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IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 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

IBM Tivoli Business Service...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 8.0%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

RH
The most valuable feature for my team is the ability to taken event feeds from all/any source tool and put them in a single pane of glass. It's being replaced for our work by another Tivoli tool.
TBSM is being replaced for our work by another Tivoli tool - DASH. This replacement will address the biggest area of improvement. We need the most commonly leveraged real-time metric trends from the source tools in the same pane of glass as the event stream is presenting, and DASH gives a way to do that with logical grouping by type & app.
MarcMermuys - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient monitoring with robust integration capabilities
We use SCOM to configure different monitors using several management packs. It integrates systems like Active Directory and correlates them, and it is used for monitoring and managing systems SCOM allows integration of several systems, providing correlation between different systems such as…

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 this solution is the efficiency."
"This solution helps our application teams by allowing them to drill further into issues and perform a root cause analysis."
"I like the historical reporting of observer metrics."
"The most valuable features for us are the monitoring, the health explorer, and the console."
"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"It discovers the components automatically, which is a fantastic thing. The discovery works in an automatic way, and it has a dynamic way of discovering the components, assets, and applications. It doesn't require any manual intervention."
"Alerts notify the server or service owner of problems, allowing quick decisions or actions to keep the service running based on configured thresholds."
"It is very good at monitoring Microsoft Server."
"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."
 

Cons

"This application should be made easier to use because it usually needs training and it is not easy to operate."
"The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult."
"There are some negative points about this product. Sometimes, the capabilities of the software don't appear, and you can't directly see the results. You have to wait for a long period to refresh the policy to push it to the software or other patches."
"The interface is a little bit cumbersome and certain actions could be simplified."
"The price could be improved."
"We didn't know the solution enough, and therefore, it took a while to set everything up correctly. There was a learning curve."
"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."
"I would like to see better support for monitoring Unix-based systems."
"The solution’s initial setup is difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
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?
SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga ( /products/icinga-reviews ) for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure ( /...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Business Service Manager, BSM
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SSGC
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,589 professionals have used our research since 2012.