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BMC TrueSight Operations Management vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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

BMC TrueSight Operations Ma...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
22nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (26th), Cloud Monitoring Software (20th), AIOps (8th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (9th), Active Directory Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of BMC TrueSight Operations Management is 0.7%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has a very good business event manager tool."
"I use the solution to monitor servers, databases, Windows, Linux, and web services."
"I believe that the ease of use and UI is great"
"We can verify uptimes as another source of keeping devices in compliance."
"The most valuable features of BMC TrueSight Operations Management are the blackouts and event management."
"It is a stable solution."
"It works irrespective of the operating system we’re running."
"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 solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"
 

Cons

"In a large company of our size, we need multiple people in our company trained. So, I have to take the training classes. Then, I have to go and train the rest of my organization. I would prefer to say to the other people on my team, "Go to this link and..." Or, "Here's a list of training sessions that you can go to which are online and that are free." I think it would help the adoption of their product in the marketplace, personally."
"The solution's support service could be better."
"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."
"The sizing (which is difficult), the maintenance of it and the upgrade paths. This is a difficult area which is not easy to cover, as every client has a different approach of implementing the product."
"The product must provide more AI capabilities."
"It's too complex, too many servers are required, there are too many different components in the solution, and a lot of agents are required."
"It would be better if the initial setup and deployment were more straightforward."
"The product must provide application or service monitoring features."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Use conservative figures. In terms of hardware, monitored servers and also effort. The product is not cheap. But as with other products, you get what you pay for."
"Pricing is all volume-driven. I think we were paying between $80 and $85 per license. That's per unit, for a perpetual license. You pay it one time and then, every year, you pay 20 percent of that for annual maintenance and support. But now that we've grown, we've purchased tens of thousands of licenses and the cost per license has gone down to something like less than $30..."
"The tool is moderately expensive."
"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."
"They have changed the licensing fees."
"The only possible additional cost that I can mention, that you might not be aware of, is that it uses Oracle partitioning, if you use Oracle. There are Oracle partitioning fees that go with that."
"The cost depends on the usage."
"The solutions are not the cheapest but are robust and stable. License model is rather complex and BMC do often change the model."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

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 needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement. Monitoring these services is more complex compared to others.
 

Also Known As

ProactiveNet, TrueSight Operations Management
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ensono, Transamerica, Boston Scientific, Park Place Technologies, inContact, TD Ameritrade, PNC Bank
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight Operations Management vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.