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IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager vs SCOM 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
SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (25th)
 

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 SCOM is 9.6%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.6%
IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager4.9%
Other85.5%
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…
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the efficiency."
"TBSM is a rock, and our house would have crumbled without it."
"Let me first say that I would be delighted if Citrix would extend the Edgesight functionality in their product so that it really monitors all of the Citrix components."
"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."
"The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location."
"The most valuable features in SCOM are Azure monitoring and integration with Azure Monitor for monitoring Azure-hosted servers from SCOM on-premises."
"The solution primarily drives system information, and I believe it works fine."
"SCOM provides alerting capabilities and threshold settings, which are helpful for monitoring."
"This product allows me to measure the level of availability of services and detect errors in them."
"Setting up SCOM is straightforward and takes about an hour as long as you have all your firewalls and DNS settings in place."
 

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 could be improved, you get many reports out-of-box but they can be difficult to interpret and drill down into."
"The management of the servers could be better."
"We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting."
"The end-user components, including the dashboards, the administration console, and the web console, need to be improved."
"Microsoft needs to train more people about how to sell SCOM (and other System Center family products) because there are a lot of emerging technologies that are replacing Microsoft."
"The console is a point to improve, because it is very heavy and a web console should be in HTML5."
"The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult."
"Because SCOM currently runs on a Citrix session, SCOM sometimes becomes slow or crashes when there is too much going on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
What is your primary use case for SCOM?
My usual use case for SCOM is as an administrator role where I create reports and provide system configuration for Linux and installation of the SCOM agent. I handle deploying and upgrading the age...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Business Service Manager, BSM
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SSGC
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.