Kentik vs SCOM comparison

Kentik and Microsoft are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Kentik is ranked #22 with an average rating of 9.0, while Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0. Kentik holds a 1.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to Microsoft’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 16 Kentik reviews

5,920 Views
5,269 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SCOM

Read 83 SCOM reviews

8,966 Views
6,007 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Kentik

SCOM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

SCOM and Kentik are both prominent in the IT infrastructure monitoring category. SCOM appears to have the upper hand in large Microsoft environments due to its seamless integration and enterprise-level features, while Kentik is favored for its real-time network visibility and traffic analysis capabilities.

Features: SCOM is strong in monitoring Microsoft products especially Windows Server OS and Hyper-V. It allows custom monitoring solutions to be created using Visual Studio and PowerShell. It provides a seamless integration with Windows, enabling robust out-of-the-box experience. Kentik is recognized for its network visibility and traffic analysis, featuring DDoS alarm and flow analysis. It offers real-time insight into network infrastructure, which optimizes network performance.

Room for Improvement: SCOM could improve by reducing its high licensing fees and simplifying setup. It generates many excess alerts, requiring significant tuning. It needs enhanced monitoring for non-Windows environments and better dashboard customization. Kentik's pricing is considered expensive and could provide more actionable insights from detected anomalies. Its interface should be more intuitive.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SCOM supports primarily on-premise and hybrid cloud environments with a complex setup that demands experienced IT staff. Microsoft's customer service quality varies with support contracts, with premier support being rated highly. Kentik supports on-premises and private cloud deployments with a straightforward setup for network monitoring tasks. Its support teams are responsive and effective.

Pricing and ROI: SCOM's pricing is often part of Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, offering savings when bundled with other products. While generally reasonable, additional management packs could increase costs. Kentik's pricing depends on the number of devices and flow data, potentially high for large deployments. However, its ability to enhance network monitoring provides cost savings, particularly in traffic management and DDoS protection.

To learn more, read our detailed Kentik vs. SCOM Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. SCOM

April 2026

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Helped 893,221 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

7.0

Kentik enhances network management and cost efficiency, offering data insights while reducing engineering efforts, boosting operational efficiency and security.

Sentiment score

6.4

SCOM users experience varied ROI, with advantages in monitoring and management offset by potential licensing costs and latency issues.

In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Kentik report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SCOM report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

8.3

Kentik's customer service is efficient and responsive, with proactive communication and expertise, greatly enhancing user satisfaction.

Sentiment score

6.8

Microsoft customer service is generally viewed positively, with efficient assistance and experienced staff, despite occasional consistency issues.

They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us to determine what is needed.

Shubham-Saxena

Network Engineer III at Fortanix

I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Kentik report

They often treat issues in isolation, not considering how one problem might relate to another.

Mark Folan

Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company

When I was working directly with Microsoft at TCS, my first company, the support experience was quite smooth, and we received solutions promptly.

Akshita Kukreja

Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH

For more quotes and insights, download the SCOM report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.3

Kentik is praised for its scalability in large, global installations, handling increased data flows and integrating with Kubernetes.

Sentiment score

6.9

SCOM offers scalable management, efficient load balancing, and high availability but faces challenges with non-Microsoft integration and diverse device monitoring.

Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

You can scale as many devices and tests as you want, but you should have a good number of credits in your accounts.

Shubham-Saxena

Network Engineer III at Fortanix

For more quotes and insights, download the Kentik report

The scalability of SCOM, meaning its ability to adapt to our needs, is excellent because we are working with SQL systems and multiple servers.

Akshita Kukreja

Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH

For more quotes and insights, download the SCOM report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Users commend Kentik for its strong stability, minimal disruptions, efficient issue resolution, and satisfactory performance, especially in lab settings.

Sentiment score

7.1

SCOM's stability has improved significantly, especially in newer versions like 2019, with proper configuration and resource allocation.

Based on stability, I would give Kentik a nine.

Shubham-Saxena

Network Engineer III at Fortanix

In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Kentik report

I have not seen many errors or frequent data loss because once we have installed the agent on the system and have the details, not much manual intervention is required.

Akshita Kukreja

Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH

SCOM is a bit unstable lately, primarily due to a lack of resources.

Mark Folan

Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company

For more quotes and insights, download the SCOM report

Room For Improvement

Kentik users desire enhanced permissions, UI, API access, integrations, AI, insights, cost-effectiveness, and alert and data features.

SCOM needs better dashboards, lower licensing costs, easier integration, improved reporting, enhanced support, and efficient alert management.

More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Kentik report

I would like to see a software-as-a-service version in Azure to eliminate the need for on-premise infrastructure.

MarcMermuys

ICT System Administrator at College of Europe

SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure.

Mark Folan

Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company

It would be beneficial to have a summary on one single dashboard, as there are many more possibilities available.

Akshita Kukreja

Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH

For more quotes and insights, download the SCOM report

Setup Cost

Kentik's pricing depends on usage factors, offering discounts for education, with annual and multi-year contracts available.

SCOM pricing varies with agreements, often part of cost-effective Microsoft packages, though licensing can be complex initially.

Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

For more quotes and insights, download the Kentik report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SCOM report

Valuable Features

Kentik offers real-time network visibility, customizable dashboards, and automation, enhancing security, performance, and user experience efficiently.

SCOM efficiently monitors Microsoft environments with integration, customizable dashboards, real-time reporting, and automated alerts for proactive management.

The most important feature is cybersecurity.

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

One of the most valuable features of Kentik, especially for service providers, is its ability to visualize all the BGP peering and the status of the BGP peering platform.

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

Kentik is easy to use and set up.

Shubham-Saxena

Network Engineer III at Fortanix

For more quotes and insights, download the Kentik report

It assists me in detecting server downtime and delivers basic performance monitoring right out of the box.

Mark Folan

Network Operations Center at Student Loans Company

The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool.

Akshita Kukreja

Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH

SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS.

MarcMermuys

ICT System Administrator at College of Europe

For more quotes and insights, download the SCOM report

Categories and Ranking

Kentik

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

22nd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)

SCOM

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Event Monitoring (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SCOM	1.5%
Kentik	1.9%
Other	96.6%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Shubham-Saxena

Network Engineer III at Fortanix

Integrating synthetic tests and network monitoring enhances traffic pattern visualization

The Kentik support team is good. If you want me to rate them on a scale, I would give them eight. I had a call with the Kentik support team for fifteen minutes, so I'm going to give them eight for now. The reason for giving them an eight is that they are good and address our issues. They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us, including what is needed and what is not. However, when we are working on some real issues with Kentik, I sometimes feel there's a delay due to the busyness of their teams. We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve.

Read full review

Akshita Kukreja

Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH

Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities

The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	54

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kentik?

There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.

See all answers

What do you like most about SCOM?

The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?

I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SCOM?

We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

April 2026

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Buyer's Guide

SCOM

April 2026

Download SCOM product report

Also Known As

No data available

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012

Overview

Kentik provides real-time visibility into network infrastructure, focusing on monitoring, data visualization, and flow analysis to manage traffic patterns efficiently.

With robust analytics capabilities, Kentik offers insights into BGP peering status, aids in DDoS detection, and allows for detailed telemetry through its intuitive interface. The platform's SaaS nature simplifies operations by eliminating server maintenance concerns. Multi-vendor support and synthetic testing enhance network security and performance by simulating customer scenarios, while its API offers automation for querying and reporting tasks.

What are the key features of Kentik?

Real-Time Visibility: Monitors network infrastructure effectively.
Data Visualization: Offers powerful tools for viewing complex data.
Flow Analysis: Analyzes traffic flow for optimal management.
BGP Peering Insights: Provides in-depth peering status checks.
DDoS Alerting: Notifies about potential DDoS threats.
Data Explorer: Aids in understanding traffic patterns.
Synthetic Testing: Simulates scenarios to enhance security and performance.

What benefits can be found in user reviews?

Automation: Users value the flexibility of its API for automating tasks.
Ease of Use: SaaS model streamlines user engagement, eliminating server maintenance.
Flexibility: Report customization and query settings are highly appreciated.
Enhanced Observability: Telemetry and multi-vendor support increase oversight.

Industries implement Kentik for network monitoring, traffic management, and flow data analysis across both on-prem and cloud setups. It proves valuable for detecting DDoS events, managing peering relationships, and optimizing costs, besides managing CDN configurations and performing synthetic tests in diverse environments.

Kentik

SCOM monitors Microsoft environments with a focus on Windows servers and applications such as SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint. It offers integration with Active Directory and Azure, along with customizable dashboards, management packs, and robust alert mechanisms, aiding efficient management and control.

SCOM provides a comprehensive monitoring solution for Microsoft technologies, helping organizations track performance and availability of applications, services, and infrastructure. It integrates with Active Directory and Azure, offering capabilities for monitoring Windows and Linux environments. Extensive management packs, customizable dashboards, and automated alerts offer a refined monitoring experience. Users benefit from detailed performance data, network monitoring, and auto-discovery features, enhancing operational insights and server management efficiency.

What are key features of SCOM?

Microsoft Environment Monitoring: Specialized for Windows servers and applications such as SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint.
Integration Capabilities: Seamless integration with Active Directory and Azure for streamlined operations.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailor visual data displays to enhance monitoring and decision-making.
Extensive Management Packs: Broad range of management packs for enhanced resource and application control.
Robust Alert Mechanisms: Comprehensive alerting to maintain service stability and address potential issues promptly.

What benefits should users seek in reviews?

Operational Efficiency: Enhanced management of server applications and infrastructure.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Detailed insights into performance and service availability.
Proactive Issue Notification: Timely alerts for quick issue resolution.
Improved Control: More efficient server management through automation and visibility.

In technology sectors, SCOM is widely implemented for its ability to monitor server applications and infrastructure components. Healthcare and finance utilize its monitoring and alert systems for compliance and uptime. Enterprises integrate SCOM for managing complex systems like Exchange, SharePoint, and Active Directory, enabling comprehensive analytics and reporting.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.

Dialog Telekom

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. SCOM

April 2026

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