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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 March 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is 3.8%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.1%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.1%
IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact3.8%
Other87.1%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Hennie Du Toit - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Specialist Architecture and Governance at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
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.
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 operational views and third party connections to fetch the data and to help engage on more activities are the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"The stability has been very good for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact, rated around eight or nine."
"It is easy to integrate with other models such as Oracle, other systems, external systems, and to reach events."
"I can recommend Netcool/Impact because it's the perfect solution when it comes to invoking ISPF APA and using ISPF integration throughout the rest of your other products."
"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."
"This product allows us to make use of open-source products, including running Java code."
"The solution is great at being able to fetch almost any kind of file."
"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well, reports everything you can think of on the Windows server, and allows you to monitor anything, making it excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"In every case so far we managed to move from a slow reactive type of non-monitoring toward a proactive monitoring for different layers within the organization and real insights into their IT environment from different angles."
"The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location."
"If SCOM is implemented correctly, it can take away the need for administrators to constantly monitor things or perform health checks."
"SCOM is a required tool in my job since I am responsible in overseeing multiple virtual and physical servers and services for a bank."
"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."
"We have found the scalability capabilities to be okay."
"SCOM provides alerting capabilities and threshold settings, which are helpful for monitoring."
 

Cons

"The solution is somewhat complicated. It's not exactly straightforward."
"The solution is somewhat complicated. It's not exactly straightforward."
"IBM is not investing in the development of the on-premise version of this solution."
"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."
"For improvement, I'd say the dashboard and the overall GUI could use some work."
"Stability-wise, this product needs to be improved."
"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."
"The interface is a little bit cumbersome and certain actions could be simplified."
"I would like to see more standard libraries for the market solutions, out of the box, that you don't need to do a lot of work on."
"I would like to see better support for monitoring Unix-based systems."
"At this point, only monitoring a network device is not good enough."
"SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product."
"I would like to better be able to monitor Oracle processes."
"Price is always an issue with Microsoft and could be improved."
"I would like to see them improve their network monitoring."
 

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."
"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."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"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
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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

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?
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...
 

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: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.