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IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 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 Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
Ranking in Event Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zenoss Cloud
Ranking in Event Monitoring
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (33rd), Network Monitoring Software (73rd), Server Monitoring (25th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (55th), Container Monitoring (11th), Cloud Monitoring Software (40th), AIOps (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus is 8.4%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 1.7%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Salman - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
ClaudiaChen - PeerSpot reviewer
Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features
As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus supports legacy protocols like CORBA, Huawei, and other telecom protocols, which I find beneficial."
"The most valuable feature is the event management capability."
"It's good for managed systems. The end query on the user interface is good. You can view lots of charts and graphs."
"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."
"The monitoring is the solution's most valuable feature."
"Offers very good event/alert drill-down and statistical reporting capabilities."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."
"It's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."
 

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."
"The solution needs to invest in the development of a knowledge base and use of AI services for providing event resolution and intervention directions."
"The cost of the product is quite high. They should work to adjust their pricing models."
"Its technical support team takes longer to reply."
"There should be an easier-to-understand model, more of a flat-structured model rather than different tiers of licenses which complicates licensing."
"They could enhance the visibility to give us a unified view of our entire IT infrastructure."
"The solution has limitations in database integration as it cannot integrate with databases other than IBM DB2."
"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."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."
"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"
"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
 

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."
"It is a costly solution."
"You have to have the right level of budget to afford this solution."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."
"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
17%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

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 is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consolidated Communications, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Capgemini
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus vs. Zenoss Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.