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Aruba Airwave vs IBM Tivoli NetCool comparison

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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

Aruba Airwave
Ranking in Network Management Applications
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Tivoli NetCool
Ranking in Network Management Applications
15th
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 September 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of Aruba Airwave is 3.1%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.7%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Aruba Airwave3.1%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.7%
Other93.2%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Edward Zeng - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at Auckland University of Technology
Troubleshooting obstacles occur but technical support excels
My general opinion on Aruba Airwave is that it's acceptable, but it's not ideal because we are accustomed to Cisco. We didn't use Aruba much, but once you set it up, you probably don't need to worry about it too much. The version we are using is quite old now, probably around version four. I can't remember the version exactly because a lot of the products require Aruba Central, but we haven't used Aruba Central yet. I face challenges with Aruba Airwave, particularly with troubleshooting. When someone has a problem, we try troubleshooting, but the end-to-end users' messages show some details that are not always up-to-date, and sometimes the information from the GUI is not exactly aligned with what's on the website. If Aruba Airwave can apply AI capabilities, that would be even more perfect. I'd appreciate integration with Aruba Central; it would be great if they could incorporate it into Airwave.
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

"We are a solution provider and Aruba Airwave is one of the products that we implement for our customers, and most of our customers use this product to manage and monitor their networks."
"The solution's most valuable features are its usage, bandwidth existence, device capacity, and utilization."
"The monitoring and administration allow configurations for checking the association of the user to the network, then to the AP, then to the switch, and back to the controller."
"The solution is not overly expensive."
"The Clarity feature makes it easy to use and understand what is going on with your network in a nice dashboard.​"
"It can interact with other vendors better than Cisco, which is a good point of AirWave. It is easy to use, and its reporting is good."
"All the technical support goes through our contractor. It is a local support, and it is perfect."
"The cost is perfect because the devices have a lifetime warranty, and the licensing is good as well."
"The Netcool solution is great, and it's very easy to use."
"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."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"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."
"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 solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
"It's very easy to use."
 

Cons

"Support is good, but it is not as good as Cisco. Cisco's support is faster."
"Sometimes there are some glitches; some access points will behave a little differently, but it is manageable."
"They should make it cheaper. By doing that, they can replace Cisco, which is also very expensive. If it is equivalent to Cisco in the features, with a reduced price, they can sell it more than Cisco."
"My general opinion on Aruba Airwave is that it's acceptable, but it's not ideal because we are accustomed to Cisco."
"We sometimes have problems with troubleshooting between the GUI and the CLI manipulation."
"The biggest problem for not using Aruba Airwave extensively now is that HP is not upgrading this tool. They're not investing money and time into it, which is why we're not using it."
"We're looking for more device compatibility. Like compatibility with third-party devices."
"Cost is always a big issue for partners."
"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 solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"I think the UI should be updated and made more presentable and eye-catching. Compared to NCE in Huawei, NSN in Nokia, the UiPath and Ubiquiti, it feels very old legacy."
"This is another one of those suites glued together from a myriad of acquisitions and it shows once you get under the hood."
"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."
"Customization and integration that you need to do to make the product fit your needs is very complex. It is not a product that somebody could easily pick up without any prior training or experience."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Run a 90 day free Proof of Concept (PoC) for each product by implementing and using it fully in your environment. This way you will be educated on its features, functionality, and manageability."
"This product is not expensive."
"It's device-based licensing. One device requires one license."
"Aruba Airwave's licensing cost is not that expensive."
"The cost is perfect because the devices have a lifetime warranty, and the licensing is good as well."
"I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten."
"The licensing is on an yearly basis."
"We must buy a new license to connect more devices to scale up the solution."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from 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."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aruba Airwave?
They have other sensors which can manage and control all the sites. There is an IoT component where we can restrict internet services such as Facebook and YouTube. These things can also be managed....
What is your primary use case for Aruba Airwave?
For Aruba Airwave, I am using the wireless devices for the Wi-Fi for the full company with access points. This is the top product I feel, and I see in the Gartner also. It is a good product and eas...
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

No data available
Tivoli NetCool
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Henkel, University of Findlay, University of Minnesota Duluth, University of Iowa
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Aruba Airwave vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.