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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
13th
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
27th
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 March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SCOM is 1.6%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 1.0%, 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 Monitor1.0%
Other97.4%
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

"They have great integration with the active directory."
"The solution is scalable. If you want to monitor more you have to buy more licenses, but you can add on. We don't plan to increase usage."
"It's easy to use."
"The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped."
"SCOM provides alerting capabilities and threshold settings, which are helpful for monitoring."
"The stability has been great."
"I like the historical reporting of observer metrics."
"It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not."
"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."
"You can create an attractive dashboard and create a hierarchy."
"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."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor are the reports. We are configuring the reports, and the first reports are only about the devices. We are configuring the thresholds in order to monitor all the devices."
"The alerts we are getting when we start losing connection access have been helpful."
"The deployment process is quick."
"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 it shows you the utilization of devices to allow you to take proactive action before something goes down or reaches the saturation point. You can take proactive action to fix the problem before it occurs."
 

Cons

"The solution should be more user-friendly and offer a better user interface."
"The configurations could be better. There are multiple tests where you can do something, but they can be a trigger as well. The overriding methodologies are not that easy. The configurations are difficult. The configuration and thorough day-to-day operations to get them to the level you want takes some time. It's very difficult."
"System Center just provided upgrade and update features for Windows clients, and Windows systems, and did not support Linux, Android, or iOS, and other operating systems. They need to provide better integration with other operating systems if they don't already."
"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."
"All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"Regarding certain issues in the solution, it can be difficult to generate reports if we have a program that is not user-friendly for reporting. While this is not necessarily negative, we may need to use another solution."
"There could be more integration of SIM in the solution."
"If everything were in the package so that everything was ready to go out of the box, that would be ideal."
"The solution lacks in performance monitoring."
"In terms of price, it could be less expensive."
"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."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve by being more user-friendly. The network has so many features which make it difficult to find how to configure how to use it. It is not simple to customize."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve the features. We don't have the complete model for the database, and the monitoring for the database is up and down. We expect that we could monitor the blocking items on the database but we don't have that feature."
"The reporting feature needs improvement because we are unable to configure reports that were included during initial implementation."
"SolarWinds pricing is on the higher side, and in India, every customer is cautious about commercial aspects."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."
"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."
"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."
"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."
"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

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 do you like most about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?
I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.
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...
 

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: March 2026.
884,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.