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IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management 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 NetCool Impact
Ranking in Event Monitoring
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow IT Operations Ma...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (10th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is 3.5%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 12.8%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow IT Operations Management12.8%
IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact3.5%
Other83.7%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Hennie Du Toit - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2755671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Significant enhancement in operations with powerful discovery and analytics, yet pricing structure poses challenges
ServiceNow IT Operations Management provides out-of-the-box dashboards. Along with the dashboard, it also provides the Operations Workspace, which is very useful for operations teams. There is a functionality called Performance Analytics, which we are also using to develop some dashboards for the senior leadership and operations team where they can perform trend analysis of alerts and events happening across the infrastructure and application landscape. These dashboards are really useful here. ServiceNow IT Operations Management's biggest plus point is that it is a platform. ITOM is just one module that ServiceNow IT Operations Management offers, but they provide seamless integration of ITOM with their other modules such as ITSM, where we can leverage the AIs for discovery, perform impact analysis, which essentially helps to enhance the overall IT operations and reduce the downtime and MTTR.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The Discovery feature is the most valuable. I only use the Discovery and Service Mapping features. I am using the minor subscription called ITOM Visibility, which includes the Discovery and Service Mapping features. It is easy to understand and easy to use. It has a lot of documentation. You can find a lot of help online, which helps me in finding what I need in a rapid way. You can find videos on YouTube channels and a lot of stuff and information in the online community."
"It is a stable solution. I have not experienced any system outages during my time using the solution."
"Feature-wise, it is a very good tool, especially when it comes to upgrades; upgrades are seamless—you will not even notice an upgrade is happening, and mostly all these upgrades happen after office hours, making it seamless."
"Our ROI since implementing ServiceNow ITOM has been significant."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a stable product."
"It helps streamline management and processes."
"I like the tool's discovery feature."
"Customer service is excellent."
 

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."
"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."
"The solution is somewhat complicated. It's not exactly straightforward."
"Stability-wise, this product needs to be improved."
"IBM is not investing in the development of the on-premise version of this solution."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management could do a little bit better with integrations. Integrating ServiceNow IT Operations Management with CMDB processes needs a little more work."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not very affordable. It is affordable for organizations with a minimum of 5,000 users plus."
"The most complaints we have received from our clients are the solution's discovery aspect. I've heard a few concerns from the customers where we have to integrate with a third-party tool to make a full-fledged discovery along with ServiceNow. ServiceNow alone does not do the total capacity of the discovery. The discovery portion of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not in-depth as what the customers are looking for. The information that it gathers from the assets is a little more limited than what other tools provide."
"When it comes to improvements, I think that my colleagues and I often have issues finding the correct screen and the search box does not work as intended."
"At times, it got cumbersome from the project management perspective. It could have been because of the way we were using it. I found Microsoft Project to be more extensive and robust than ITOM."
"There is room for improvement in service mapping within ServiceNow ITOM."
"The time for deployment of ServiceNow IT Operations Management depends on many factors. It's a SaaS application, it should not take too long, but if you want to define the tool based on your processes, then it would take some time. It fully depends on the company's complexity. There are out-of-the-box product flows and if you want to use them, you can from day one. However, if you want to customize it and change it to your company's practices, then it will take more time. The setup could be faster."
"There is room for improvement in service mapping within ServiceNow ITOM. When we have more time, we'll look to extend that and apply it to business-critical services like email."
 

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."
"The solution is costly compared to the products offered by its competitors."
"It has different subscription models."
"It is moderately expensive. The pricing itself and the licensing options are depending on the model and the customization."
"The cost of ServiceNow is much higher."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a costly solution. I'd rate the price at ten, on a scale from one to ten with one being the lowest and ten being the highest price. Some clients do have a problem with the price, but most find that the solution is worth the cost."
"There are additional costs, you have to pay more for everything."
"My customers pay for the ServiceNow IT Operations Management license annually. I'd rate the pricing based on value. ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a premium product as it has better features than competitors."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact?
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 wit...
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 ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
From my perspective as an asset manager, the most valuable feature of the solution is the configuration management portion, where I can actively add something to the database.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
It is definitely high-priced compared to other products available in the same domain in the market.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
ServiceNow IT Operations Management has not been very popular in these regions for multiple reasons. One is that for SMB customers, ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not very affordable. It is...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool Impact
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,443 professionals have used our research since 2012.