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SCOM vs System Center comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th), Network Monitoring Software (26th)
System Center
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Asset Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

SCOM and System Center aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. SCOM is designed for Event Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 9.4%, down 9.9% compared to last year.
System Center, on the other hand, focuses on Software Asset Management, holds 18.5% mindshare, down 25.4% since last year.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.4%
BMC TrueSight8.6%
OpenText AI Operations Management8.5%
Other73.5%
Event Monitoring
Software Asset Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
System Center18.5%
ManageEngine AssetExplorer14.6%
iQuate iQSonar14.3%
Other52.599999999999994%
Software Asset Management
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user3483 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Unify Square
Aug 13, 2015
 

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.
Ted Mbugua - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Have faced challenges managing cloud endpoints and support response has been slow
System Center alone just being able to handle cloud endpoints has always been a challenge, even from Microsoft's end. Just looking at how best can you do it without Intune on System Center when it comes to cloud, it becomes a challenge. You'll find that for System Center, it purely looks at on-premise solutions; if maybe you have an Azure or an AWS virtual machine, it might become a challenge when looking at how you're able to manage that. On the reporting capability of System Center, there are some reports that you really need, but sometimes they are a bit shallow or sometimes they are not even there, so maybe on the reporting capability, more improvement is needed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If you are a large Microsoft shop then this product excels in monitoring Microsoft services."
"It's a lot more powerful than people realize, and I believe people become dissatisfied with it because of the complicated setup, but once it's up and running, it's pretty amazing at what it can do."
"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well, reports everything you can think of on the Windows server, and allows you to monitor anything, making it excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"The System Center 2012 R2 is really powerful, all products work great together, is not so expensive anymore, easy to license, and can cover from end to end (Networking, Hardware layer, OS, App and services, ports, etc.)."
"The good reporting capabilities was one of the major functions which made us choose SCOM as the tool for handling MS application operations (only used for that, not the OS platforms)."
"It would have to be the ability to monitor services, devices, and operations for many devices from a single console leveraging a wide variety of Management Packs available."
"This product is really easy to use and has best monitoring capabilities when used to monitor Microsoft products."
"We leverage every component of SCOM; we have dashboards up, customized management packs, and monitors for both Windows and Linux, and we use SNMP traps to pull in information from network devices across the enterprise, so we use it for everything."
"System Center helps us manage everything in the company."
"Time is money, so saving on time means you're also saving on costs, especially when looking at how quickly you're able to patch endpoints and servers when it comes to updates, the whole System Center family, if you're able to integrate the whole SCCM functionalities, you're able to harness more."
"The System Center is a comprehensive solution that can help support the organization."
"Everything, from patches to deployments, can be done remotely."
"Compared to the early versions, System Center 2012 is a major breakthrough."
"System Center is easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature of the System Center is the easy management of everything."
"The most valuable feature of System Center is remote deployment."
 

Cons

"I’d like to see cross-platform support that would make SCOM a single enterprise monitoring application."
"The console was not stable at the early versions of 2007 product, opening multiple consoles might cause a crash, and the web console might hang when opening multiple sessions as well."
"Third-party tools have had to be created to make SCOM management pack creation more efficient and effective. However, this weighs down the application as it just adds a resource requirement, which is ballooning the size of the necessary storage and all that for essentially substandard components."
"The solution should have more tools for monitoring the cloud engine versus on-premise."
"The suite is a monster. Without a clear strategy and fine tuning can produce a lot of noise (unnecessary noise) or miss critical aspects of your environment."
"We didn't know the solution enough, and therefore, it took a while to set everything up correctly. There was a learning curve."
"I feel that the stability of the tool has room for improvement and I would like to see that in the next version."
"Non Windows monitoring is fairly weak. Network device monitoring is not reliable."
"The way the backups can be done could be easier."
"Sometimes the updates don't work as they should."
"Future versions should integrate more with non Microsoft Operating systems, whether its virtual machines or hypervisors."
"The support experience rates at a five; you really struggle to get support, and by the time you're getting support, they have to take you through their collecting logs before they can actually give you the technical assistance."
"System Center should make its interface and console easy to understand and operate."
"The integration could improve in the future. Additionally, a single reporting feature for databases would be useful."
"SCCM is expensive for me personally."
"The security of the System Center can be enhanced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"The licensing fee is yearly."
"I rate the price System Center a six out of ten."
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Answers from the Community

it_user3483 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Unify Square
Aug 13, 2015
Aug 13, 2015
I believe the answer is "it depends". How much visibility do you need into your servers, network, applications? All of these questions need to be answered before you can justify the System Center Suite of products. A typical small business could live with a server going down or a misconfigured DNS server but if you need to put a magnifying glass up to any Microsoft product then the suite is ...
2 out of 5 answers
it_user149673 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Sep 30, 2014
1. What kinds of VM you are running? if they are Hyper-V, good match. If they are any others, I guess there are better tools in the market. 2. Yes some products included in the suite is not applicable, but they are included and you have it no matter what... like DPM, even you have the licenses, you might still go for other tools like backup exec or so.... 3. For ROI... it is the same for all management software I believe, how critical is your application? How much downtime you can afford?
it_user78465 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 30, 2014
I have no experience in that regard.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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 primary use case for SCOM?
My usual use case for SCOM is as an administrator role where I create reports and provide system configuration for Linux and installation of the SCOM agent. I handle deploying and upgrading the age...
What needs improvement with System Center?
System Center alone just being able to handle cloud endpoints has always been a challenge, even from Microsoft's end. Just looking at how best can you do it without Intune on System Center when it ...
What is your primary use case for System Center?
When it comes to device management, I am working heavily with Intune and System Center in terms of the co-management functionality. We have implemented it and it works wonders, especially when look...
What advice do you have for others considering System Center?
We are using other Microsoft solutions including the Defenders. We started off with on-prem, but with the co-management functionality with Intune, now we are able to do the hybrid, where we can mon...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
PKP Energetyka S.A., Florida Atlantic University, Bank Alfalah Ltd., Dimension Data, Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H
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921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.