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Microsoft System Center Orchestrator vs PagerDuty Operations Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

Microsoft System Center Orc...
Ranking in Process Automation
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PagerDuty Operations Cloud
Ranking in Process Automation
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (1st), AIOps (9th), Critical Event Management (CEM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Microsoft System Center Orchestrator is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PagerDuty Operations Cloud is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Dan Campeanu - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates tasks and manages multiple servers from a central location
The initial setup was quite complex. It required careful preparation of installation steps, as many tasks were not automated as expected. Special attention was needed to prepare groups, users, and permissions at each step to ensure a smooth setup process. Please do so accurately to avoid having to start over. Challenges encountered during deployment included issues with installation and configuration and difficulties detecting machines and executing tasks as expected. Some solutions were found through trial and error during installation, while others were discovered through recommendations from other users. Despite these challenges, the deployment and rollout of Orchestrator took approximately one and a half months to ensure proper functionality.
JeremyEmmett - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized alert management with customizable routing and superior scheduling
Everything can always be better. Operations are somewhat limited by their integration package. For example, integrating with Jira was problematic until they updated to a better plug-in. The ability to build customized modules would be advantageous, allowing organizations to define their own integration modules. It would be useful to have a way to define all configurations in code that is similar to how Terraform operates.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can manage multiple servers and workstations from a single location."
"Automation is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"PagerDuty's notification process is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the flexibility of the schedule. The mobile app is quite also good for what we do: for receiving alerts, acknowledging, assigning, adding new responders. It has rich features for our needs."
"The alerts are immediate in this solution, which allows us to respond to errors quickly."
"A cool feature is that it helps us to understand the flow of the alert. If the alert was coming to the current on-call and he didn't catch the call or didn't notice it for any reason, it starts being escalated automatically, according to the escalation schedule, or to other teammates. You can see the flow very easily on your phone or via the website, if you want to do a post-mortem."
"The product has valuable on-call scheduling, escalation, and incident workflow management features."
"PagerDuty let us set up rosters based on our shifts. We could assign a hierarchy for how the calls should be escalated and the number of times the call will be transferred between people before it is answered. It makes it easy to access an agent via mobile phone."
"The SMS pages and the mobile application are pretty much the top two features."
 

Cons

"I find the Orchestrator UI to be problematic."
"The product's management aspect needs enhancement."
"PagerDuty could improve the event orchestration by enhancing features, such as easier condition setup inside the orchestration."
"The On-Call Teams feature could be better in terms of levels of conditions related to which team or member should get the responsibility of handling a matter or incident."
"This solution works best in conjunction with a proper logging system, which can be an additional cost to organizations."
"I am not a direct end user of PagerDuty. It's hard to consider its shortcomings in that sense."
"It is a very non-customizable product, so you cannot add things like root cause analysis or the classification of incidents based on the area where you are getting more incidents. For example, if you're getting a lot of database issues, that may be an are you want to probe."
"The solution does not code all alerts correctly so sometimes you get false positives or multiple alerts for the same issue."
"The biggest area for improvement with PagerDuty is noise suppression. There have been a handful of incidents through our use of PagerDuty over the years where one incident may lead to 30 to 50 pages because you're monitoring all these different things, and each thing is an individual page. There should be the ability to set up paging tiers and group correlations between some of the different pages. That is something that would be really valuable. We should be able to say this one page may have a group or a tree of effective other pages that may tier off of it. So, if you see those pages independently, go ahead and alarm, but if you see this plus that, don't do that."
"It is difficult to send underlying trace files or statuses using PagerDuty."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the cost of the solution a five out of ten."
"We obtained a license that bundled Windows Server with System Center at no additional cost."
"If you add more people, then you have to pay more, which is always a thing with the SaaS solutions."
"The pricing may be about $1,000 per user."
"The cost is based on the package you select."
"If we wanted phone calls or additional SMSs, we would have to pitch up for those. They give us so many per month per user, then we have to pay extra if it goes over that."
"PagerDuty has monthly and yearly licenses available, the costs of which can get quite high if you have a large number of users."
"The price is very high."
"There is a license needed to use PagerDuty."
"The cost is quite high. But if you want to get a full-featured application and you have a big team..."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft System Center Orchestrator?
It can manage multiple servers and workstations from a single location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft System Center Orchestrator?
The platform was almost free of cost for us. We obtained a license that bundled Windows Server with System Center at no additional cost.
What needs improvement with Microsoft System Center Orchestrator?
The product's management aspect needs enhancement. It affects the visibility of powerful scripts that were previously accessible. Furthermore, the focus is shifting towards cloud-based features, sp...
What do you like most about PagerDuty?
The product easily integrates with other solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PagerDuty?
The solution was expensive, but if all its features were utilized, it was considered worth the cost. The tier-based pricing model was cumbersome, and there was a desire for a service-based catalog ...
What needs improvement with PagerDuty?
Everything can always be better. Operations are somewhat limited by their integration package. For example, integrating with Jira was problematic until they updated to a better plug-in. The ability...
 

Also Known As

MS System Center Orchestrator
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
40% of the Fortune 100 TrustPagerDuty. Customers include: Slack, Intuit, Zendesk, Panasonic, Pinterest, Airbnb, eHarmony, McKesson, Comcast
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft System Center Orchestrator vs. PagerDuty Operations Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.