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Microsoft System Center vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights comparison

Microsoft and NetApp are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #28 with an average rating of 8.5, while NetApp is ranked #41. Microsoft holds a 0.7% mindshare in CMS, compared to NetApp’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.
Microsoft System Center
Read 20 Microsoft System Center reviews
  • 847 Views
  • 525 Comparison Views
85% willing to recommend
NetApp Data Infrastructure ...
Read 13 NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights reviews
  • 1,801 Views
  • 828 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 2, 2025

Microsoft System Center and NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights compete in the IT management and data analytics category. NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights appears to have an edge in environments needing multi-platform data visualization and security analytics due to broader visibility.

Features: Microsoft System Center offers comprehensive integration with other Microsoft products, extensive automation features, and management packs that support both Microsoft and other hypervisors. It is also noted for its ease of configuration and advanced performance monitoring capabilities that benefit IT operations. NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights excels in data visualization, providing detailed analysis in multi-vendor environments, and its advanced analytics features deliver real-time security alerts across various platforms.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft System Center struggles with integration when dealing with non-Microsoft products and involves a complicated installation process with extensive prerequisites. Users report a need for enhanced reporting features and more detailed documentation. NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights could improve its report creation process and simplify its pricing model. Users also find the console complex and seek better initial technical support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft System Center is mainly deployed on-premises, facing challenges in technical support, particularly in non-Microsoft environments, with average customer service feedback. NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights supports both on-premises and cloud deployments, with users praising initial support while noting complexity in customer service engagements. NetApp’s flexible deployment options present a significant advantage.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft System Center is considered costly, with high licensing fees impacting affordability but delivering significant ROI through process automation. NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights, although complex in licensing, is deemed cost-effective, particularly for NetApp products, offering flexible payment options and cost savings via efficient resource management. The pricing model of NetApp could be simpler, while Microsoft's high costs remain a barrier for some users despite robust ROI.

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft System Center vs. NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
December 2025
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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
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (14th)
NetApp Data Infrastructure ...
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
41st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (50th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Microsoft System Center is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft System Center0.7%
NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights1.2%
Other98.1%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Carl Palapal - PeerSpot reviewer
Carl Palapal
Sr. Sys. Server & Storage Egineer / Tech .Consultant at CANAR OFFICE SYSTEMS
Provides comprehensive system management with effective deployment and integration capabilities
The advantages of Microsoft System Center are significant, and I have seen other products as well. As far as advantages are concerned, they have PXE deployment, which is good for deploying operating systems, such as Windows client systems including Windows 10 and Windows 11. Since it is a Microsoft product, all the patches are proprietary, making it easier to deploy. In Microsoft System Center, all the features are integrated already, whereas in ManageEngine, you have to license each feature individually to access those features. The automated features of Virtual Machine Manager are very useful; it automates as long as the policy that I have created is in line with the objective, especially the templates when I'm going to deploy. Regarding endpoint management, Microsoft System Center is very helpful; it has integrated endpoint protection deployment, allowing me to handle endpoint configuration, system deployment, and patch deployment, making it an all-in-one stop shop for managing and configuring end clients. The impact of using Microsoft System Center is significant; it gives me a whole picture of my environment, making it easy to get inventory details regarding applications and hardware, providing full visibility of my setup within the organization.
Read full review
Punit Waghela - PeerSpot reviewer
Punit Waghela
Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited
Reduces troubleshooting time and improves operational efficiency through a single console
NetApp technology, specifically NetApp Cloud Insights, has significantly impacted the way my customers do business. One customer had multiple components, such as a VMware environment, Cisco switches, NetApp storage, and backup tools. Previously, the customer had to monitor all these tools individually each morning by logging into every console to check for errors or performance issues. It used to take them about 1 or 2 hours, but after we installed NetApp Cloud Insights, the time spent was reduced to just 5 minutes with a single console where they could monitor everything. The customer can integrate their VMware servers, Cisco switches, and storage with NetApp Cloud Insights to quickly identify any problems and resolve issues efficiently, demonstrating a reduction in complexity and monitoring time. The values that NetApp Cloud Insights delivers to my customers are evident in real examples, such as an application team running their application on a single VM connected through a switch and storage. When they experience a performance issue, the VMware team needs to identify the source of the slowness, whether it's from the server, switch, or storage, which requires a time-consuming investigation of each component. Without NetApp Cloud Insights, this process is slow and stressful for both the application team and the VMware team, but with the tool, a single click allows the customer to pinpoint the issue directly, improving response times to performance problems immensely. The evolving cybersecurity landscape and the proliferation of AI highly influence my customers' technology decisions, as having NetApp storage in their environment allows them to detect ransomware attacks effectively. NetApp guarantees data recovery in case of such attacks, and here, NetApp Cloud Insights plays a crucial role; it can identify where a ransomware attack originates, allowing the IT team to respond rapidly, such as disconnecting affected devices to mitigate the damage, especially crucial when multiple users are involved.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Step-by-step documentation that clarifies the implementation procedure."
"The impact of using Microsoft System Center is significant; it gives me a whole picture of my environment, making it easy to get inventory details regarding applications and hardware, providing full visibility of my setup within the organization."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"System Center helps to create the basis for ITIL alignment."
"The installation process is easy."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft System Center is its GUI (graphical user interface)."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it helps us manage our company's application pool, license pool, application update pool, and OS updates."
"Good for managing and administering the infrastructure."
More Microsoft System Center pros
"The solution is 98 percent stable."
"NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or needed to interface with other groups and their products, a task that should require only one or two people turned into a six-person job."
"NetApp Cloud Insights helps reduce the time spent on problem resolution by up to 50% for my customers, making their operations significantly more efficient and productive, which is a perfect outcome."
"It is good for giving an overview of the systems and for tracking long-term trends. It is handy for root cause analysis, e.g. it can eliminate whether storage is the cause of an issue."
"NetApp Cloud Insights helps reduce the time spent on problem resolution by up to 50% for my customers, making their operations significantly more efficient and productive, which is a perfect outcome."
"The visibility and assistance with security vulnerabilities are valuable."
"All our production clusters are in Cloud Insight. It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment, which allows us to understand if any issues are going on across any of our clusters."
"Its ability to quickly inventory our resources, figure out interdependencies across them, and assemble a topology of your environment is brilliant. There is a price associated with it. Whenever you target a NetApp environment, it is included in the price but whenever you want to add different vendors, like VMware and Cisco, the price greatly spikes. Inventorization helps us a lot to visualize the environment."
More NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights pros
 

