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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
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is 3.3%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.5%, up from 8.3% 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

"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."
"The stability has been very good for IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact, rated around eight or nine."
"The solution is great at being able to fetch almost any kind of file."
"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."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"The product has helped our organization with in-depth monitoring."
"It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not."
"The stability has been great."
"I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time."
"The solution's reporting engine has given me detailed information on which applications or services I've either failed or about to fail in terms of the predictive makeup on Azure cloud."
"The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of Windows and Linux servers."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution is somewhat complicated. It's not exactly straightforward."
"Stability-wise, this product needs to be improved."
"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."
"They could provide better dashboards, detailed logs, and reports crucial for monitoring services in real-time."
"The solution should be more user-friendly and offer a better user interface."
"Non Windows monitoring is fairly weak. Network device monitoring is not reliable."
"It would be a much better product if Microsoft provided management packs with the product."
"Third-party tools have had to be created to make SCOM management pack creation more efficient and effective. However, this weighs down the application as it just adds a resource requirement, which is ballooning the size of the necessary storage and all that for essentially substandard components."
"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."
"They can focus more on cloud monitoring instead of on-premise monitoring. We should be able to monitor cloud-related applications. They can include this feature in the next release. If it is in the cloud, we can have scalability by using Kubernetes. The container is containerized, packaged, and managed using Kubernetes. This feature is not there in SCOM. Going forward, if they can focus on that, it will be great."
"SCOM is not as straightforward in terms of user interface or general experience, which could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is yearly, and although I'm happy with the pricing I do think it could be better."
"Licensing of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact depends on the number of nodes on the element that you are monitoring."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Retailer
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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?
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...
 

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: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.