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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs SCOM comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
3rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
15
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 (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 7.7%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.4%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus7.7%
SCOM9.4%
Other82.9%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Salman - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance & Monitoring Supervisor at Saudi Telecom Company
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…
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Very stable tool and good for all types of event integration and automation."
"Overall, this is a great tool and one that I recommend but it depends on the cost."
"OMNIbus is valuable for its compatibility and performance, as I haven't encountered any performance issues."
"It is customer-centric; customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event, with 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."
"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."
"Difficult to implement ( more resource and timing) but flexibility in implementation."
"This is an amazing product and you will fall in love with it."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"It takes a lot of the headache out of managing your data centers and software in other places."
"The feature I like most about SCOM is that it is easy-to-use."
"This product helps companies detect problems before they cause any real problems like downtime."
"Having been in IT for over 20 years, with Microsoft, you know what you are getting."
"SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS."
"Alerts notify the server or service owner of problems, allowing quick decisions or actions to keep the service running based on configured thresholds."
"This product is really easy to use and has best monitoring capabilities when used to monitor Microsoft products."
"When it comes to monitoring Microsoft servers, it is very useful."
 

Cons

"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"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."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"IBM support is a bust; Zenoss support is good."
"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."
"I would like more customized reports. People should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it. Beyond customizing the content, there should be the ability to customize the colors so that they can engage some priority and mark challenges separately."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"The console was not stable at the early versions of 2007 product, opening multiple consoles might cause a crash, and the web console might hang when opening multiple sessions as well."
"There were some deployment and configuration problems with the gateway server and overall this feature works a bit sloppy with other monitoring."
"The configuration, especially for alerts, are somewhat lengthy."
"Unfortunately, when you need to monitor member servers which are not joined to the same domain as the SCOM servers, you need to go through the certificate route (so that you can have the required trust through the certificate). This is very time consuming and very prone to error."
"I feel that the stability of the tool has room for improvement and I would like to see that in the next version."
"Almost always, these alert storms can put IT managers and operators off the product and give the impression that everything is broken or not working properly, so making them easier to work with will help SCOM administrators (especially if they are new to SCOM) manage and understand what the product is showing them."
 

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."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing 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 Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

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 inte...
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.
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?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
What is your primary use case for SCOM?
My usual use case for SCOM is as an administrator role where I create reports and provide system configuration for Linux and installation of the SCOM agent. I handle deploying and upgrading the age...
 

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: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.