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BMC TrueSight Operations Management vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server 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

BMC TrueSight Operations Ma...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (16th), Cloud Monitoring Software (18th), AIOps (7th)
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of BMC TrueSight Operations Management is 12.1%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 1.2%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Srri G - PeerSpot reviewer
The product is reasonably priced, but the solution is a little obsolete because it is deployed on-premise
If I want custom monitoring across a very large estate of more than 50,000 units, the on-premise deployment gets quite slow. The on-premise product’s performance must be improved. The solution is a little obsolete. That is why the solution moved to Helix, a SaaS operating system. The SaaS platform has the features I like. There is no point in BMC expanding TrueSight Operations’ console. It's high time that BMC starts a demise path for the product and is associated only with Helix. If we need any additional function, we must switch to Helix. Since TrueSight is deployed on-premise, the scalability and usage of the product are mainly focused on providing basic features and not enhanced features like analytics or cost analysis. People should move to a SaaS platform because on-premise products have limited storage and capacity.
SeniorDB3550 - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively alerts us on a wide variety of issues, but it has not scaled out well with our large environment
We get hundreds of alerts per day, because we manage so many different servers and databases, that alert us to disk space issues, query issues, a wide variety of things. We take that information and we're able to make proactive decisions as to what we need to do. In terms of the solution helping us with performance monitoring and diagnostics, sticking with the alerting feature, we're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action. Overall, it has allowed us to do more with database management and run more databases on a given server, because we're able to isolate issues quicker and take the proactive steps necessary to correct them. We were spread out with many servers running databases. We've consolidated some 80 servers down to just a handful. We're getting more bang for the buck out of the equipment that we have.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"BMC TrueSight Operations Management is easily scalable."
"The solution's event management capabilities are fantastic. We do a best of breed. If, on the network side, they use a different tool, we pull all that data in so that we have a single console. It's kind of like the monitor of monitors. We're able to aggregate all the different types of data sets, whether it's log data, app data, OS data, infrastructure data, or network data. We're able to aggregate all those events and then correlate and be able to say we're having an event."
"The solution has a very good business event manager tool."
"The major advantage of the product is estate management."
"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]."
"Helix Innovation Studio is a very good feature. It allows us to develop our own enterprise applications and make them available for the customers."
"We can verify uptimes as another source of keeping devices in compliance."
"It is a scalable solution."
"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."
"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."
"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time. It's basically the output of an sp_who2."
"The best part of SQL DM is the ability to customize alerts and counters. This allows our team to find an issue then alert on the issue at a granular level."
"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."
 

Cons

"The solution is overly complex."
"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."
"One of the things that the TrueSight environment is missing is some of the HA abilities. The data collection server called the ISM doesn't really have the HA functionality or workload balancing. It was missing from the previous product as well. It's missing redundancy."
"Reporting would be an area for improvement in TrueSight... We have almost 800 customers today on TrueSight and just under 10,000 assets. We need to be able to give a customer some information. If the customer's product fails, they'll ask us, "Did it have a problem beforehand?" We have all those events and we know all the problems it had beforehand. We have to be able to give them access to that kind of reporting. That's an enhancement that we need."
"I definitely would like to see more improvement in the self-diagnostics. I need to know when anything is not working or collecting, long before our customer finds it."
"I would like to see a little more out-of-the-box event correlation and expanded AIOps type capabilities. Where you can train your artificial intelligence operations to be able to memorize an issue once you encounter one scenario, so if you encounter that same problem, you can get to the root cause very quickly."
"We were somewhat limited in TrueSight due to some of the RBAC controls not quite being what we wanted as far as delegating out administrative privileges for implementation. But because we were able to turn requests around pretty well, that burden wasn't too heavy."
"The solution is a little obsolete."
"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
"I'm going to do an upgrade which may resolve my issues, but one area for improvement is its ability to handle the amount of data that we collect with it. We're likely one of the largest installations, with over 300 servers being collected with this product, and sometimes there are gaps. That would really be my only concern, in terms of how the data is collected and stored, for consistency."
"I would absolutely love to create customized dashboards but, unfortunately, they don't provide me the information that I need to create the report. The report I need is the detail or the transaction detail that's happening on those Snapshots. I'd like to be able to go back through time and search for things. I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information. So it's encrypted. I can't pull it out and that is really bothersome."
"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."
"We don't find that it helps us with performance monitoring and diagnostics. We find that SentryOne does that better. Also, in terms of alerts, we had to customize them dramatically so that we didn't get alerted on every little thing."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Consider scalability very carefully: how much you want to monitor and what components are very important. Then, depending on these two things, filter out unwanted metrics or attributes. If you do a good job at filtering the data, then your licensing costs will be manageable."
"We did a five-year, multimillion dollar deal."
"Pricing is very high."
"The solutions are not the cheapest but are robust and stable. License model is rather complex and BMC do often change the model."
"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."
"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..."
"Annual licensing amount depends on the customers requirements. Support is an additional fee and there are options for three and five year support."
"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
Though I have no clue about the tool's actual price, I know that it is astronomical.
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Operations Management?
Cost is an issue with BMC TrueSight Operations Management. Though I am not responsible for the budget, I know that it is an expensive tool set when used only for event management. The tool's issue ...
What do you like most about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?
The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?
One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level. In future releases, I w...
What is your primary use case for IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server?
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes.
 

Also Known As

ProactiveNet, TrueSight Operations Management
IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ensono, Transamerica, Boston Scientific, Park Place Technologies, inContact, TD Ameritrade, PNC Bank
Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight Operations Management vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.