IBM Tivoli NetCool vs SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager comparison

"It's very easy to use."

"NetCool has a huge database that can collect and process about one million alarms a day."

"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."

"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."

"It's very easy to use."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable features the solution offers are compliance, reliability, and information about reliability."

"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."

"It is pretty straightforward to set up."

"It is a stable solution."

"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."

"The feature that I really enjoy is the ability to script changes across all of your devices."

"It allows us to manage backups in big companies. It is also useful in managing the configuration changes."

"We push all our configurations to the servers with ease and the logs capture almost all the transactions needed for an internal audit."

"The solution is too expensive."

"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."

"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."

"UI is outdated, very old legacy."

"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."

"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."

"The solution is not user-friendly."

"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."

"I would like to see more features in terms of wireless reporting and more historical information for client connectivity in SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager."

"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."

"When it comes to the way of managing the network devices, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager should provide the simplest way that devices can relate to the server. For example, when we want to get the devices on board, we go by SSH to make the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager create the connectivity with the device. After that, we pull the configuration. It would be helpful if they could combine both so that everything will be done in one step."

"There are certain limitations of node-related monitoring"

"The network flow is a problem for this solution."

"The third-party plugins available in the solution could improve. I have received some issues with the templates."

"We want to be able to store it in a data warehouse format and integrate it with Google single sign-on."

"The Network Configuration Manager needs to improve the access control list compliance."

"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."

"The price of the product is too expensive."

"The price of the solution is high compared to other solutions."

"We have to pay additionally for its support and maintenance."

"The pricing is good."

"I have a yearly subscription."

"You have a base license for 50 devices, and then you can add more licenses as you go."

"In Africa, the cost is a major factor in decision-making for many companies. As a result, some companies may choose cheaper solutions, even if they are open-source, over more expensive ones, such as SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. However, as an engineer, I believe that the functionalities and services offered by SolarWinds justify the cost. Nonetheless, many companies in Africa may still view the prices as unaffordable."

"Pricing is reasonable and competitive."

"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is priced well, there is a lot of value for the money."