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Fortinet FortiManager 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

Fortinet FortiManager
Ranking in Network Management Applications
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
74
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 Fortinet FortiManager is 4.1%, down from 5.2% 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 (%)
Fortinet FortiManager4.1%
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.7%
Other92.2%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

SudeepMaydeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Head of IT Infrastructure at EPL Americas
Ensures seamless integration and centralized visibility for network security operations
The version upgrade from a single dashboard for all the firewalls in one click is the beauty of Fortinet FortiManager as the most impactful feature in managing our network security. Fortinet FortiManager's policy management enhances our security protocols by enabling us and giving integrated centralized visibility, which has proven to be very healthy. Because of this, we have identified some of the vulnerabilities in our systems, and we mitigated them through Fortinet FortiManager. The central dashboards and the visibility are what appealed to us to go with Fortinet FortiManager. Fortinet FortiManager has adapted to changes in our network scale and complexity as we have geographically 18 international locations, all equipped with firewalls and some cybersecurity initiatives and IT infrastructure initiatives.
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

"The best feature of Fortinet FortiManager is its ease of use. It is easy to manage the firewall from Fortinet FortiManager. Additionally, the interface is very good."
"The product is a combination of management and monitoring from the same interface."
"FortiManager's best feature is the integration of administrator users."
"The integration is quite good."
"The setup is very simple."
"The user interface is very easy to navigate."
"If we use the Fortinet FortiManager to replicate the configuration and want to install ten FortiGate on ten sites, you don't have to set configuration on all ten because you can configure one FortiGate and the Fortinet FortiManager will replicate the configuration on all FortiGate devices."
"The reports feature is excellent."
"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 a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"NetCool has a huge database that can collect and process about one million alarms a day."
"The solution is very fast, there's no lag or delay between the IBM solution and the other solutions like Huawei and Nokia."
"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."
 

Cons

"The graphics interface between Fortinet FortiManager and any Forti products should be standardized."
"The GUI is not ideal. It needs to be improved. It should be more user-friendly."
"You cannot integrate with other solutions, so they should allow integration with Cisco and Juniper."
"FortiManager could improve by making it easier to port larger policy packages to the FortiGate firewalls. Sometimes, there's an issue when we install a big package of policies. If you have a couple thousand policies for FortiGate firewalls, it can take a few minutes to receive a response from the remote devices. It's only an issue when you're dealing with thousands of policies and installing them on a large number of devices."
"Within the management of some features on FortiManager, specifically the management of user objects used for VPN service, FortiManager is quite weak."
"FortiManager needs to handle different firewall versions more efficiently."
"Can be difficult to configure."
"In future updates, I would like to see more customization and AI integration."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"This is another one of those suites glued together from a myriad of acquisitions and it shows once you get under the hood."
"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."
"The product is pretty costly. It's definitely not the least expensive option."
"The solution does not have any AI capabilities."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the licensing fee, we paid around 10,000 to 15,000 euros."
"Our organization pays a monthly license fee for the solution."
"FortiManager is reasonably priced - I pay around US$40,0000 per year, which covers fifty locations."
"Fortinet is a high-end product and the cost is high. They should consider reducing the price, especially for existing customers."
"I hope that the prices will become more competitive in subsequent releases, as the current pricing is perceived as somewhat elevated."
"For us, it is a little bit expensive."
"In comparison with other products, the price of FortiManager is reasonable."
"Fortinet FortiManager is costly."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiManager?
I am satisfied with the licensing cost, and I would rate it an 8.5.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiManager?
I think Fortinet FortiManager can be improved as the web page loading is slightly slow.
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiManager?
My main use case for Fortinet FortiManager is to manage multiple FortiGate devices. I can confirm that I use Fortinet FortiManager perfectly in my main use case.
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

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiManager vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.