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Alcatel-Lucent ClearPass vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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

Alcatel-Lucent ClearPass
Ranking in Network Management Applications
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Alcatel-Lucent ClearPass is 1.7%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.8%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.8%
Alcatel-Lucent ClearPass1.7%
Other94.5%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Karthikeyan Ravi - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President of Technology at Netcon Technologies India Private Limited
Has an automated feature for user onboarding and supports heterogeneous devices
We use the product for the automated onboarding of corporate users with secure network access. It helps secure IoT endpoints for specific networks. It allows us to control the devices, including posture, endpoint verification, validation, latest patching, and signatures The product’s most…
Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I think the best features are the user profiling and the BYOD facilities."
"It helps secure IoT endpoints for specific networks."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"Full featured - event/fault management, performance management, topology map, discovery, RCA, event enrichment, Proviso will chart data from almost any source with a variety of aggregation options."
"The Netcool solution is great, and it's very easy to use."
"The solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution. NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility. There are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite. Whenever an issue happens, rather than going to technical support, if you find the exact issue in Google, you can get tech notes for that particular issue."
"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
"Tivoli NetCool allows us to grasp a lot of data that can be applied toward predictive analytics and auto-remediation."
"Anything is possible with Tivoli. It's quite a robust system."
 

Cons

"I think the solution would be greatly improved by adding application level visibility on the dashboard."
"There could be in-built end-to-end map integration features for IoT devices instead of using third-party tools."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
"IBM's technical support takes a long time to do root cause analysis, and we have to go through several levels of help before getting a solution."
"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see more AIOps, Artificial Intelligent Operations in the next release. IBM develops new features for Power BI or Cognos Analytics, which is good. As of now, we use Cognos Analytics, we are not using Power BI. They have the Insight concept but we don't like that."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
"The solution is too expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Alcatel-Lucent ClearPass is an expensive product compared to other vendors."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
 

Also Known As

Alcatel Lucent ClearPass, ClearPass Policy Management System, ClearPass
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blickle and Scherer, Loughborough University, CSF Inox, Caritas Speyer
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Alcatel-Lucent ClearPass vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.