IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs OPS/MVS Automation Intelligence comparison

"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."

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

"The most valuable feature is the event management capability."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Because we can define complex commands, the training of new operators is quicker. We can also put checks in place, that will prevent user errors."

"The documentation is simple, easy to follow, and use. A limited, first-time systems programmer can do it, in that it is out-of-the-box almost functional."

"It reduces the number of repetitive motions required by a human to respond to the system."

"It's very flexible. You can customize what you need to, which is good. For example, you can do your own coding inside the tool, make your own scripting tooling."

"It allows us to respond faster to issues. If there are issues that come out, we're able to capture a message and alert somebody about it."

"With the automation pieces we can bring this region up or take this region down, and it allows us to always meet our time critical requirements."

"I do not have to keep recordings. It is there and is proactive. It helps the operators, human editors, and me."

"Valuable features include: SSM, which provides for orderly startup and shutdown; OPSLOG, which enables filtering by message-id, and/or jobname(s); Rules, as OPS/REXX interface streamlines deployment, interfaces easily with JES2 and z/OS."

"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."

"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."

"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"The reason sometimes it is not stable, we do not have the expertise to write the script.​"

"The further expansion of the mainframe teamcenter interface. Also, the web services support is something that I am looking into."

"The GUI interface could be improved, but that is coming. They are working on that."

"Performing a stop/restart of OPS/MVS could be a little smoother. Without special coding, some undesired tasks will be started and some necessary tasks will be stopped if we have to bounce OPS/MVS during the day."

"​It’s a complex product. The initial installation is easy, but implementing various functions is a constant process.​"

"One thing that comes to mind is the MQ interface. The last time we tried to use it, it seemed a little clunky."

"Because of its age, it's a little bit difficult to modernize some of the integrations and some of the functions."

"Scalability is zero. It cannot be scaled because of its age."

"It is a costly solution."

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

"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."