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FortiMonitor vs SCOM comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

FortiMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
31st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (43rd), IT Alerting and Incident Management (18th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (10th)
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of FortiMonitor is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 1.4%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.4%
FortiMonitor0.7%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2677554 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer III at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Managing diverse networks with detailed alerts enhances device oversight
FortiManager is very helpful in managing our networks. We use it to manage 20 farms and various networks with hundreds of devices. The version we are using provides more detail than the older dashboard. We appreciate the alerting capabilities, which are integrated with SolarWinds to notify our team via SMS.
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is user monitoring, as we are able to see if the user is following the policy or not from their system, and additionally the solution integrates well with Fortinet FortiGate and has centralized management."
"It provides the best firewall features."
"Fortinet's customer support is very good."
"FortiMonitor is really easy to use for monitoring the logs on FortiGate...It is a stable product."
"With FortiMonitor, you can get all the logs of the traffic information of the destination or the source."
"Overall, I would recommend FortiMonitor to others."
"In FortiMonitor, we're linked up with our Netgear, CactusServer, and NOC. It's really valuable because everything's migrating to one dashboard for us system engineers. We can keep an eye on traffic, blocked sites, and the health of our hardware. That last part, about knowing if something's going to fail soon, is super important. It gives us time to sort things out before any big problems happen. As a system engineer, I need to keep tabs on everything – temperature, monitoring systems, and network operations. This data is really handy because it helps me ensure our site runs smoothly, whether it's turning systems on or off. Just last night, there was a system failure, but thanks to real-time monitoring, I quickly identified the problem and got the necessary replacement parts."
"FortiMonitor is 100% stable."
"I enjoy its integration with the Microsoft Active Directory functions, which means users, computers, or other group policies can connect with Windows Active Directory."
"Being able to make and customize management packs and send out notifications is very valuable."
"We have installed SCOM in our Windows Server 2020 system to monitor any issues that might happen in our infrastructure and keep them in good health, including our SQL Servers, web servers, and web interfaces."
"It discovers the components automatically, which is a fantastic thing."
"Ticket Automation has taken a considerable load from the NOC."
"The advantages of SCOM are that it is definitely user friendly and a more appropriate solution for what we need."
"It integrates with your Windows environment seamlessly and provides a lot of visibility on your Windows environment."
"The dashboard is in a class of its own, with a whole other range of competing products in management of datacenters and cloud environment."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the FortiMonitor report. It is not ideal for showcasing to tech customers or managers, especially when trying to display high CPU usage from logins within a specific range of months or the most recent month."
"I think the current features are really good for me, nothing else comes to mind right now. Maybe some small improvements could be made in the customization and configuration part of the UI to make it easier or more intuitive. Customizable UI options, like we saw in the demo, could be helpful for everyone. But in our operational environment, having clear health status and system details is crucial for us system engineers. One feature I'd really like to see is a credential management system. It would help us keep track of who's logged in and how many times, which is important due to user restrictions. Sometimes, we need to manage logins more efficiently, like logging off other users to free up credentials. So having a feature like that would be really helpful."
"There are areas for improvement that FortiManager is addressing."
"Sometimes, we get corruption when upgrading from firmware to the new generation, causing a lot of issues."
"The solution's initial setup process is time-consuming."
"Sometimes, during high CPU usage, we cannot access FortiMonitor and must refresh it."
"We use FortiToken, and it's a pain to use because you have to send things through your phone and then confirm by email. Only after this can you log in. It's dual-factor authentication. I wish that I could just log in or bring up a dashboard where I could log in from."
"Additionally, there are no AI features in FortiMonitor, which might be an area for enhancement."
"Non Windows monitoring is fairly weak. Network device monitoring is not reliable."
"Stability and some performance issues exist and they need improvement."
"The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult."
"The solution’s initial setup is difficult."
"SCOM needs to improve its usability."
"SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure."
"I would like more customized reports. People should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it. Beyond customizing the content, there should be the ability to customize the colors so that they can engage some priority and mark challenges separately."
"Monitoring non Microsoft products and 3rd party applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of FortiMonitor is approximately $200 annually for 225 users. The price is competitive."
"On a scale from one to ten, I rate the pricing a nine since it is a good solution that is available at a cheap price."
"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."
"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."
"In terms of licensing, while it may not be the most expensive option on the market, it's relatively cost-effective. You can obtain licenses at a lower cost, with the calculation being straightforward. For example, if you onboard around 5,000 devices, you'll need approximately 5,000 licenses, as each device typically counts as one license."
"FortiMonitor's price is very high."
"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."
"Compared to other solutions, FortiMonitor is a very expensive solution."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have a clear bias because I work for Panopta. We aren't a fit for everyone, but I can confirm that Panopta is a lot less work to stand up and maintain. It's also a lot easier to use and onboard n...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiMonitor?
FortiMonitor does save time but not significantly on costs, as there are still expenses related to procurement, installation, and licensing.
What needs improvement with FortiMonitor?
There are areas for improvement that FortiManager is addressing. We have not yet upgraded to the latest software versions, being a full revision behind, but we plan to update soon since the current...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
What is your primary use case for SCOM?
My usual use case for SCOM is as an administrator role where I create reports and provide system configuration for Linux and installation of the SCOM agent. I handle deploying and upgrading the age...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Panopta
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SONY, GoDaddy, HCL, ING, ARMOR, billboard
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiMonitor vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.