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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus 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 NetCool OMNIbus
Ranking in Event Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 10.0%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 8.9%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Salman - PeerSpot reviewer
Aids in network performance monitoring and management
I am working as a customer, mainly using IntelliQ and another product, IBM NetCool, Watson AI. These products are used for monitoring network performance and management.  The primary use case involves network performance monitoring, and it is compatible only with IBM DB2 IBM Tivoli NetCool…
MarcMermuys - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient monitoring with robust integration capabilities
We use SCOM to configure different monitors using several management packs. It integrates systems like Active Directory and correlates them, and it is used for monitoring and managing systems SCOM allows integration of several systems, providing correlation between different systems such as…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"It is an easy-to-use solution."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"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."
"It's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."
"It is customer-centric. Customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event. There is no need to go and connect to any other server and run events to have a view of all the events happening in the environment. We get a good response from customers about this feature and the main architecture of NetCool. Its processing is very good. Deduplication and correlation functionalities are good in this solution as compared to other solutions. A big advantage of NetCool is that it also supports multi-layered protocols. We can receive multiple events from different protocols like UDP, HTTP, and those events can be captured in NetCool."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"This solution helps our application teams by allowing them to drill further into issues and perform a root cause analysis."
"SCOM provides alerting capabilities and threshold settings, which are helpful for monitoring."
"It's easy to use."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is the capability of using classes within your management pack development."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool."
"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped."
 

Cons

"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"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."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"Its integration could be better. They should provide an easier integration for all the monitoring stuff, and it will make things easier for us. Currently, there is a complexity in integrating it with a vendor application, and we have to use another tool to integrate it with a vendor application. To integrate some applications with NetCool, I need to install an IBM tool on top of it. It would be good if they can provide an API or any kind of interface that we can leverage while developing a new protocol interface or application. We should be able to use an API or interface with NetCool. 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. Whenever we do anything on the GUI, it takes time. They need to focus on the GUI part, especially the dashboard. They should focus on how users can effectively drill down from one box to another. The visual appeal of the dashboard is as important as the data and functionality."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"Areas that could be better include the fact that the solution is only on-premises, lacks AI capabilities, and support response times could be quicker."
"System Center just provided upgrade and update features for Windows clients, and Windows systems, and did not support Linux, Android, or iOS, and other operating systems. They need to provide better integration with other operating systems if they don't already."
"SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure."
"There are some negative points about this product. Sometimes, the capabilities of the software don't appear, and you can't directly see the results. You have to wait for a long period to refresh the policy to push it to the software or other patches."
"I would like to see more standard libraries for the market solutions, out of the box, that you don't need to do a lot of work on."
"I would like to see them improve their network monitoring."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"Regarding certain issues in the solution, it can be difficult to generate reports if we have a program that is not user-friendly for reporting. While this is not necessarily negative, we may need to use another solution."
"They can focus more on cloud monitoring instead of on-premise monitoring. We should be able to monitor cloud-related applications. They can include this feature in the next release. If it is in the cloud, we can have scalability by using Kubernetes. The container is containerized, packaged, and managed using Kubernetes. This feature is not there in SCOM. Going forward, if they can focus on that, it will be great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a costly solution."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
17%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
If the various HW elements are from the same vendor, a monitoring solution provided by that vendor or its partners will potentially result in lower licensing and operational costs. Moreover, for ve...
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
IBM is working on converting NetCool to NetCool Operations Insight, which runs on Watson AI. There were areas needing improvement in terms of AI, however, they have migrated the entire NetCool suit...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
OMNIbus is used for alert processing and deduplication of alarms. It is used for performing certain actions on any alarm processed through NetCool. It serves as a core component for action triggers...
What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
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?
SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga ( /products/icinga-reviews ) for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure ( /...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.