System Center Operations Manager and Splunk Observability Cloud compete in the monitoring solutions category. Splunk Observability Cloud appears to have the upper hand with its real-time analytics capabilities and adaptable features, which provide extensive cloud-native application monitoring and flexibility with dashboard customizations.
Features: System Center Operations Manager is noted for robust monitoring of Microsoft ecosystems through extensive management packs and flexible customization. It effectively monitors Microsoft applications and infrastructure. Splunk Observability Cloud stands out with real-time analytics, comprehensive cloud-native monitoring, flexible dashboards, and the ability to integrate with diverse data sources, offering a complete view.
Room for Improvement: System Center Operations Manager faces challenges with high resource requirements, licensing costs, and its complexity which can cause alert storms and misconfigured monitors. It needs better dashboard capabilities and out-of-the-box support for third-party products. Splunk Observability Cloud is considered expensive and has a complex setup, especially for logs. Enhancements in real-time monitoring features and customer guidance are needed.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: System Center Operations Manager operates mainly in on-premises environments, posing a challenge for businesses transitioning to the cloud but offers solid support when coupled with Microsoft Premier support. Splunk Observability Cloud provides a hybrid-friendly option adaptable to both on-premises and cloud environments, though its rich feature set presents a steeper learning curve. Both solutions are praised for customer support, despite the complexity of their deployment options.
Pricing and ROI: System Center Operations Manager is included in the broader System Center suite, providing extensive tools under one license at a competitive rate if already part of Microsoft agreements. Splunk Observability Cloud pricing is often seen as high relative to its comprehensive capabilities, impacting its value proposition in competitive markets, although it offers a flexible licensing model aligned with usage needs. Both products deliver ROI by reducing downtime and enabling proactive monitoring.
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
They often treat issues in isolation, not considering how one problem might relate to another.
When I was working directly with Microsoft at TCS, my first company, the support experience was quite smooth, and we received solutions promptly.
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
Support from Splunk is not very helpful because Splunk doesn't have a dedicated APM; they only have one APM engineer in Korea.
They did respond to us, but they did not explicitly inform us about the feature's absence.
The scalability of SCOM, meaning its ability to adapt to our needs, is excellent because we are working with SQL systems and multiple servers.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
The issue is mainly about pricing because if they want to monitor more, it costs money.
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.
SCOM is a bit unstable lately, primarily due to a lack of resources.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
I would like to see a software-as-a-service version in Azure to eliminate the need for on-premise infrastructure.
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.
It would be beneficial to have a summary on one single dashboard, as there are many more possibilities available.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Improvements in dashboard configuration, customization, and artificial intelligence functionalities are desired.
Customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms.
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
Splunk is a little expensive, however, it is in line with the current market pricing.
It assists me in detecting server downtime and delivers basic performance monitoring right out of the box.
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool.
SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS.
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) is a cross-platform data center monitoring and reporting tool that checks the status of various objects defined within the environment, such as server hardware, system services, etc. The solution allows data center administrators to deploy, configure, manage, and monitor the operations, services, devices and applications of multiple enterprise IT systems via a single pane of glass. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes.
SCOM Features
SCOM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SCOM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SCOM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SCOM solution.
A Manager at a financial services firm says, “The feature I like most about SCOM is that it is easy-to-use. I find it very user-friendly. I also like the knowledge base which it has. You can find the resolution to questions or issues directly within the SCOM itself. It will alert you with a recommendation of what you need to do at the same time. This sort of self-diagnosis or prompting is one of the great values you get from SCOM compared to other solutions.”
PeerSpot user Zahari Z., Information Technology Auditor at a financial services firm, mentions, “Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications. There is a mechanism to set up a notification from the SCOM and whenever there is a drop in the availability the notification alerts not only for availability but for other issues as well. You can align thresholds according to the speed of your environment and you can have a threshold related notification, which is one of the useful features.”
Bill W., Sr. Systems Engineer at Arapahoe County Government, comments, “ I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time. When we patch, things are automatically put into maintenance mode so that the numbers for our systems being down, do not count against us.”
A Project Manager at a tech services company explains, “The feature I have found most valuable is the book feature. While we run the Sprint one we can add some setups for multiple sprints.”
A Systems Engineer at an educational organization states, “Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it.”
Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.
Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.
What are the key features?In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.
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