Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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 January 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact is 3.5%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.1%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SCOM9.1%
IBM Tivoli NetCool Impact3.5%
Other87.4%
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

"This product allows us to make use of open-source products, including running Java code."
"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 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."
"It is easy to integrate with other models such as Oracle, other systems, external systems, and to reach events."
"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."
"Being able to make and customize management packs and send out notifications is very valuable."
"It is a user-friendly product that requires almost no maintenance."
"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS."
"We have found the scalability capabilities to be okay."
"The most valuable features in SCOM are Azure monitoring and integration with Azure Monitor for monitoring Azure-hosted servers from SCOM on-premises."
"The advantages of SCOM are that it is definitely user friendly and a more appropriate solution for what we need."
 

Cons

"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."
"Stability-wise, this product needs to be improved."
"IBM is not investing in the development of the on-premise version of this solution."
"The solution is somewhat complicated. It's not exactly straightforward."
"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 should be more user-friendly and offer a better user interface."
"It would be a much better product if Microsoft provided management packs with the product."
"The management of the servers could be better."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"The interface is a little bit cumbersome and certain actions could be simplified."
"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."
"The configurations could be better. There are multiple tests where you can do something, but they can be a trigger as well. The overriding methodologies are not that easy. The configurations are difficult. The configuration and thorough day-to-day operations to get them to the level you want takes some time. It's very difficult."
"SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure."
 

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."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Event Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.