Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BMC TrueSight vs IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 8, 2026

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

BMC TrueSight
Ranking in Event Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (28th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (25th), AIOps (11th)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
Ranking in Event Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of BMC TrueSight is 7.1%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 6.5%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus6.5%
BMC TrueSight7.1%
Other86.4%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Has improved monitoring efficiency and supports fast issue resolution through responsive support and reliable automation
I work with BMC TrueSight and have been using it for eight-plus years BMC TrueSight brought a positive impact and benefits to our organization. The customization part is one of the advantages of the product, along with the monitoring capabilities. Automated root cause analysis and predictive…
RS
EMEA Senior Sales Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Customization and robust network monitoring enhance operational efficiency
The most useful functions for monitoring purposes with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus are that it can be automated in many ways. Most importantly, it can communicate with many network components without requiring any medium connectors. You can directly integrate it if you have SNMP, which is great. The main benefits that IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus provides are that it's an umbrella tool that can be placed on top of any existing monitoring system. You can monitor the entire network from this tool. The underlying interfaces can be many, but you can keep it as a single tool in IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus and it can manage the load on its own. It negates the need to train the user base with other tools. I can provide this single tool and have hundreds of different tools underlying, but I only need to train one single user base, which is a great advantage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like everything about this tool. I recommend this solution to anyone looking for a standalone solution with high availability meaning that can be used depending on the customers requirements."
"It has provided us with a single location to host all events to be viewed/monitored by our NOC. This has greatly helped them to streamline their processes."
"The ability of this platform to monitor the very diverse assets that we maintain around the world is its most valuable feature... We support a vast array of manufacturers' equipment, like HP, IBM, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hitachi... We can do it all with [this] one [solution]."
"We have one application, which is fairly large. In the past, we had Level 1 and 2 NOC support teams who were responsible for watching dashboards. When they saw an issue in the application, they would call Level 2 or 3 support and escalate the call, if necessary. Now, through the use of this product, we have been able to reduce the headcount by five people, as we are able to eliminate the eyes on the glass. We no longer have people watching the dashboard. We have events which are processed automatically through the system and get to the right people. We had six people in L1s, and now have one. So, we reduced five out of six headcount, which is pretty significant."
"The tool is flexible enough to be customized based on customer requirements."
"The most valuable features of the solution are alert management, alert generation, and event management."
"It is breadth. It covers so many different technologies which can roll up into a single console."
"The fact that they have a very integrated relationship with Sentry Software, the Knowledge Module, is valuable... The richest feature for us is the number of Knowledge Modules that we can load into the product to add breadth of service to the customer. It enables us to move up the operational stack from hardware, to operating system, to application, and to cloud... That enables us to provide one pane of glass over all those layers - hardware, OS, app, and cloud."
"It is an easy-to-use solution."
"It is customer-centric. Customers can access the event list from their location or desktop and view the event. There is no need to go and connect to any other server and run events to have a view of all the events happening in the environment. We get a good response from customers about this feature and the main architecture of NetCool. Its processing is very good. Deduplication and correlation functionalities are good in this solution as compared to other solutions. A big advantage of NetCool is that it also supports multi-layered protocols. We can receive multiple events from different protocols like UDP, HTTP, and those events can be captured in NetCool."
"The most useful functions for monitoring purposes with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus are that it can be automated in many ways, and most importantly, it can communicate with many network components without requiring any medium connectors."
"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"Probes are the best feature because they are well written which rarely requires you to write additional rules. These probes monitor activity within your environment."
"The most valuable feature is the event management capability."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
 

Cons

"The graphs are extremely limited. We don't have a lot of dashboard options. To make reports and dashboards more useful, we usually need to integrate some dashboard solutions."
"More modules for less popular applications and better documentation."
"We have a unique use case because BMC typically sells this solution into enterprises that are deploying it within their IT, versus to a managed services provider like us where we're supporting thousands of customers. Multi-tenancy and the scalability have been challenges along the way, as we've grown... If anything could have gone better as we were ramping this up and adding a lot of volume to it, I would say it's the scalability. That would be one thing that could be improved."
"The one piece that I would love to see is a general-purpose, configurable agent which would be a framework that you can deploy on anything, whether it be Java or anything else. It would allow you to easily deploy it on a platform that they support."
"I think the ease of deployment needs to be looked at. It would be great if the deployment was faster and easier."
"The product must provide more AI capabilities."
"The knowledge modules could be more lightweight in size. At present, the installation packages can be quite large."
"Deployment requires lots of resources (servers). It has too many consoles."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"Its integration could be better. They should provide an easier integration for all the monitoring stuff, and it will make things easier for us. Currently, there is a complexity in integrating it with a vendor application, and we have to use another tool to integrate it with a vendor application. To integrate some applications with NetCool, I need to install an IBM tool on top of it. It would be good if they can provide an API or any kind of interface that we can leverage while developing a new protocol interface or application. We should be able to use an API or interface with NetCool. Its GUI can also be better. As compared to other tools, it is not user friendly, and it is not easy to do stuff through GUI. Whenever we do anything on the GUI, it takes time. They need to focus on the GUI part, especially the dashboard. They should focus on how users can effectively drill down from one box to another. The visual appeal of the dashboard is as important as the data and functionality."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"Areas that could be better include the fact that the solution is only on-premises, lacks AI capabilities, and support response times could be quicker."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost depends on the usage."
"Annual licensing amount depends on the customers requirements. Support is an additional fee and there are options for three and five year support."
"We pay license fees of between $150 and $200 per asset. There is an enterprise software license fee, and then you pay a percentage for your maintenance, and then Premier Support. For example, if you buy a two-year license for the product, then the maintenance fee is added to that for two years at X percent a year. Then there's a small fee on top of that for Premier Support..."
"They have changed the licensing fees."
"We're end-of-lifeing it now. Overall, the licensing costs of BMC are a challenge for us in that they're hard costs, whereas open-source monitoring has soft costs, where it's harder to line-item."
"BMC TrueSight Operations Management is not on the cheaper side, but its pricing is on a case by case basis. Its licensing model is simple and based on the number of devices."
"We did a five-year, multimillion dollar deal."
"The price of BMC TrueSight Operations Management is very high. If there was more flexibility with the sizing of the licensing it would be helpful, especially during the pandemic. We have wanted to expend but the licensing cost is too high."
"It is a costly solution."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"Its license cost is a little bit more than other solutions. Our customers expect a standard market price that is comparative to other products. For each and every NetCool OMNIbus component, we have to purchase a separate license. These components are not free with the product."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Event Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
884,328 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
The solution provides visibility to our infrastructure, how it is, the resources we are monitoring, and quick updates when it has any problems. We have integrated it with ServiceNow to open instances.
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
There are some complexities with deployment that could be improved in BMC TrueSight.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
I would rate the pricing for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus as three, where one is a high price and ten is a low price.
What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
Based on my experience and my colleagues' feedback, IBM can improve IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus in automation with respect to using AI, as it lacks considerably compared to other tools. The integrat...
What is your primary use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?
My current use case for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is for monitoring the networks.
 

Also Known As

ProactiveNet, TrueSight Operations Management
Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ensono, Transamerica, Boston Scientific, Park Place Technologies, inContact, TD Ameritrade, PNC Bank
Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight vs. IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,328 professionals have used our research since 2012.