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IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact 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 NetCool Impact
Ranking in Event Monitoring
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
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
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is 3.4%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 8.9%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Hennie Du Toit - PeerSpot reviewer
Event management strengthens with automation but needs better event flooding handling
Better handling of event flooding in IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact would be beneficial. If there are massive issues with power, for example, and we get millions of events, then it struggles to deal with that. Better root cause correlation and faster processing for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact would be helpful. If there can be more end-to-end functionality, such as observability tools built in natively, that would be great. With correlation, IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact has many functions, but we've built them custom-built. Functions such as automated logging, automated dispatching, and automated notification of engineers could be native in the tool.
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 stability has been very good for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact, rated around eight or nine."
"The most valuable feature that comes with Netcool/Impact is the ISPF APA support. It is inherent to Netcool/Impact, so I can use the ISPF of any other product, which I can invoke and consume through Impact, and do integrations, which is great. I run the Netcool desktop application so I can integrate with other applications in the ticketing system. It's a great ability being able to invoke ISPF and integrate."
"The solution is great at being able to fetch almost any kind of file."
"This product allows us to make use of open-source products, including running Java code."
"It is easy to integrate with other models such as Oracle, other systems, external systems, and to reach events."
"SCOM provides alerting capabilities and threshold settings, which are helpful for monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool."
"Being able to make and customize management packs and send out notifications is very valuable."
"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"The solution is scalable. If you want to monitor more you have to buy more licenses, but you can add on. We don't plan to increase usage."
"The ease of deployment, especially on Windows platforms, is valuable."
"Alerts notify the server or service owner of problems, allowing quick decisions or actions to keep the service running based on configured thresholds."
 

Cons

"IBM is not investing in the development of the on-premise version of this solution."
"For improvement, I'd say the dashboard and the overall GUI could use some work. Although, I don't think that there's much improvement that Netcool really needs to achieve in this area, because when we're talking GUI, Impact is able to integrate with any third-party system and it comes with ISPF APA. It's more beneficial than Netcool/OMNIbus in this respect, and it's quite easy to handle."
"Better handling of event flooding in IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact would be beneficial. If there are massive issues with power, for example, and we get millions of events, then it struggles to deal with that."
"Stability-wise, this product needs to be improved."
"The solution is somewhat complicated. It's not exactly straightforward."
"They could provide better dashboards, detailed logs, and reports crucial for monitoring services in real-time."
"The interface is a little bit cumbersome and certain actions could be simplified."
"All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved."
"Regarding certain issues in the solution, it can be difficult to generate reports if we have a program that is not user-friendly for reporting. While this is not necessarily negative, we may need to use another solution."
"In terms of features that could be improved, I would say the agent integration into the operating system. We are having difficulties integrating Linux into some of the networking devices."
"The end-user components, including the dashboards, the administration console, and the web console, need to be improved."
"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."
"Of course, price is always an issue with Microsoft and could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact depends on the number of nodes on the element that you are monitoring."
"The licensing is yearly, and although I'm happy with the pricing I do think it could be better."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Retailer
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
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

What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact?
Better handling of event flooding in IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact would be beneficial. If there are massive issues with power, for example, and we get millions of events, then it struggles to deal wit...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact?
IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is our event management tool, specifically the umbrella fault management tool set. All of our events across the network correlate the data for us, and we have certain use ...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact?
We remain a partner with IBM Tivoli and continue using their products. We use IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact's AIOps functionality. We experienced some skills issues, but currently receive assistance fr...
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

 

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool Impact
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.