Cons

"In Microsoft System Center, it is difficult to follow the steps to create dataflows at times."
"Implementation and integration in the case of multi-tenant environments needs improvement."
"Could be more user friendly."
"The platform performance and responsiveness need improvement. It still demands high computing resources."
"The multi-tenancy support needs to be improved. We need to have the ability to manage several different environments from one central point of administration."
"Less server consumption would help, as would better, more flexible reports."
"The platform's performance could be improved. Additionally, its UI needs to be well-upgraded and work faster."
"Microsoft System Center should be easier to manage. However, it is complex to deploy, so people hesitate to use it. Though it has many features, such as licensing, asset tracking, and software deployment, we mainly use it for Windows updates. It protects many screens and integrates with databases, but it's complex compared to other solutions. Many now use cloud-based products or other tools like Automox to deploy updates and manage vulnerabilities."
More Microsoft System Center cons
"Cloud Insights could offer more detail when we drill down into the Azure environment."
"In a perfect world we would have something built, right out-of-the-box, that can identify what we call "noise," and reduce the amount of data. You're presented with so much data when you first start the data collectors. For example, it brings back a lot of change rates that happen just because of standard computing, like profile changes and that sort of thing. Being able to identify things like that and categorize them and strip it down—and it probably can do that, I just haven't gotten there yet—would be very beneficial."
"Ease of reporting is one thing that they're trying to tackle. If you have a specific set of data you want from Cloud Insights, you can ask NetApp to help you build the reports from the ground up. The dashboards are intuitive, but finding the report you want is sometimes a challenge. If you don't have the report already loaded, pulling it in and letting it build its data can be cumbersome."
"The support is not very quick."
"Even though I work with NetApp, it still takes time for me to navigate and find components, so new customers might require considerable hands-on experience to efficiently use the console, indicating that it could be more user-friendly."
"Their pricing model needs improvement."
"The IP-based monitoring could be added in a future release."
"The first level of NetApp's technical support could be improved."
More NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Microsoft System Center is quite expensive."
"We maximized our license investment."
"Microsoft System Center's licensing is costly."
"I know that sometimes there is some reduction in the prices of Microsoft System Center because of the costs of Microsoft SQL Server, which can be advantageous."
"It's rolled into our enterprise subscription. The entire subscription is around $25,000 a year, however, that covers all the products that we use."
"I rate the product price as five to six on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is cheap and ten means it is expensive."
"Be aware of the capacity licensing and understand how that works, because it is based on capacity. Getting an understanding of that is the biggest thing."
"The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about the end-use managed units and having an easy place to reference how far those units go."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are billed based on management units, so we can purchase units based on six months, twelve months, twenty-four months, or thirty-six months upfront or pay as you go depending on our requirements."
"The licensing model could be improved. We love that you can use it for free for looking at NetApp products. You only need licenses to look at non-NetApp products, but as soon as you do that, you start utilizing licenses that actually would have been free in the public. So, there is a bit of an anomaly in the licensing model."
"The solution's pricing is based on the device you purchase and includes support services."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Transportation Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
27%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Consumer Goods Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft System Center?
The product's initial setup phase was easy.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft System Center?
Microsoft System Center's licensing is costly.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Microsoft System Center?
The disadvantage of Microsoft System Center is related to the many integrated services; if one service is failing, then all features will be affected. For example, with site configuration, when one...
See all answers
What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Insights?
In my opinion, one area where NetApp Cloud Insights could be improved for the next release is the console, which I find a bit complex. Even though I work with NetApp, it still takes time for me to ...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for NetApp Cloud Insights?
It is a monitoring and analysis tool. In our environment, we have different technologies such as VMware, Nutanix, or maybe a backup tool. Instead of monitoring them through different consoles, with...
See all answers
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp Cloud Insights?
NetApp Cloud Insights delivers significant efficiencies in addressing performance issues as experienced by an application team running on a single VM. The VMware team must methodically check each c...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs Microsoft System Center Logo
VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs Microsoft System Center
Compared 19% of the time
Veeam Data Platform vs Microsoft System Center Logo
Veeam Data Platform vs Microsoft System Center
Compared 13% of the time
IBM BPM vs Microsoft System Center Logo
IBM BPM vs Microsoft System Center
Compared 13% of the time
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform vs Microsoft System Center Logo
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform vs Microsoft System Center
Compared 12% of the time
LogicMonitor vs Microsoft System Center Logo
LogicMonitor vs Microsoft System Center
Compared 9% of the time
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Dell CloudIQ vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights Logo
Dell CloudIQ vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
Compared 13% of the time
Datadog vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights Logo
Datadog vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
Compared 10% of the time
Grafana Enterprise Stack vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights Logo
Grafana Enterprise Stack vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
Compared 9% of the time
HPE OneView vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights Logo
HPE OneView vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
Compared 8% of the time
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights Logo
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
Compared 5% of the time
More NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Microsoft System Center
January 2026
Microsoft System Center reportDownload Microsoft System Center product report
Buyer's Guide
NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
January 2026
NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights reportDownload NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights product report
 

