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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus 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 NetCool OMNIbus
Ranking in Event Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 7.0%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus7.0%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.9%
Other89.1%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

RS
EMEA Senior Sales Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Customization and robust network monitoring enhance operational efficiency
The most useful functions for monitoring purposes with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus are that it can be automated in many ways. Most importantly, it can communicate with many network components without requiring any medium connectors. You can directly integrate it if you have SNMP, which is great. The main benefits that IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus provides are that it's an umbrella tool that can be placed on top of any existing monitoring system. You can monitor the entire network from this tool. The underlying interfaces can be many, but you can keep it as a single tool in IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus and it can manage the load on its own. It negates the need to train the user base with other tools. I can provide this single tool and have hundreds of different tools underlying, but I only need to train one single user base, which is a great advantage.
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

"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"Very stable tool and good for all types of event integration and automation."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"Probes are the best feature because they are well written which rarely requires you to write additional rules. These probes monitor activity within your environment."
"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"It's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."
"The most useful functions for monitoring purposes with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus are that it can be automated in many ways, and most importantly, it can communicate with many network components without requiring any medium connectors."
"This is an amazing product and you will fall in love with it."
"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."
"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."
"Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact."
"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."
"SQL monitoring time has been dramatically reduced and our IT Infrastructure team has improved SQL maintenance and monitoring knowledge over time just by using SQL DM."
"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."
"Overall, it has allowed us to do more with database management and run more databases on a given server, because we're able to isolate issues quicker and take the proactive steps necessary to correct them."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"I would like for the next release to be more user-friendly and out of date. The next release should focus on the cloud, AI, and ML technologies."
"IBM support is a bust; Zenoss support is good."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"Its GUI can also be better. As compared to other tools, it is not user friendly, and it is not easy to do stuff through GUI."
"Yes often problems appear after resolving a previous one."
"Tech support has been okay, not that great, but they made sure that we got what we were looking for."
"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."
"Some more granularity in alerting."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its license cost is a little bit more than other solutions. Our customers expect a standard market price that is comparative to other products. For each and every NetCool OMNIbus component, we have to purchase a separate license. These components are not free with the product."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"It is a costly solution."
"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
24%
Computer Software Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Construction Company
5%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
I would rate the pricing for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus as three, where one is a high price and ten is a low price.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
Based on my experience and my colleagues' feedback, IBM can improve IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus in automation with respect to using AI, as it lacks considerably compared to other tools. The integrat...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
My current use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is for monitoring the networks.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
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 NetCool OMNIbus vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,917 professionals have used our research since 2012.