this solution for working with data. The most valuable feature of this solution is the efficiency. This application should be made easier to use because it usually needs training and it is not easy to operate. We have been using this solution for fourteen years. The stability of this…
reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"TBSM is a rock, and our house would have crumbled without it."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the efficiency."
"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time. It's basically the output of an sp_who2."
"Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact."
"There are several monitoring tools, but IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager is actually better than other competitors."
"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."
"One of the things that it is used for is to detect anything that could possibly cause our systems not to function well, and it has helped us to determine that before anything has actually happened."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."
"The best part of SQL DM is the ability to customize alerts and counters. This allows our team to find an issue then alert on the issue at a granular level."
 

Cons

"Yes, Event Storms and other less traumatic triggers the JVM to hang requiring recycles."
"This application should be made easier to use because it usually needs training and it is not easy to operate."
"Reporting and overall analysis of data gathered from SQL Server."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"We don't find that it helps us with performance monitoring and diagnostics. We find that SentryOne does that better. Also, in terms of alerts, we had to customize them dramatically so that we didn't get alerted on every little thing."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"Scalability is what I mentioned earlier, regarding room for improvement. It doesn't seem to scale out to an environment as large as ours, with just a single monitoring server."
"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
"With basic SQL training in my history, I've found at times I needed to Google SQL counters, for example, to understand what was occurring or how to configure SQL DM to be useful."
"I'm going to do an upgrade which may resolve my issues, but one area for improvement is its ability to handle the amount of data that we collect with it. We're likely one of the largest installations, with over 300 servers being collected with this product, and sometimes there are gaps. That would really be my only concern, in terms of how the data is collected and stored, for consistency."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Business Service Manager, BSM
IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SSGC
Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.