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Observer Apex vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Observer Apex
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
105th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Observer Apex is 0.3%, up from 0.1% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.5%
Observer Apex0.3%
Other98.2%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Jeroen-Dubbelman - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Bitrate
Has good network visibility
The primary use case is for monitoring and troubleshooting. We also use it for security.   The correlation of data in Apex helps to get full visibility of the entire enterprise. Apex is where we get the end-user experience score from one to ten. Network visibility is the most valuable feature.…
AK
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Network visibility is the most valuable feature."
"If I have to choose any one product for server monitoring to take care of all aspects of monitoring out of the box, SCOM is number one."
"I enjoy its integration with the Microsoft Active Directory functions, which means users, computers, or other group policies can connect with Windows Active Directory."
"This product is really easy to use and has best monitoring capabilities when used to monitor Microsoft products."
"It would have to be the ability to monitor services, devices, and operations for many devices from a single console leveraging a wide variety of Management Packs available."
"With Operations Manager, you have extract reporting capabilities and multiple report libraries that you can select from to customize reports to your own granular requirements."
"I like the historical reporting of observer metrics, and it's a fairly user-friendly solution."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is real-time alerts."
"SCOM is capable of providing full-featured infrastructure monitoring, alerting and reporting, especially for Windows-centric production environments."
 

Cons

"The pricing and AI can be improved."
"All of the areas of reporting are very bad and need to be improved."
"In terms of features that could be improved, I would say the agent integration into the operating system. We are having difficulties integrating Linux into some of the networking devices."
"Regarding certain issues in the solution, it can be difficult to generate reports if we have a program that is not user-friendly for reporting. While this is not necessarily negative, we may need to use another solution."
"On-prem network monitoring is something that could be improved drastically."
"It would be a much better product if Microsoft provided management packs with the product."
"SCOM is not as straightforward in terms of user interface or general experience, which could be improved."
"The solution should have more tools for monitoring the cloud engine versus on-premise."
"We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
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.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Capita
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.