IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server

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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 Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus

Ranking in Event Monitoring

3rd

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...

Ranking in Event Monitoring

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 9.5%, up from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 1.2%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Event Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Salman

Performance & Monitoring Supervisor at Saudi Telecom Company

Aids in network performance monitoring and management

I am working as a customer, mainly using IntelliQ and another product, IBM NetCool, Watson AI. These products are used for monitoring network performance and management. The primary use case involves network performance monitoring, and it is compatible only with IBM DB2 IBM Tivoli NetCool…

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SeniorDB3550

Senior DBA Lead at a government with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"It's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."

"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 biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform."

"It is an easy-to-use solution."

"OMNIbus is valuable for its compatibility and performance, as I haven't encountered any performance issues."

"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."

"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."

More IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."

"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."

"Memory and CPU utilization features are good."

Cons

"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."

"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."

"The web portal and typical event controls are a little outdated."

"I would like for the next release to be more user-friendly and out of date. The next release should focus on the cloud, AI, and ML technologies."

"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."

"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."

"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."

More IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus cons

"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."

"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."

"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."

"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."

"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."

"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."

"It is a costly solution."

"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

18%

Energy/Utilities Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?

The biggest plus points for me are the configurability and scalability of the solution, as well as the multi-tenancy of the platform.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?

If the various HW elements are from the same vendor, a monitoring solution provided by that vendor or its partners will potentially result in lower licensing and operational costs. Moreover, for ve...

What needs improvement with IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus?

IBM is working on converting NetCool to NetCool Operations Insight, which runs on Watson AI. There were areas needing improvement in terms of AI, however, they have migrated the entire NetCool suit...

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.

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Product Reports

IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus

Download IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus product report

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server

Download IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server product report

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server report

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager

Overview

Tivoli Netcool OMNIbus provides near real-time service assurance for business infrastructure, applications, servers, network devices and protocols, Internet protocols, storage and security devices.

IBM

SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server helps database administrators to find and fix SQL Server performance problems in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Unlike its competition, it provides effective scalability, advanced SQL query analysis and optimization, prescriptive analysis with corrective SQL scripts, powerful automated alert responses, broad PowerShell integration, complete customization, and extensive support for current and legacy SQL Server and Windows.

IDERA

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini

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

IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server