No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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 (11th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 6.9%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 8.4%, down from 20.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ServiceNow IT Operations Management8.4%
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus6.9%
Other84.7%
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

"OMNIbus is valuable for its compatibility and performance, as I haven't encountered any performance issues."
"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."
"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."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"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."
"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."
"Difficult to implement ( more resource and timing) but flexibility in implementation."
"Provides everything in one solution."
"It is a market leader and is very implementation-friendly. Developers have a clear understanding of how the solution works, and it is mature enough to handle different client needs."
"Their Event Management is very good."
"I am impressed with the tool's ability to track information in an easy way."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable features of ServiceNow IT Operations Management are ease of use, intuitive design, and ease of management, and its based on IT practices which are 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 asset management tools are very valuable."
 

Cons

"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."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"IBM support is a bust; Zenoss support is good."
"Yes often problems appear after resolving a previous one."
"I would like more manual issues to have automated report-facing options."
"The discovery portion of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is not in-depth as what the customers are looking for, and the information that it gathers from the assets is a little more limited than what other tools provide."
"Service Mapping is a time-consuming process. The time and effort versus the benefits are very difficult to articulate to customers."
"The product needs to add a workflow insight tool."
"There is a slower learning curve associated with the tool's scripting part. It is also not cheap."
"The solution's subscription model could be improved."
"I advise others not to customize a lot while using the solution."
"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 migration and consistency, especially since we have 14,000 users in my group company utilizing this for multiple purposes, emphasizing workflows defined so that onboarding processes can be streamlined into a single tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"The cost of ServiceNow is much higher."
"The pricing is high and may be excluding the small to medium-sized enterprise businesses."
"I would rate the product's pricing a five out of ten since there are vendors who are cheaper."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and a subscription model for add-on features."
"The price of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is expensive."
"ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a costly solution. I'd rate the price at ten, on a scale from one to ten with one being the lowest and ten being the highest price. Some clients do have a problem with the price, but most find that the solution is worth the cost."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Event Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
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?
It is definitely high-priced compared to other products available in the same domain in the market.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
We don't use the orchestration part of ServiceNow IT Operations Management here. The CMDB part of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is a little bit too complicated, and it is a bit slow at our co...
What is your primary use case for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
We are customers of ServiceNow IT Operations Management, using it for the ticketing systems and user management and change management. Change management and user management are the major use cases ...
 

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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.