IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs PubSub+ Platform comparison

IBM and Solace are both solutions in the Event Monitoring category. IBM is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.0, while Solace is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.5. IBM holds a 3.3% mindshare in EM, compared to Solace’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Solace users who would recommend it.

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact

Read 5 IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact reviews

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100% willing to recommend

PubSub+ Platform

Read 17 PubSub+ Platform reviews

2,443 Views
0 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact

PubSub+ Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact and PubSub+ Platform compete in the network management and event processing sector. PubSub+ Platform seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced scalability and real-time data processing capabilities.

Features: IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact offers strong event correlation, automation of IT workflows, and integration capabilities with diverse IT systems. PubSub+ Platform provides high-performance data streaming, event mesh technology, and support for multiple communication patterns.

Room for Improvement: IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact could improve its event streaming capabilities and real-time data processing. Enhancements in user interface customization and ease of scaling could benefit users. PubSub+ Platform might benefit from strengthened integrations with legacy systems, enhanced customization options for users, and an expanded community support system.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact provides a robust deployment model suited for existing IT infrastructures and offers responsive customer support. PubSub+ Platform offers seamless and flexible deployment options, including cloud-native solutions, and is known for its proactive and efficient customer service.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact involves significant initial investment but offers strong long-term ROI through its network visibility and automation. PubSub+ Platform presents competitive pricing and delivers ROI through rapid deployment and effective real-time data streaming solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs. PubSub+ Platform Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs. PubSub+ Platform

July 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 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

PubSub+ Platform

Ranking in Event Monitoring

12th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software (8th), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Streaming Analytics (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is 3.3%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 0.2%, up from 0.0% 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.

Read full review

BhanuChidigam

Sofware Engineering Manager at Wells Fargo

Performs well, high availability, and helpful support

We use approximately four people for the maintenance of the solution. My advice to others is this solution has high throughput and is used for many stock exchanges. For business critical use cases, such as processing financial transactions at a quick speed, I would recommend this solution. I rate PubSub+ Event Broker an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

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

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

"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 most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live."

"Guaranteed Messaging allows for us to transport messages between on-prem and the cloud without any loss of data."

"This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement. We can just push one update, then we don't have to know who is consuming it and what's happening to that publication downstream. It's all done by the broker, which is a huge benefit of using Event Broker."

"Some valuable features include reconnecting topics, placing queues, and direct connections to MongoDB. The platform provides a dashboard to monitor the status of messages, such as how many have been processed or delivered, which is helpful for tracking performance."

"We've built a lot of products into it and it's been quite easy to feed market data onto the systems and put entitlements and controls around that. That was a big win for us when we were consolidating our platforms down. Trying to have one event bus, one messaging bus, for the whole globe, and consolidate everything over time, has been key for us. We've been able to do that through one API, even if it's across the different languages."

"The topic hierarchy is pretty flexible. Once you have the subject defined just about anybody who knows Java can come onboard. The APIs are all there."

"As of now, the most valuable aspects are the topic-based subscription and the fanout exchange that we are using."

"The valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the speed of processing, publishing, and consumption."

More PubSub+ Platform pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"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 integrations could improve in PubSub+ Event Broker."

"The deployment process is complex."

"We have requested to be able to get into the payload to do dynamic topic hierarchy building. A current workaround is using the message's header, where the business data can be put into this header and be used for a dynamic topic lookup. I want to see this in action when there are a couple of hundred cases live. E.g., how does it perform? From an administration perspective, is the ease of use there?"

"The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary."

"A challenge we currently have is Solace's ability to integrate with single sign-on in our Active Directory and other single sign-on tools and platforms that any company would have. It's important for the platforms to work. Typically, they support only LDAP-based connectivity to our SQL Servers."

"For improvements, I would suggest increasing the max payload size to a limit of 100MB or more. The current max payload size is limited to 5MB."

