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IBM Tivoli NetCool vs SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (10th)
SolarWinds Network Configur...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (12th), Network Automation (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Tivoli NetCool is designed for Network Management Applications and holds a mindshare of 3.7%, up 2.0% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Configuration Management, holds 3.1% mindshare, up 1.5% since last year.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.7%
Cisco DNA Center8.7%
OpenText Network Node Manager5.4%
Other82.2%
Network Management Applications
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager3.1%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform10.3%
HashiCorp Terraform7.4%
Other79.2%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.
reviewer1327239 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Automated configuration management has improved monitoring, backups, and policy control
I do not think there is anything I would like to improve at this point in time because SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager compares almost perfectly to what it is supposed to do. I think it is one of the best products in its category. Regarding the automation capabilities of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, I think that is an area they will need to explore in making it more autonomous. Discovery happens through IP address scanning, but building out automation is something they need to focus on. I absolutely believe in providing automation for SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. It is essential to address how to deploy, discover, and remediate wherever possible. I think that is something they should already be looking at because AAFS is currently something everybody is focused on, and storage also needs to consider it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It improves customer satisfaction, deploy-ability, adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and reduces cost of operation."
"The solution is a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
"The solution has very good integration capabilities."
"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
"NetCool has a huge database that can collect and process about one million alarms a day."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution. NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility. There are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite. Whenever an issue happens, rather than going to technical support, if you find the exact issue in Google, you can get tech notes for that particular issue."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
"The tool is useful for security purposes."
"What's nice with NCM is you can set up policies that you can then check against the configs to ensure that your device configs adhere to a baseline or standard that you've set in place."
"We can proactively monitor our infrastructure in a single pane of glass, unlike before when there were a lot of network management tools that would need to be looked at."
"I use it for monitoring the entire network for the company. We oversee nodes down, we oversee devices heading up to crossing the threshold for CPU usage. We oversee power so power backups on the switches, we oversee if they're down or if they're failing. We oversee any node down or any router from any vendor."
"This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to store all the device configurations for the various network devices in NCM and making it easy for us to retrieve and look them over."
"Configuration refers to the specific settings and options that determine how a device or system behaves. It can include things, such as network settings, security settings, and other options that are specific to the device or system in question. One of the most valuable features of the solution was its ability to track and monitor changes to the configuration of devices on a network. This can be useful for troubleshooting and identifying potential issues. By keeping track of who made changes to the configuration and when it can be easier to determine the cause of any problems that may arise."
"The most valuable Real-time fault detection is beneficial as it enables the identification of changes made to a device's configuration through the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. This makes it easy to pinpoint which configurations were added or removed, potentially causing network issues. Such changes are saved in logs for future reference."
"The feature that I really enjoy is the ability to script changes across all of your devices."
 

Cons

"I think the UI should be updated and made more presentable and eye-catching. Compared to NCE in Huawei, NSN in Nokia, the UiPath and Ubiquiti, it feels very old legacy."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"Customization and integration that you need to do to make the product fit your needs is very complex. It is not a product that somebody could easily pick up without any prior training or experience."
"The solution is too expensive."
"It was a bit expensive to purchase but the benefits outweigh all the cons by far."
"When we run the SolarWinds NCM jobs at the cellular line, it runs in the morning. They're just not finishing. We're getting false processing."
"The solution could improve by being more secure."
"Its customer service response could be faster."
"The only thing that requires some experience, and training doesn't fix, is how to set up your custom policy-based reports to check compliance."
"Improvements are needed in the automatic network mapping function."
"We had issues with the FailOver Engine module installation, due to the resources of each SolarWinds server."
"Releasing a product compatible with operating systems other than Windows would be advantageous."
"The solution could have better integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"Additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee are inevitable."
"The pricing is good."
"With a minimal bundle, we pay about $3000 a year in licensing costs. If you have multiple devices in your network, you must buy the bundle, which is 100% identical for your infrastructure. If you have 15 devices, you need 15 licenses, for example. That's one bundle. You don't pay for anything over and above that."
"Pricing is reasonable and competitive."
"The price of the solution is high compared to other solutions."
"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is priced well, there is a lot of value for the money."
"There is a license needed to use SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager."
"We have to pay additionally for its support and maintenance."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The main challenge is its licensing model, which is very complicated.
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool?
NetCool is the manager of managers in the stack. It basically combines the devices of the whole network. We are the mobile network operator, so we use it to assist us in cross-domain correlations a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager?
On pricing, I would rate SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager as one of the best in its segment among leading products and competitors. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is positioned as...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager?
I do not think there is anything I would like to improve at this point in time because SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager compares almost perfectly to what it is supposed to do. I think it is...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager?
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is used for managing a large number of IPs, distributing them within my enterprise, and addressing issues related to them. People typically manage this thro...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool
SolarWinds NCM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
United Lincolnshire Hospitals, Air Rarotonga, NetSuite, Thai AirAsia, REA Group, 335th Signal Command, Agilisys, Marine Expeditionary Force
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in Network Management Applications. Updated: June 2026.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.