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SCOM vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
4th
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zenoss Cloud
Ranking in Event Monitoring
13th
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
75th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (26th), Server Monitoring (24th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (51st), Container Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (42nd), AIOps (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of SCOM is 9.1%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 5.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.1%
Zenoss Cloud5.0%
Other85.9%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"SCOM integrates several systems and offers correlation features, like setting up everything around Active Directory or DNS."
"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."
"The monitoring features are the most valuable. We have seen a major benefit from that so far."
"The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location."
"SCOM has helped us to monitor all the VMs in our environment, especially the Windows servers."
"It is very good at monitoring Microsoft Server."
"SCOM's most valuable features are the network path feature, reporting, and integration with business intelligence."
"It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"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."
"It's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."
"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."
 

Cons

"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."
"The initial setup should be easier to complete."
"Stability and some performance issues exist and they need improvement."
"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."
"Third-party tools have had to be created to make SCOM management pack creation more efficient and effective. However, this weighs down the application as it just adds a resource requirement, which is ballooning the size of the necessary storage and all that for essentially substandard components."
"System Center just provided upgrade and update features for Windows clients, and Windows systems, and did not support Linux, Android, or iOS, and other operating systems. They need to provide better integration with other operating systems if they don't already."
"Application monitoring must be improved."
"On-prem network monitoring is something that could be improved drastically."
"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"
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."
"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."
"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

"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about SCOM vs. Zenoss Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.