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OpenText Enterprise Security Manager vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

OpenText Enterprise Securit...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
35th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of OpenText Enterprise Security Manager is 1.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenText Enterprise Security Manager1.5%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager1.0%
Other97.5%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

DayaramGoyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President, Technology at Cache Digitech Pvt Ltd.
Integration shines but threat detection and technical support need attention
Regarding threat detection capabilities, I think OpenText Enterprise Security Manager covers the MITRE ATT&CK framework at an average level, and on a scale of one to ten, I would rate it only five. They have to improve in those areas in terms of threat detection capabilities. For ArcSight, they need to give the complete package, with UBA being part of that. They have added it, but I question what capabilities are there, especially on the SOAR side where they have to improve because the SIEM was very strong. For the SOAR side, because SIEM was very strong when they were earlier launched, but for SOAR, they were integrating with third-party solutions initially, and then they built the capability. They have acquired some company, but it is not up to that potential. They slowly and gradually lost that ground to Splunk, QRadar, and other companies, so when anybody talks about the full capabilities, they are not thinking about Micro Focus as of now. I would desire additional features in OpenText Enterprise Security Manager, especially on the SOAR side, and maybe on the UBA side, as threats intel and all, which are part of bundled solutions. Those are the areas they have to improve so that customers can trust and enhance those things, and maybe the customers will feel they should go for this product. As of now, if we are evaluating our own scenario, we are not even thinking about it. Earlier, that was not the scenario when they were selling this SIEM solution in the market; everybody was thinking OpenText was the default option, but now, if you're looking for a complete solution stack, nobody is even considering it.
Yashokanth Partkunan - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed Services Engineer at Loop1 Systems
Has supported client needs efficiently but requires deeper analysis features and faster support
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in order to make it closer to optimal performance. From observation and feedback from users, they need more functionality related to monitoring, and in-depth analyzing needs to be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a very useful tool for intelligence building because it has many use cases and many rule sets."
"Having a SIEM solution in general improves the way an organization functions, especially in the SOC part."
"SmartConnector: Normalization parses raw logs and converts them into CEF (common event format). This is the core of the product."
"We help our customers do more than 'check a box' for security and compliance and we are very proud of that."
"It has absolutely improved the efficiency of our security team. We use it internally as well. It is such a powerful tool that our internal security team became a customer of our ArcSight managed service."
"The most valuable features of ArcSight ESM are the dashboards, ease of management for anyone, and simple for teams to provide reports related to cyber security. There are a lot of good features that are provided."
"It has helped us to gather, store, correlate and analyze security log data from many different information systems."
"I am satisfied with the solution's stability."
"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."
"SolarWinds is effective for server, network, and log monitoring. It's also good for IP address management. We also have a patch manager, but we're still working on getting that operational."
"We were suffering from a lack of visibility into our logs, so we implemented SolarWinds LEM."
"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."
"It's easy to build rules and actions based on the logs and event types we collect with the software."
"SolarWinds is easy to configure, and it provides timely alerts."
"SolarWinds' stability is fine. I don't think we've had any software issues."
 

Cons

"We would like the ability to easily identify either unused resources or those that are being used sub-optimally."
"The technical support was not very good. They are slow and not very efficient."
"I would like to have a feature that gives us an entire report listing what devices are integrated."
"The layout of the analyst's console need improvement. Also, the advanced statistics in visualizations simply don't work, and I've performed an analysis of these functions."
"I tried to learn the syntax in order to customize the software (connectors and agents) for a particular device, and it was a nightmare."
"I must say that tech support is getting worse and worse every year."
"ArcSight is incredibly complex when configuring and deploying, and if your organization doesn't know what they want and what they need, ArcSight will be a challenge for them."
"Best SIEM product but it's high on pricing and licensing."
"It won't tell you when your backups are failing, but it will give you hints when your database is running on full recovery."
"I would like to have a more customizable dashboard."
"I imagine we will have to develop our own reports soon, this seems to be more cumbersome."
"SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways."
"I think the product can use some improvement on the reporting side. The reporting could be easier and more robust."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
"Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch. You lose a lot of your nodes. Whenever you set your nodes up and everything else, they don't want to bring those nodes back in, so you have to really go back and restructure all your nodes. I went from version 6.5 to version 6.6 and then to version 6.7. I then went to version 2019, and now it is version 2020. It would be good if we can upgrade without having to delete everything and start from scratch. They can maybe build more KPIs and other things for the dashboard. Some of the other systems already have built-in KPIs. SolarWinds is starting to catch up, but it is not there yet. They can include some of the business or industry standards for tracking the time, that is, the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to resolve (MTTR). They can also find a way to build a KPI that measures the number of instances of port scans experienced in a week or a month."
"I would like to be able to dig deeper into the visibility of events or incidents to determine whether they are malicious, such as by doing behavior analysis."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is great compared to others."
"It's a good price, it's one of the cheaper solutions."
"The cost of the solution is not very high, although hiring a qualified analyst to work with the product is expensive."
"The product licenses are inexpensive."
"Pricing is good, I'd rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being low price. It's better than Splunk and IBM QRadar because their pricing is based on EPS."
"ArcSight can be a little bit expensive because of the area that we work in and the cost. Licensing is mostly on a yearly basis, not monthly."
"The solution is super expensive. At our organization size and license model, I think the price is average to what anyone else would charge us."
"ArcSight ESM is an affordable solution, it cost approximately $200,000 for three years. This price was at a substantial discount."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
University
10%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best SIEM tool for a mid-sized financial services firm: Arcsight or Securonix?
In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was pretty good. Now a lot of them are looking for a more effective solution due to ...
What do you like most about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
We utilize ArcSight ESM for real-time threat detection in our organization. We have custom rules that we've developed on top of the WAN services, along with scheduled licensing activities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools. It is worth the investment if you are considering the cost.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in or...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I work with all SolarWinds products mostly, including Network Configuration Manager and NPM. I am a reseller. I usually recommend SolarWinds products for Loop1. It's for the bigger ones; we are the...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Enterprise Security Manager vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.