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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

"From an administrative standpoint, what stands out in TrueSight is the ability to implement quickly. When they have a requirement to monitor something, we're able to turn that on quickly in their environment. We're able to set up new apps within a day."
"Signature baselines, which have allowed us to fine tune many of our events and significantly reduce the number of events generated."
"It is breadth. It covers so many different technologies which can roll up into a single console."
"The event management tool builds correlation logic and protection algorithms into a field of events that is valuable when a data center goes down."
"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."
"Using the TrueSight platform we can monitor server performance and notify the customers using the integrated ticketing for events. We can let them know if there are any issues with a server, or application, or database."
"I believe that the ease of use and UI is great"
"The tool is flexible enough to be customized based on customer requirements."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"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 find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."
 

Cons

"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."
"There are some small limitations with this tool in terms of reporting dashboards that fit all of the requirements of the individual customer."
"The solution is a little obsolete."
"The dashboards are not good. We have a limited dashboard, and if we want better dashboards, we need to use other solutions like Grafana because the TrueSight dashboards are not good."
"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 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."
"BMC's solutions for cloud monitoring (monitoring of AWS and Azure resources) are very poor in stability and customization."
"The solution should improve predicting events and flaws in service. It also needs to improve integration with other systems."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solutions are not the cheapest but are robust and stable. License model is rather complex and BMC do often change the model."
"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..."
"Other products are more expensive than BMC TrueSight."
"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."
"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'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."
"Annual licensing amount depends on the customers requirements. Support is an additional fee and there are options for three and five year support."
"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."
"The price is too high."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
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 needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

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: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.