"The section on observability pertains to understanding the functioning of an event crash. Instead of focusing on how the crash occurs, attention is given to the observable aspects, such as a memory pipeline where one person pushes messages and another reads them. However, this pipeline often encounters issues, such as the reader being unavailable, causing the system to become stuck and preventing the messages from moving forward. This can lead to the pipeline being permanently stalled."

"One of the areas of improvement would be if we could tell the story a bit better about what an event mesh does or why an event mesh is foundational to a large enterprise that has a wide diversity of applications that are homegrown and a small number off the shelf."

More PubSub+ Platform cons

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."

"I would rate the product's pricing a ten out of ten."

"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."

"We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."

"Having a free version is critical for our technology operations use case. This is primarily because our technology operations team is a cost center in our company. They are not profit drivers and having a free version for installation will probably meet our needs. Even for production, it'll support up to a 100,000 messages per second. I don't think in technology operations that we have that many events and alerts from our detection tools. Even if I have 20 or 30 event detection products out there, they're only going to publish the things which are critical or warnings. I don't think we'll ever reach a 100,000 messages per second."

"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."

"There are different tiers where you can choose what would work for you. As a customer, you need to know roughly how many messages a month you will use."

More PubSub+ Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Retailer

14%

Energy/Utilities Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Healthcare Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

31%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Retailer

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?

See all answers

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 ...

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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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?

Regarding improving the PubSub+ Platform, I'm not sure about the pricing aspect, but I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka. That's the only concern I can mention; otherwise, it was a...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?

My typical use case for the PubSub+ Platform is as an event-driven solution for communication between two components.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering PubSub+ Event Broker?

I have experience working with Kafka, PubSub+ Platform, and IBM MQ, all three of them. We are customers, meaning my company uses Solace. We use it and customize it based on our needs. Based on my e...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact

Compared 100% of the time

More IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact Competitors

Apache Kafka vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 22% of the time

IBM MQ vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 18% of the time

ActiveMQ vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Confluent vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Software AG Universal Messaging vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 8% of the time

More PubSub+ Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact

August 2025

Download IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact product report

Buyer's Guide

PubSub+ Platform

August 2025

Download PubSub+ Platform product report

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool Impact

PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal

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

PubSub+ Platform supports real-time shipment tracking, IT event management in multiclouds, and connects legacy and cloud-native systems for application modernization. It's utilized for trading, streaming market data, and app-to-app messaging, enhancing event-driven architectures with reliable message queuing.

Organizations adopt PubSub+ to efficiently transport events across hybrid and cloud environments, managing audit trails and long processing tasks. The platform aids integration through dynamic data publication, event mesh capabilities, and WAN optimization. Features like seamless integration, protocol agnosticism, and flexible topic hierarchy enhance versatility. Solace Admin Utility simplifies configuration and management, while the event portal allows hybrid deployment.

What are the key features of PubSub+ Platform?

Dynamic Data Publication: Enables flexible and responsive data handling.
Event Mesh Capabilities: Facilitates efficient event transportation.
WAN Optimization: Enhances data transfer across networks.
Protocol Agnosticism: Supports a wide range of protocols for integration.
Flexible Topic Hierarchy: Allows detailed and organized data exchange.
Solace Admin Utility: Provides intuitive configuration and management.
Granular Topic Filtering: Offers precise data filtering options.
Guaranteed Messaging: Ensures reliable message delivery.

What benefits or ROI should users consider?

Seamless Integration: Reduces complexity in connecting systems.
Performance and Scaling: Supports high-load environments efficiently.
Asynchronous Messaging: Improves application performance.
Robust Support System: Provides guidance and problem resolution.

PubSub+ is implemented in industries requiring real-time data handling and integration between disparate systems. Financial institutions use it for trading and streaming market data, while logistics companies benefit from real-time shipment tracking. Enterprises apply it to modernize operations by connecting legacy systems with cloud-native applications, enhancing their architecture and ensuring data reliability across environments.

Solace

Sample Customers

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

FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet

Buyer's Guide

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs. PubSub+ Platform

July 2025

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