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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
4th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow IT Operations Ma...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (15th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (15th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 7.4%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 6.5%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow IT Operations Management6.5%
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus7.4%
Other86.1%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Salman - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance & Monitoring Supervisor at Saudi Telecom Company
Aids in network performance monitoring and management
I am working as a customer, mainly using IntelliQ and another product, IBM NetCool, Watson AI. These products are used for monitoring network performance and management.  The primary use case involves network performance monitoring, and it is compatible only with IBM DB2 IBM Tivoli NetCool…
reviewer2755671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Significant enhancement in operations with powerful discovery and analytics, yet pricing structure poses challenges
ServiceNow IT Operations Management provides out-of-the-box dashboards. Along with the dashboard, it also provides the Operations Workspace, which is very useful for operations teams. There is a functionality called Performance Analytics, which we are also using to develop some dashboards for the senior leadership and operations team where they can perform trend analysis of alerts and events happening across the infrastructure and application landscape. These dashboards are really useful here. ServiceNow IT Operations Management's biggest plus point is that it is a platform. ITOM is just one module that ServiceNow IT Operations Management offers, but they provide seamless integration of ITOM with their other modules such as ITSM, where we can leverage the AIs for discovery, perform impact analysis, which essentially helps to enhance the overall IT operations and reduce the downtime and MTTR.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"OMNIbus is valuable for its compatibility and performance, as I haven't encountered any performance issues."
"This solution is highly scalable; we have hundreds of probes running on more than thousands of devices, gathering millions of alarms and creating thousands of tickets, and yet we have never seen any performance issue."
"It is customer-centric. Customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event. There is 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. We get a good response from customers about this feature and the main architecture of NetCool. Its processing is very good. Deduplication and correlation functionalities are good in this solution as compared to other solutions. A big advantage of NetCool is that it also supports multi-layered protocols. We can receive multiple events from different protocols like UDP, HTTP, and those events can be captured in NetCool."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the event management capability."
"It is an easy-to-use solution."
"Overall, this is a great tool and one that I recommend but it depends on the cost."
"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."
"Their Event Management is very good."
"The end-to-end ticketing process is most valuable in ServiceNow IT Operations Management because its notification feature is excellent in keeping all users informed on the next step compared to BMC. I also like that ServiceNow IT Operations Management is very user-friendly."
"The software asset management features — especially around discovery — are the tools I find to be the most valuable."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. A person just needs to join a team to access the network and that's all."
"You can improve integrations of the operation with the solution."
"The main and best thing about ServiceNow IT Operations Management is that it helps to organize user management tickets in an organized form."
"The way this solution has helped us is that it improved our communication."
"It is easy to use and simple to learn."
 

Cons

"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"IBM support is a bust; Zenoss support is good."
"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."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"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."
"Yes often problems appear after resolving a previous one."
"I would like for the next release to be more user-friendly and out of date. The next release should focus on the cloud, AI, and ML technologies."
"Even though they call it low code there are a lot of customizations needed, especially from an ITOM standpoint."
"There are some limitations with Discovery; some areas are not available in the installation. I would like the solution to be able to discover more devices. That will remove the need to have multiple tools."
"The pricing of some modules is higher because they are sold in packages. If we need something specific, we cannot take it individually."
"The solution’s licensing cost could be improved."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not very affordable. It is affordable for organizations with a minimum of 5,000 users plus."
"There is room for improvement in service mapping within ServiceNow ITOM."
"The tool can be improved by including more detailed information to assist new users."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of ServiceNow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this 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."
"It is a costly solution."
"The solution is costly compared to the products offered by its competitors."
"There are additional costs, you have to pay more for everything."
"We obtained discovery licenses at about seven dollars Australian per unit, which we found to be reasonable and competitive."
"The cost of ServiceNow is much higher."
"It has different subscription models."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"I would rate the product's pricing a five out of ten since there are vendors who are cheaper."
"The price of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Business12
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise29
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
Regarding pricing, while I initially felt the prices were high when we moved, I now see that it is reasonable considering that we are not just using an ITSM tool; we are improving processes and com...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
ServiceNow IT Operations Management can be improved by focusing on adoption, as some companies still use other tools, and we had to onboard them initially, addressing challenges such as data migrat...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
As an implementation expert and former CIO, I handled implementation from an IT best practice perspective for different companies.
 

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.