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IBM Tivoli NetCool vs NetMaster Network Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 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
Ranking in Network Management Applications
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetMaster Network Intelligence
Ranking in Network Management Applications
22nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Management Applications category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool is 3.0%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetMaster Network Intelligence is 2.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Management Applications Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool3.0%
NetMaster Network Intelligence2.5%
Other94.5%
Network Management Applications
 

Featured Reviews

Petar Ganev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Monitoring Engineer at Commerzbank
Reliable for enterprise monitoring but no longer actively developed
There are problems with the latest security requirements because many things have changed in recent years, and now the security audits are very strict. And we need to switch to something else. We need to patch it constantly. Moreover, it is a very old tool and a little bit difficult to support. Otherwise, they work okay.
it_user558525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines quick and effective drill-down into the network stack for better troubleshooting
I would like to see a web-based interface that mimics the ease of doing data traces, similar to something like a Wireshark which is a Windows-based network monitoring tool. Wireshark is fast. I'm an old Windows guy, it's what I know. I think the liability of NetMaster is having to do things through the panels. It's slow to generate traces, and when you're doing a real-time troubleshooting call - when you have to wait 30 seconds for a process to spawn and fire up in order to give data back - 30 seconds is a long time when there's an issue. The user interface is probably the biggest impediment to my success with it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature I have found most valuable with NetCool is how it collaborates all the alarms, and then it does a predictive analysis, providing a consolidated alarm view and management."
"The scalability of monitoring, the breadth of supported network components, the scale of the number of monitoring events, and the flexibility in customization make this a well-rounded product."
"The tool had many built-in automation capabilities."
"Full featured - event/fault management, performance management, topology map, discovery, RCA, event enrichment, Proviso will chart data from almost any source with a variety of aggregation options."
"The solution is a complete package; it has various useful elements including inventory management and incident management packaged inside it, and anything is possible with Tivoli since it is quite a robust system that offers a lot of useful integration capabilities."
"The tool is much easier to manage than running scripts and figuring out how many endpoints have been exceeded."
"NetCool has a huge database that can collect and process about one million alarms a day."
"Support is one of the best aspects of this solution. NetCool is a good product that has good flexibility. There are a lot of documents available online which is one of the best features of IBM Tivoli Suite. Whenever an issue happens, rather than going to technical support, if you find the exact issue in Google, you can get tech notes for that particular issue."
"Otherwise, I think it is one of the better network products out there."
"The support has been excellent. It is far and away the best among the products that our team supports."
"Stability-wise, the whole product runs great, especially with the automation; that's where it really shines."
"The most valuable features are SNA and IP monitoring, and it has been very easy to define many thresholds, including self-defining baselines."
 

Cons

"From a customer perspective, it is quite an expensive solution to initially implement and then support."
"The solution is not user-friendly."
"UI is outdated, very old legacy."
"The installation could be simplified, and technical support could be faster."
"Tivoli NetCool's has medium scalability - there are some problems with its replications not being mature."
"The solution is too expensive."
"Tivoli NetCool is based on a Linux platform, it would be beneficial if they moved it to Windows because not everyone is acquainted with Linux."
"Customization and integration that you need to do to make the product fit your needs is very complex. It is not a product that somebody could easily pick up without any prior training or experience."
"I would like to see a web-based UI (major effort now in progress)."
"I didn't think the SNMP function was easy to set up. That caused some problems with the address space."
"The automation part could use improvement, but I do not do that much with it."
"I would like to see new release migrations made easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It costs around 100k for every ten servers, which is lower than similar products from other vendors."
"Customers are required to pay a licensing fee."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The price of the product is too expensive."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool?
The main challenge is its licensing model, which is very complicated.
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool?
NetCool is the manager of managers in the stack. It basically combines the devices of the whole network. We are the mobile network operator, so we use it to assist us in cross-domain correlations a...
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Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool
CA NetMaster Network Management. CA NetMaster, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP, CA NetMaster Network Management for SNA, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Claranet, Consolidated Communications, Telus, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Telekom Srbija, Bendigo Community Telco, Capgemini, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB)
Tieto
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool vs. NetMaster Network Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.