Also Known As

MS System Center
Cloud Insights
 

Overview

System Center helps customers realize the benefits of the Microsoft Cloud Platform by delivering unified management. Experience fast time-to-value with out-of-the-box monitoring, provisioning, configuration, automation, protection and self-service.
Microsoft

NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights delivers comprehensive capabilities like visibility, usage optimization, and real-time alerting to manage and report resource utilization efficiently.

NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights focuses on strengthening data security and enhancing performance monitoring. Its sophisticated analytics tools offer clarity on complex resource interdependencies, reducing troubleshooting times. With advanced dashboards and data visualization, users can efficiently monitor performance metrics and optimize infrastructure management. While it boasts numerous features, improvements are needed in reporting, affordability, and simplifying the interface.

What are the key features of NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights?
  • Visibility and Optimization: Tracks resource utilization to optimize operations.
  • Real-time Alerting: Provides immediate alerts for performance issues.
  • Advanced Analytics: Uncovers multi-tiered insights for better decision-making.
  • Snapshot Capabilities: Enhances security by providing recovery points.
  • Comprehensive Dashboards: Visualizes complex data for performance monitoring.
What benefits and ROI should users expect?
  • Improved Efficiency: Streamlines performance monitoring and troubleshooting.
  • Increased Security: Identifies vulnerabilities like ransomware threats.
  • Resource Optimization: Forecasts capacity needs to prevent bottlenecks.
  • Seamless Integration: Unifies technologies like VMware and Nutanix for cohesive management.

Organizations implementing NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights across industries can expect improved analysis capabilities and security measures. From finance to healthcare, entities rely on its ability to integrate diverse environments like virtualization or storage management, enhancing predictability and efficiency in their operations.

NetApp
 

Sample Customers

Kassen_rztliche Vereinigung Nordrhein, Magyar Telekom Nyrt., Adeka, QualCare, Aeriandi, UniCredit Bank d.d., Mostar, Allianz Australia Ltd., Grupo Familia
Information Not Available
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft System Center vs. NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights
December 2025
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