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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
12th
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
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager is 4.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.9%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.9%
IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager4.9%
Other85.2%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer847356 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good technical support, and efficient for working with business data
We use this solution for working with data. The most valuable feature of this solution is the efficiency. This application should be made easier to use because it usually needs training and it is not easy to operate. We have been using this solution for fourteen years. The stability of this…
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 this solution is the efficiency."
"TBSM is a rock, and our house would have crumbled without it."
"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."
"Alerts notify the server or service owner of problems, allowing quick decisions or actions to keep the service running based on configured thresholds."
"The license is very cheap compared to other products, and with SCOM license you get a license for all system center products."
"The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped."
"We were supporting a bank infrastructure using SCOM, and their application availability improved a lot as we had the real time monitoring of the applications due to which application issues were fixed before the end user comes up and complains."
"Asset monitoring and auto alerts are the most valuable features of this product to me."
"Ticket Automation has taken a considerable load from the NOC."
"It is a user-friendly product that requires almost no maintenance."
 

Cons

"This application should be made easier to use because it usually needs training and it is not easy to operate."
"Yes, Event Storms and other less traumatic triggers the JVM to hang requiring recycles."
"Areas for improvement in my opinion are the resource footprint of the SCOM infrastructure side, the web console (drop Silverlight please!) and a few of the management packs."
"SCOM server needs periodic maintenance to make sure the disk/database has enough space and a lot of alerts across a big environment might come fairly quickly."
"The end-user components, including the dashboards, the administration console, and the web console, need to be improved."
"I feel that the stability of the tool has room for improvement and I would like to see that in the next version."
"Super high cost for the 2012 version due to change to a CPU based."
"The dashboard is still not so great and, most of the time, a third-party tool is required for presentation."
"Very expensive now that you are forced to buy entire System Center suite, although comparable to other monitoring solutions that include basic APM."
"Even though I think there are ways that this product is superior to most other solutions on the market, there are quite a few things that it does not do alone."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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...
 

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: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.