In terms of the architecture, I'd like it to be highly scalable. 

It would be nice if there was automated incident management to reduce manual interventions. I'd also like to see real-time event management capabilities. I'd like to coordinate the events from various sources in real-time. It needs rapid detection and resolution. 

They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure. That would make it easier to monitor and manage complex environments. 

If there was a way to do root cause analysis or advanced core initial analytic capabilities, that would be ideal.

The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2. High availability is also challenging, and the dashboard is not user-friendly or appealing, requiring additional tools for reporting. Service maintenance is difficult, and migration is a tough process.

The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions based on:

- The HW vendor

- The alert type

- The installed applications

- The server OS/VM type and version

- The interfaces between the various infrastructure elements

- The network topology

- The predefined event/alert correlation system rules

They need to enhance the system's capabilities to detect network security breaches based on the aforementioned knowledge base and AI services and the relevant network security architecture.

Based on my experience and my colleagues' feedback, IBM can improve IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus in automation with respect to using AI, as it lacks considerably compared to other tools. The integration with AI-based tools is quite challenging.

The event correlation engine in IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is useful, though not as much as desired.

It works for normal, simple parent-child correlation, but not for more complex situations.

IBM is working on converting NetCool to NetCool Operations Insight, which runs on Watson AI. There were areas needing improvement in terms of AI, however, they have migrated the entire NetCool suite to Watson AI. 

Despite these improvements, other areas that could be better include the fact that the solution is only on-premises, lacks AI capabilities, and support response times could be quicker.

Honestly, the solution has a very complicated licensing model. Firstly, there should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing. There’s also no dashboard where you can see how many licenses you have consumed or what is free, which makes it quite challenging to know where you are at a certain space in time. So, you always have to do an audit to find your usage, which is a complicated exercise.

The other thing is that we buy a lot of their products, but it takes a while for them to reintroduce the Blue Eyes functionality as part of the product suite. It requires separate licensing. So, if you want to use that functionality, you must buy a different product rather than being part of an existing product suite.

I would like for the next release to be more user-friendly and out of date. The next release should focus on the cloud, AI, and ML technologies.

Its integration could be better. They should provide an easier integration for all the monitoring stuff, and it will make things easier for us. Currently, there is a complexity in integrating it with a vendor application, and we have to use another tool to integrate it with a vendor application. To integrate some applications with NetCool, I need to install an IBM tool on top of it. It would be good if they can provide an API or any kind of interface that we can leverage while developing a new protocol interface or application. We should be able to use an API or interface with NetCool. 

Its GUI can also be better. As compared to other tools, it is not user friendly, and it is not easy to do stuff through GUI. Whenever we do anything on the GUI, it takes time. They need to focus on the GUI part, especially the dashboard. They should focus on how users can effectively drill down from one box to another. The visual appeal of the dashboard is as important as the data and functionality.

The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated. The need to work on improving the dashboard layout.

The whole layout is an old style and needs updating. The functionality is great but it needs to look more modern, perhaps by moving to HTML 5 dashboards.

The price could be made more competitive.

The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models.

Improve support quality as it is not good.

A lot can be improved in this product considering the performance. Maybe, in a future release, an automated email and an SMS option could be introduced directly from the tool, instead of using any third-party tool/script for it.

From my experience with this tool, I can't find any bugs in it as of now.

Root cause and event correlation. End to End visualization of the Network

There are too many complicated layers in the solution. They should improve this particular area.