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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management 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
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
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 7.0%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 7.7%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow IT Operations Management7.7%
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus7.0%
Other85.3%
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.
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

"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."
"Overall, this is a great tool and one that I recommend but it depends on the cost."
"The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"It's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."
"Very stable tool and good for all types of event integration and automation."
"Probes are the best feature because they are well written which rarely requires you to write additional rules. These probes monitor activity within your environment."
"Has service mapping, impact management, metric intelligence and health of analytics."
"The most important features of ServiceNow IT Operations Management are the discovery service mapping and orchestration."
"IT support management is the most valuable feature and a very good product."
"It has been very useful for tracking. It has evolved a lot over time, and there is a single pane of glass where you can track and see everything."
"Our ROI since implementing ServiceNow ITOM has been significant."
"The solution is very capable and user friendly."
"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."
"I like the solution due to the fact that it's scalable."
 

Cons

"IBM support is a bust; Zenoss support is good."
"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."
"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."
"Yes often problems appear after resolving a previous one."
"A lot can be improved in this product considering the performance."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"Enhancing automation-related solutions, such as Wi-Fi, porting, machinery, and product automation would help to achieve better operational outcomes."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of ServiceNow."
"The security policies could be increased."
"If you are new to using the solution, you will find the setup complex."
"The time for deployment of ServiceNow IT Operations Management depends on many factors. It's a SaaS application, it should not take too long, but if you want to define the tool based on your processes, then it would take some time. It fully depends on the company's complexity. There are out-of-the-box product flows and if you want to use them, you can from day one. However, if you want to customize it and change it to your company's practices, then it will take more time. The setup could be faster."
"My managers would say that the price is too high. We wanted to also have the visibility version of it, but it's too expensive for us. Going for visibility would have doubled up the price."
"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 tool can be improved by including more detailed information to assist new users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a costly solution."
"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 has different subscription models."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"There are additional costs, you have to pay more for everything."
"While not entirely sure, I believe the solution costs at least a million dollars annually."
"My customers pay for the ServiceNow IT Operations Management license annually. I'd rate the pricing based on value. ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a premium product as it has better features than competitors."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and a subscription model for add-on features."
"The price of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is expensive."
"The pricing is high and may be excluding the small to medium-sized enterprise businesses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Construction Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
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: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.