IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact Reviews

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is our event management tool, specifically the umbrella fault management tool set. All of our events across the network correlate the data for us, and we have certain use cases and rule sets, which are based on either a rule book that we use or some AI use cases.

In terms of automation capabilities introduced in the latest version, moving from Operations Insights to AIOps, IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact has had some improvements. A lot of the other use cases had to be developed in policies where they are now native in the product.

It helps with AI-driven network management using IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact. As mentioned previously, we built some functions out of the tool because it wasn't available. We're trying to migrate those functions into the AI functions now. It is a journey to get there because people must first trust the rules it's doing and reinforce the rules. The learning language portion is taking a bit long, but it does help.

In general, we will probably look at the options in the near future. For now, IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is the heart of our operation. The value for us is getting everything in a single place and being able to manage a large volume of data and correlate it and do some intelligence in reducing and finding issues.

We generally use Impact for ticketing with other ticketing applications like Remedy. We also use it for enrichment of other applications that collect information from different sources, such as on the internet. But primarily, we use Impact for ticketing purposes.

It's a customer-centric product, so in my current company there aren't that many people who use it as an end-user application. In fact, it's mostly only used by the Netcool team, rather than any end-users at all. Only the Netcool/OMNIbus event console and event dashboard will be used by the end-user. In the Netcool team that uses Impact, there are probably 20-30 people, and they assist with the console.

The most valuable feature that comes with Netcool/Impact is the ISPF APA support. It is inherent to Netcool/Impact, so I can use the ISPF of any other product, which I can invoke and consume through Impact, and do integrations, which is great. I run the Netcool desktop application so I can integrate with other applications in the ticketing system. It's a great ability being able to invoke ISPF and integrate.

Mainly we're using Impact for event engagement. We're also trying to connect from the third party database like IDSM, and fetching the data. It's for event engagements. and for looking at results within the Impact as to the EF flow of data management.

The operational views and third party connections to fetch the data and to help engage on more activities are the most valuable aspects of the solution. 

We're trying to engage with some automation as well. We're mainly working on the dev automation, and many of the fields we need to engage and resolve are on the DB. We're trying to fetch all the third party DB's like IDSM, and I think we're using data from ServiceNow. To resolve the DB for the automation has been great.

The solution is great at being able to fetch almost any kind of file.

The solution can connect to any database.

We're able to write our own custom functions.

We're able to connect third-party tools to the solution.

The primary use case of NetCool Impact is event correlation. 

For example, we are able to manage all the events inside Omnibus. If we want to create an integration with a ticket, we cannot use Omnibus by itself. We need to work with Impact as well. If we are experiencing alarms on our database with Omnibus, and we have to reach the data from Excel, we need to use Impact. 

IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is a powerful tool. It is very important for the correlation model. It is easy to integrate with other models such as Oracle, other systems, and external systems, and to reach events. 

The most valuable feature is that you can run complex tasks. 

This product allows us to make use of open-source products, including running Java code.

Stability-wise, this product needs to be improved.

Integration with new-wave technologies is not easy.