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IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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

IBM SevOne Network Performa...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
39th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
45th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
27th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (19th), Log Management (47th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is 1.0%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.6%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Grzegorz Nowak - PeerSpot reviewer
Improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic
We use SevOne to collect and report on network flows SevOne improves infrastructure planning by helping us analyze network traffic. We can look at bandwidth for specific endpoints on the customer's network and analyze traffic to identify issues. For example, maybe some connectors are unavailable.…
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The monitoring of the network is very customizable. That is its unique feature."
"Data Insight reporting tool is the most valuable feature. They came up with it a couple of years ago. The most pleasing factor is the dark theme. You don't have a white background. It has templates that you can create for all kinds of reports that you can hit on the fly. It's much better printing of the reports. If you want to send PDFs to people, the reports are actually decent. Whereas for years, the old architecture of the PDFs was rubbish and even our customers said, "We have to manipulate your PDFs because they all have bad margin breaks. SevOne fixed that a couple of years ago with the new Data Insight. It's fantastic."
"Scalability. I have never had to worry about how to handle really big environments."
"Flexible architecture: You can extend the system and its capacity by attaching another cluster pair."
"The comprehensiveness of this solution's collection of network performance and flow data is one of the basics in the field for what it does. It meets all of our needs. So for all those areas, for the most straightforward collection capabilities, right up to NetFlow and even telemetry, it meets all those demands. Not only just basic or fundamental SNMP collection capability, but the product also supports what we need for the future with telemetry streaming. So it's very comprehensive."
"We find that the reporting is particularly valuable in terms of not only communicating with our peer teams but also with the executives."
"The most valuable feature is the NMS because that's the core of the system. Without the NMS, the other tools aren't that usable."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the scale-up and scale-down. The scale-up is an operation where the CPU boosts-up and then the memory will boost-up. That works awesomely."
"We can proactively fix historical issues, so we won't face those problems in future."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"The people in technical support are very good."
"It's a very good tool and a very stable tool."
"As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
"The biggest thing for me is that it provided enough information for me to monitor. It alerts and provides you with the information you need."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"One of the best features is the reports feature."
 

Cons

"Telemetry is hot these days, and IBM can improve SevOne's support for telemetry correction. Reporting is another feature that could be better. It provides the bare minimum functionality, which is good enough for most engineers, but the management isn't advanced. The new portal provides a much lighter view and better visualization, but the management is not so good."
"User-friendly, multi-tenancy."
"One area that requires a little bit of improvement is the topology of visualization and being able to map out connections, end-to-end. It's able to do that, but it's not as impressive as we would like it to be. We would like to understand the different interface types and the connection points better, through the visualization. Heatmaps also need further development."
"The method of searching for SIP and the way to create the groups."
"The reporting of NMS is good, but it could be better."
"I'm not really sure if this was the software's fault or a server issue, but a couple of years back the disks were failing on our SevOne physical server every month and the server would go down. The secondary server took over from the primary until the disk issue was resolved. That was annoying."
"The one area with room for improvement is probably administration. They added data insights to make a better user experience, but I'd like to see some improvements in the way the system's administered."
"SevOne should work with the graphs legend functionality."
"The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"The price of the solution can be improved."
"SolarWinds NPM should be more flexible to accommodate specific customer requirements quickly."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"Complex and overly detailed setup."
"The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Although I don't have exact details in terms of cost, my experience has been that SevOne is willing to make a deal with the customer."
"There are different options available for licensing, with the per-device option being more expensive but more flexible."
"Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.)."
"A blocking point is the high upfront cost because it is challenging to get it accepted and the purchase approved."
"The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing."
"The pricing has not evolved with the market, which is one of the reasons we are moving to a new product."
"It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools."
"Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
"We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes."
"Price could be improved on"
"There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Educational Organization
5%
Educational Organization
58%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SevOne Network Data Platform?
I like the tool’s scalability and real-time reports. Earlier, we struggled to give real-time reports to clients. I also like the tool’s deployment model where we can deploy it either on-premises or...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SevOne Network Data Platform?
The tool is not expensive. We were able to negotiate with SevOne on pricing.
What needs improvement with SevOne Network Data Platform?
SevOne could improve its flexibility because it isn't fully customizable and its out-of-the-box configuration doesn't cover all use cases.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

SevOne
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ATOS, Devereux, Spark New Zealand, Access4, Rogers Communication, Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink)
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.