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SCOM vs System Center 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
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (5th), Network Monitoring Software (25th)
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 9.6%, up 9.0% compared to last year.
System Center, on the other hand, focuses on Software Asset Management, holds 18.9% mindshare, down 35.0% since last year.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.6%
OpenText AI Operations Management8.2%
BMC TrueSight8.2%
Other74.0%
Event Monitoring
Software Asset Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
System Center18.9%
iQuate iQSonar16.1%
ManageEngine AssetExplorer12.5%
Other52.5%
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

"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool."
"Asset monitoring and auto alerts are the most valuable features of this product to me."
"It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not."
"The advantages of SCOM are that it is definitely user friendly and a more appropriate solution for what we need."
"Setting up SCOM is straightforward and takes about an hour as long as you have all your firewalls and DNS settings in place."
"SCOM has improved our organization by simplifying the monitoring process. The system tells you what the bi-weekly or monthly usage was and that enables us to report this information to the manager. It shows if there was a connectivity issue that needs to be fixed and it's easier to concentrate on what needs to get fixed. System errors, therefore, get fixed faster."
"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 most valuable feature of System Center is remote deployment."
"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 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."
"System Center is easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature of the System Center is the easy management of everything."
 

Cons

"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."
"Areas for improvement in my opinion are the resource footprint of the SCOM infrastructure side, the web console (drop Silverlight please!) and a few of the management packs."
"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."
"Unfortunately, when you need to monitor member servers which are not joined to the same domain as the SCOM servers, you need to go through the certificate route (so that you can have the required trust through the certificate). This is very time consuming and very prone to error."
"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."
"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."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"The integration could improve in the future. Additionally, a single reporting feature for databases would be useful."
"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."
"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 way the backups can be done could be easier."
"System Center should make its interface and console easy to understand and operate."
"The security of the System Center can be enhanced."
"SCCM is expensive for me personally."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"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."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"I rate the price System Center a six out of ten."
"The licensing fee is yearly."
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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
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

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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