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BMC TrueSight Operations Management vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

BMC TrueSight Operations Ma...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
26th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
20th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (22nd), Event Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (8th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of BMC TrueSight Operations Management is 0.8%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.9%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Srri G - PeerSpot reviewer
The product is reasonably priced, but the solution is a little obsolete because it is deployed on-premise
If I want custom monitoring across a very large estate of more than 50,000 units, the on-premise deployment gets quite slow. The on-premise product’s performance must be improved. The solution is a little obsolete. That is why the solution moved to Helix, a SaaS operating system. The SaaS platform has the features I like. There is no point in BMC expanding TrueSight Operations’ console. It's high time that BMC starts a demise path for the product and is associated only with Helix. If we need any additional function, we must switch to Helix. Since TrueSight is deployed on-premise, the scalability and usage of the product are mainly focused on providing basic features and not enhanced features like analytics or cost analysis. People should move to a SaaS platform because on-premise products have limited storage and capacity.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable features of BMC TrueSight Operations Management are the blackouts and event management."
"The tool is flexible enough to be customized based on customer requirements."
"From an administrative standpoint, what stands out in TrueSight is the ability to implement quickly. When they have a requirement to monitor something, we're able to turn that on quickly in their environment. We're able to set up new apps within a day."
"I use the solution to monitor servers, databases, Windows, Linux, and web services."
"The tailoring of the knowledge modules has been particularly useful as I can streamline the agents to only report on critical events."
"It has provided us with a single location to host all events to be viewed/monitored by our NOC. This has greatly helped them to streamline their processes."
"It is breadth. It covers so many different technologies which can roll up into a single console."
"The stability is fantastic."
"There are a lot of valuable features with SolarWinds NPM. We can receive a lot of detailed data from the monitoring that can use useful for investigations, especially when you are troubleshooting. It is very helpful. Overall it was a very good experience."
"The product is lightweight in terms of memory use, requiring only 10 megabytes or less."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"Network performance is the main issue clients are facing. SolarWinds checks if a node is down, and we can set thresholds for performance metrics. For example, we set it up to get an alert automatically if a value is over 80 percent. It has a full dashboard that covers CP, hard disk, and node monitoring."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of SolarWinds NPM."
 

Cons

"It would be better if the initial setup and deployment were more straightforward."
"Application performance management (APM) is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement. I"
"I would really like to see out-of-the-box support for monitoring uninterruptible power supplies."
"The sizing (which is difficult), the maintenance of it and the upgrade paths. This is a difficult area which is not easy to cover, as every client has a different approach of implementing the product."
"BMC's solutions for cloud monitoring (monitoring of AWS and Azure resources) are very poor in stability and customization."
"Cost is an issue with BMC TrueSight Operations Management."
"The solution could improve its price."
"There are some small limitations with this tool in terms of reporting dashboards that fit all of the requirements of the individual customer."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
"If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful."
"There isn't support available to us as they don't offer support in our country."
"Time: A worldwide deployment can be confusing for dispersed users with non-local times. Each node should have a local time (with summer offset if appropriate) & each user should view & report in their local time."
"Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable."
"We also had to be attentive to vulnerabilities, because SolarWinds NPM have some issues in that area. We had to work with our security team, so that they could help us check and backup the data, and check what they needed to secure."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data. SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature. I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is based on endpoints and knowledge models which can be costly."
"The solutions are not the cheapest but are robust and stable. License model is rather complex and BMC do often change the model."
"Pricing is all volume-driven. I think we were paying between $80 and $85 per license. That's per unit, for a perpetual license. You pay it one time and then, every year, you pay 20 percent of that for annual maintenance and support. But now that we've grown, we've purchased tens of thousands of licenses and the cost per license has gone down to something like less than $30..."
"The tool is moderately expensive."
"It is a relatively inexpensive solution."
"Other products are more expensive than BMC TrueSight."
"We did a five-year, multimillion dollar deal."
"Annual licensing amount depends on the customers requirements. Support is an additional fee and there are options for three and five year support."
"It is expensive."
"We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"We pay approximately $4,000 annually for SolarWinds NPM. There are no additional fees required other than the standard fees."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
The solution provides visibility to our infrastructure, how it is, the resources we are monitoring, and quick updates when it has any problems. We have integrated it with ServiceNow to open instances.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
Though I have no clue about the tool's actual price, I know that it is astronomical.
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
Cost is an issue with BMC TrueSight Operations Management. Though I am not responsible for the budget, I know that it is an expensive tool set when used only for event management. The tool's issue ...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

ProactiveNet, TrueSight Operations Management
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ensono, Transamerica, Boston Scientific, Park Place Technologies, inContact, TD Ameritrade, PNC Bank
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight Operations Management vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.