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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus 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 OMNIbus
Ranking in Event Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
15
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 OMNIbus is 6.5%, down from 8.9% 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 (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus6.5%
SCOM9.1%
Other84.4%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

RS
EMEA Senior Sales Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Customization and robust network monitoring enhance operational efficiency
The most useful functions for monitoring purposes with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus are that it can be automated in many ways. Most importantly, it can communicate with many network components without requiring any medium connectors. You can directly integrate it if you have SNMP, which is great. The main benefits that IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus provides are that it's an umbrella tool that can be placed on top of any existing monitoring system. You can monitor the entire network from this tool. The underlying interfaces can be many, but you can keep it as a single tool in IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus and it can manage the load on its own. It negates the need to train the user base with other tools. I can provide this single tool and have hundreds of different tools underlying, but I only need to train one single user base, which is a great advantage.
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 monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"It also offers us everything we need in terms of features and functionality."
"The most useful functions for monitoring purposes with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus are that it can be automated in many ways, and most importantly, it can communicate with many network components without requiring any medium connectors."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"Very stable tool and good for all types of event integration and automation."
"It is an easy-to-use solution."
"It is customer-centric; customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event, with no need to go and connect to any other server and run events to have a view of all the events happening in the environment."
"Anything that can be accessed via SNMP commands, SCOM can retrieve via SNMP Gets."
"The advantages of SCOM are that it is definitely user friendly and a more appropriate solution for what we need."
"SCOM is a very powerful tool if deployed and eventually maintained correctly."
"I enjoy its integration with the Microsoft Active Directory functions, which means users, computers, or other group policies can connect with Windows Active Directory."
"The dashboard is in a class of its own, with a whole other range of competing products in management of datacenters and cloud environment."
"The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location."
"This is a product that does more generally than any of the competing solutions."
"It would have to be the ability to monitor services, devices, and operations for many devices from a single console leveraging a wide variety of Management Packs available."
 

Cons

"Areas that could be better include the fact that the solution is only on-premises, lacks AI capabilities, and support response times could be quicker."
"A lot can be improved in this product considering the performance."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"Yes often problems appear after resolving a previous one."
"Its integration could be better. They should provide an easier integration for all the monitoring stuff, and it will make things easier for us. Currently, there is a complexity in integrating it with a vendor application, and we have to use another tool to integrate it with a vendor application. To integrate some applications with NetCool, I need to install an IBM tool on top of it. It would be good if they can provide an API or any kind of interface that we can leverage while developing a new protocol interface or application. We should be able to use an API or interface with NetCool. Its GUI can also be better. As compared to other tools, it is not user friendly, and it is not easy to do stuff through GUI. Whenever we do anything on the GUI, it takes time. They need to focus on the GUI part, especially the dashboard. They should focus on how users can effectively drill down from one box to another. The visual appeal of the dashboard is as important as the data and functionality."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"IBM support is a bust; Zenoss support is good."
"Too small of a scope in reports, need to improve a lot."
"Monitoring non Microsoft products and 3rd party applications."
"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."
"Stability and some performance issues exist and they need improvement."
"Very high administrative burden, requires constant maintenance."
"Reporting could be improved, you get many reports out-of-box but they can be difficult to interpret and drill down into."
"Because SCOM currently runs on a Citrix session, SCOM sometimes becomes slow or crashes when there is too much going on."
"It would be a much better product if Microsoft provided management packs with the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"It is a costly solution."
"Its license cost is a little bit more than other solutions. Our customers expect a standard market price that is comparative to other products. For each and every NetCool OMNIbus component, we have to purchase a separate license. These components are not free with the product."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
I would rate the pricing for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus as three, where one is a high price and ten is a low price.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
Based on my experience and my colleagues' feedback, IBM can improve IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus in automation with respect to using AI, as it lacks considerably compared to other tools. The integrat...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
My current use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is for monitoring the networks.
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 OMNIbus
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.