IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server

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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 Tivoli NetCool Impact

Ranking in Event Monitoring

9th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...

Ranking in Event Monitoring

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is 3.1%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Event Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Hennie Du Toit

Principal Specialist Architecture and Governance at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Event management strengthens with automation but needs better event flooding handling

Better handling of event flooding in IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact would be beneficial. If there are massive issues with power, for example, and we get millions of events, then it struggles to deal with that. Better root cause correlation and faster processing for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact would be helpful. If there can be more end-to-end functionality, such as observability tools built in natively, that would be great. With correlation, IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact has many functions, but we've built them custom-built. Functions such as automated logging, automated dispatching, and automated notification of engineers could be native in the tool.

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reviewer2317098

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,…

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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

"The most valuable feature that comes with Netcool/Impact is the ISPF APA support. It is inherent to Netcool/Impact, so I can use the ISPF of any other product, which I can invoke and consume through Impact, and do integrations, which is great. I run the Netcool desktop application so I can integrate with other applications in the ticketing system. It's a great ability being able to invoke ISPF and integrate."

"The stability has been very good for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact, rated around eight or nine."

"It is easy to integrate with other models such as Oracle, other systems, external systems, and to reach events."

"This product allows us to make use of open-source products, including running Java code."

"The solution is great at being able to fetch almost any kind of file."

"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."

"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."

"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."

"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."

"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."

"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."

"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."

Cons

"For improvement, I'd say the dashboard and the overall GUI could use some work. Although, I don't think that there's much improvement that Netcool really needs to achieve in this area, because when we're talking GUI, Impact is able to integrate with any third-party system and it comes with ISPF APA. It's more beneficial than Netcool/OMNIbus in this respect, and it's quite easy to handle."

"The solution is somewhat complicated. It's not exactly straightforward."

"IBM is not investing in the development of the on-premise version of this solution."

"Stability-wise, this product needs to be improved."

"Better handling of event flooding in IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact would be beneficial. If there are massive issues with power, for example, and we get millions of events, then it struggles to deal with that."

"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."

"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."

"I would absolutely love to create customized dashboards but, unfortunately, they don't provide me the information that I need to create the report. The report I need is the detail or the transaction detail that's happening on those Snapshots. I'd like to be able to go back through time and search for things. I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information. So it's encrypted. I can't pull it out and that is really bothersome."

"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."

"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact depends on the number of nodes on the element that you are monitoring."

"The licensing is yearly, and although I'm happy with the pricing I do think it could be better."

"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

Financial Services Firm

19%

Retailer

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Real Estate/Law Firm

10%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact?

What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact?

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is our event management tool, specifically the umbrella fault management tool set. All of our events across the network correlate the data for us, and we have certain use ...

What advice do you have for others considering IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact?

We remain a partner with IBM Tivoli and continue using their products. We use IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact's AIOps functionality. We experienced some skills issues, but currently receive assistance fr...

What do you like most about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?

The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature.

What needs improvement with IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?

One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level. In future releases, I w...

What is your primary use case for IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?

We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes.

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Product Reports

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact

Download IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact product report

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server

Download IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server product report

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server report

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool Impact

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager

Overview

IBM Tivoli Netcool Impact is an enterprise and network management software that automates the support of business-critical functions. The software helps to enrich events with business context, provides an integrated view of data from multiple sources in context and enables custom automations.

IBM

SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server helps database administrators to find and fix SQL Server performance problems in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Unlike its competition, it provides effective scalability, advanced SQL query analysis and optimization, prescriptive analysis with corrective SQL scripts, powerful automated alert responses, broad PowerShell integration, complete customization, and extensive support for current and legacy SQL Server and Windows.

IDERA

Sample Customers

Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)

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

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server