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DX Spectrum vs IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus comparison

Why PeerSpot?

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

DX Spectrum
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (8th), Network Monitoring Software (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

DX Spectrum and IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. DX Spectrum is designed for DX NetOps and holds a mindshare of 24.6%, down 35.0% compared to last year.
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus, on the other hand, focuses on Event Monitoring, holds 7.4% mindshare, down 9.2% since last year.
DX NetOps Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
DX Spectrum24.6%
AppNeta by Broadcom30.9%
DX Performance Management24.8%
Other19.700000000000003%
DX NetOps
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus7.4%
SCOM9.3%
OpenText AI Operations Management8.3%
Other75.0%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

PinchasAlbalya - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Monitoring has become centralized and management now sees real‑time health of key network assets
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we took an external vendor to install and make the customization. If we want to make others changes without paying for customization, we need to learn it deeply by ourselves. The tutorials are very complicated. They could work on that area. The tutorial part could be more simplified. I know there are many explanations, and you can get help or documents in one click on the current page in the product, but it is not very clear. If you want to do something new that you did not see from the vendor in the installation, it is not very simple. The documents are good for people that know how to operate the product well, but for new users, it is not simple.
Ahmed Salman - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance & Monitoring Supervisor at Saudi Telecom Company
Aids in network performance monitoring and management
I am working as a customer, mainly using IntelliQ and another product, IBM NetCool, Watson AI. These products are used for monitoring network performance and management.  The primary use case involves network performance monitoring, and it is compatible only with IBM DB2 IBM Tivoli NetCool…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We were able to clearly identify the root cause of incidents visually and with specimen alerts with the topology design."
"The fact that I don't have to sit and watch things; they get monitored, and then I hear about them and take care of them as needed."
"It allows us to manage alerts, schedule downtime and maintenance, as well as triage documentation for our support teams."
"An organization using DX Spectrum is more easily able to understand the root cause when something happens in its environment."
"This tool makes it more transparent to the customers, and they can be alerted and be proactive based on the data we are getting."
"The quick notification of issues, quick alerting because timeliness is always valuable, it's very important for us."
"It has improved the way our organization has functioned over the last 10 years."
"The most valuable feature is automatic discovery."
"Difficult to implement ( more resource and timing) but flexibility in implementation."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"It is customer-centric; customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event, with no need to go and connect to any other server and run events to have a view of all the events happening in the environment."
"Probes are the best feature because they are well written which rarely requires you to write additional rules. These probes monitor activity within your environment."
"Overall, this is a great tool and one that I recommend but it depends on the cost."
"This solution is highly scalable; we have hundreds of probes running on more than thousands of devices, gathering millions of alarms and creating thousands of tickets, and yet we have never seen any performance issue."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"It is customer-centric. Customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event. There is no need to go and connect to any other server and run events to have a view of all the events happening in the environment. We get a good response from customers about this feature and the main architecture of NetCool. Its processing is very good. Deduplication and correlation functionalities are good in this solution as compared to other solutions. A big advantage of NetCool is that it also supports multi-layered protocols. We can receive multiple events from different protocols like UDP, HTTP, and those events can be captured in NetCool."
 

Cons

"It was somewhat complex, but that's also a little difficult to evaluate because we had a consultant that was the primary resource for the setup, and he had some challenges."
"NCM needs to be more user-friendly and refined."
"I would say integration between performance monitoring and CA Spectrum, as well as improved graphing capabilities."
"Customer Service: It's poor. Technical Support: It's poor."
"Make it easier to certify devices."
"The EventDisp logic (code) is too complex."
"No good technical support from CA."
"We're trying to replace this solution with another product because it's too expensive and not very user-friendly; it requires training and takes some time to learn how to use it."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"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."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"Yes often problems appear after resolving a previous one."
"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"A lot can be improved in this product considering the performance."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The cost of some of these products are a little cost prohibitive, which is unfortunate. We have to find lower cost solutions for some of the things that we have to pull in. For the most part, CA has capabilities in pretty much everything that you would need. You just have to figure out where are you going to spend the most money for what you have to actually get done. You can do all these things but, which ones do you have to do? And that's hard to choose sometimes because you want to do them all."
"Spectrum is expensive."
"The price is good enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"Currently, a perpetual license but some services are moving to a subscription"
"DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"It is a costly solution."
"Its license cost is a little bit more than other solutions. Our customers expect a standard market price that is comparative to other products. For each and every NetCool OMNIbus component, we have to purchase a separate license. These components are not free with the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise90
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
The time investment required is significant, not because of difficulty but because of the need for free time to invest in it. We need to get the knowledge. We know there are many options, but we to...
What is your primary use case for DX Spectrum?
The university purchased DX Spectrum, called ICE. DX Spectrum NAC is working for us only on Cisco 9200 switches. It is not working on any other switch like C1000 or HG or any 2960X. Even other Cisc...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
I would rate the pricing for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus as three, where one is a high price and ten is a low price.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
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 integrat...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
My current use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is for monitoring the networks.
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini