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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs Zenoss Cloud 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
Zenoss Cloud
Ranking in Event Monitoring
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (21st), Network Monitoring Software (70th), Server Monitoring (26th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (54th), Container Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (42nd), AIOps (26th)
 

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 Zenoss Cloud is 5.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus6.9%
Zenoss Cloud5.1%
Other88.0%
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.
ClaudiaChen - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra
Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features
As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"Very stable tool and good for all types of event integration and automation."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"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's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."
"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"It is the most flexible solution of this type, but it takes time to adapt."
"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."
"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts, for example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"Overall, it's a great solution, and I consider it to be one of the best."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing."
"With this solution, they can have one million users at the same time with no crashes."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
 

Cons

"A lot can be improved in this product considering the performance."
"Yes often problems appear after resolving a previous one."
"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."
"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."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. The administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex."
"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."
 

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."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."
"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Transportation 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 Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

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 the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. Zenoss Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.