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SCOM vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th), Network Monitoring Software (16th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (16th), Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

SCOM and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SCOM is designed for Event Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 8.1%, down 9.0% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, on the other hand, focuses on Server Monitoring, holds 2.6% mindshare, down 3.4% since last year.
Event Monitoring
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

MarcMermuys - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient monitoring with robust integration capabilities
We use SCOM to configure different monitors using several management packs. It integrates systems like Active Directory and correlates them, and it is used for monitoring and managing systems SCOM allows integration of several systems, providing correlation between different systems such as…
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."
"The monitoring features are the most valuable. We have seen a major benefit from that so far."
"This is a product that does more generally than any of the competing solutions."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"This solution allows us to standardize all of the reports for monitoring the network, so it helps a lot for auditing purposes."
"The product has helped our organization with in-depth monitoring."
"Being able to make and customize management packs and send out notifications is very valuable."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."
 

Cons

"SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product."
"SCOM needs to improve its usability."
"I would like to see them improve their network monitoring."
"Direct integration with third-party tools, like ticketing systems, is lacking but would be beneficial."
"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."
"It could use some system enhancements, such as better dashboards."
"All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved."
"It lacks certain details that other products do better, like granular access and better application monitoring."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"The price is too high."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga ( /products/icinga-reviews ) for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure ( /...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
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