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SCOM vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th)
SolarWinds Network Device M...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
30th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SCOM is 1.6%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.6%
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor0.9%
Other97.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.
SG
IT Infrastructure Senior Network Technician at Autoliv
Offers some features but needs better customization and analysis tools
There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for improvement. The features are not as customizable as we would prefer, but they are workable. If configured properly, you can perform a drill-down analysis. However, I have not used this feature much for our infrastructure on the network side.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"SCOM has improved our organization by simplifying the monitoring process."
"ROI turned out to be pretty good since we had good centralized monitoring for our whole data center and all the outages were quickly escalated from the Command center to the relevant Team."
"Setting up SCOM is straightforward and takes about an hour as long as you have all your firewalls and DNS settings in place."
"In every case so far we managed to move from a slow reactive type of non-monitoring toward a proactive monitoring for different layers within the organization and real insights into their IT environment from different angles."
"The solution is used for monitoring the hardware inventory. For instance, it helps with the whole operational monitoring view for the company's infrastructure."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"In terms of general network monitoring features, I find SolarWinds Network Device Monitor very flexible and comfortable to use. The software itself is extremely useful when it comes to monitoring how our data moves between different networks and environments."
"Overall, I rate SolarWinds Network Device Monitor ten out of ten."
"We are doing more with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor than we were doing in the past with WhatsApp Gold; when we moved to SolarWinds Network Device Monitor, the whole observability part started to grow."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is monitoring."
"The alerting functionality in SolarWinds Network Device Monitor helps us stay informed during off-hours by sending alerts if our main links or devices are impacted, allowing us to quickly address any issues."
"You can create an attractive dashboard and create a hierarchy."
"Since our devices are spread out across the world, we can see the status of these devices without having to send someone physically to a remote location, which saves money."
"The alerts we are getting when we start losing connection access have been helpful."
 

Cons

"SCOM needs to improve its usability."
"Monitoring non Microsoft products and 3rd party applications."
"Even though I think there are ways that this product is superior to most other solutions on the market, there are quite a few things that it does not do alone."
"The dashboard features are not user-friendly for our management team, only for the technical department."
"I would like to see more standard libraries for the market solutions, out of the box, that you don't need to do a lot of work on."
"I would like more customized reports. People should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it. Beyond customizing the content, there should be the ability to customize the colors so that they can engage some priority and mark challenges separately."
"The initial setup should be easier to complete."
"Microsoft needs to train more people about how to sell SCOM (and other System Center family products) because there are a lot of emerging technologies that are replacing Microsoft."
"It should provide user-friendly page"
"Although I haven't explored all of the features available, I wouldn't mind if the software were made to be a bit more customizable."
"There is no mobile version of this product, and our team should be able to access it using a mobile device."
"The main disadvantage of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is the licensing cost, which is expensive."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor lacks the granularity of other monitoring tools like LiveNX."
"Although I haven't explored all of the features available, I wouldn't mind if the software were made to be a bit more customizable."
"The security could always be improved."
"The solution lacks in performance monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."
"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."
"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."
"I rate the product's price as three to three and a half or on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means high price."
"The product is expensive."
"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I am not a positive person regarding SolarWinds Network Device Monitor.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for impro...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I have experience regarding the AD part, but my focus for the last 15 years has been oriented to the network side. My experience with identity tools comes more from a network perspective. We used N...
 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
Network Device Monitor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
Air Rarotonga
Find out what your peers are saying about SCOM vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.