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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus 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 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
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 December 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 8.3%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 14.3%, 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 Management14.3%
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus8.3%
Other77.4%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Senior Consultant AWS at Cognizant
Good GUI and accuracy in processing but needs automated incident management
There is a complex setup and configuration process. It requires experience. We've had integration capabilities. We have to assess the specific needs or objectives of the organization, including scaling of deployment, and integration points, before implementation. Then, we need to design the architecture, including server specification networks, configuration, and storage requirements. We also need to consider the environment setup, hardware, projecting, and virtual machines. We need to ensure that network settings, firewalls, and security protocols are configured to allow communication between the components. Once you have all of the requirements laid out, it will only take five to six hours to set up. It does depend on the level of connectivity. If you are connecting remotely, it may take a bit longer. I set it up for three environments: development, testing, and production. One person can set up the solution themselves. If you are doing a NetCool suite of products, it may take two to three resources. You may need to do some maintenance in terms of additional patching or upgrading.
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

"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"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."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"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."
"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."
"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"The most important features of ServiceNow IT Operations Management are the discovery service mapping and orchestration."
"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."
"Their Event Management is very good."
"It provided out-of-the-box integrations, requiring only minimal effort, typically a couple of days, to massage those systems into a seamless operation."
"It's easy to set up."
"It is flexible. You can tune it, more or less, as you want."
"It is easy to use and simple to learn."
"I like the tool's CMBD connection with Discovery. The solution is also flexible."
 

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."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"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."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"The solution’s licensing cost could be improved."
"It should have better integrations with other solutions."
"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."
"We are facing difficulties with service mapping of CIs from the end users, and are seeking help from third-party vendors."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management could be improved by providing more user customization options."
"I would like more manual issues to have automated report-facing options."
"Service mapping is pretty limited."
"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."
 

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."
"The cost of ServiceNow is much higher."
"There are additional costs, you have to pay more for everything."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"It is moderately expensive. The pricing itself and the licensing options are depending on the model and the customization."
"The price of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is expensive."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and a subscription model for add-on features."
"We obtained discovery licenses at about seven dollars Australian per unit, which we found to be reasonable and competitive."
"This solution offers good value but comes at a very high premium. Pricing could be reduced by 10 to 20%."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise26
 

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.
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 OMNIbus
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.