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SCOM vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (3rd)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SCOM is 2.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

MarcMermuys - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient monitoring with robust integration capabilities
We use SCOM to configure different monitors using several management packs. It integrates systems like Active Directory and correlates them, and it is used for monitoring and managing systems SCOM allows integration of several systems, providing correlation between different systems such as…
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

"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"The product’s auto-remediation feature helps with automation."
"I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time."
"The solution has improved our overrides and the ability to start services if they're stopped."
"This solution allows us to standardize all of the reports for monitoring the network, so it helps a lot for auditing purposes."
"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"The most valuable features in SCOM are Azure monitoring and integration with Azure Monitor for monitoring Azure-hosted servers from SCOM on-premises."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is the capability of using classes within your management pack development."
"All the features are very good. The monitoring of the equipment, the configuration manager, and the IP address monitoring are great."
"SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks."
"The solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities."
"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."
"From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization."
"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes."
"I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical."
 

Cons

"The solution can be improved by expanding to cloud usage."
"I would like more customized reports. People should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it. Beyond customizing the content, there should be the ability to customize the colors so that they can engage some priority and mark challenges separately."
"They can focus more on cloud monitoring instead of on-premise monitoring. We should be able to monitor cloud-related applications. They can include this feature in the next release. If it is in the cloud, we can have scalability by using Kubernetes. The container is containerized, packaged, and managed using Kubernetes. This feature is not there in SCOM. Going forward, if they can focus on that, it will be great."
"Direct integration with third-party tools, like ticketing systems, is lacking but would be beneficial."
"There could be more integration of SIM in the solution."
"The configurations could be better. There are multiple tests where you can do something, but they can be a trigger as well. The overriding methodologies are not that easy. The configurations are difficult. The configuration and thorough day-to-day operations to get them to the level you want takes some time. It's very difficult."
"I would like to see them improve their network monitoring."
"The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult."
"If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"It is difficult for stakeholders to translate technical requirements, which results in difficulties selecting a platform or implementing a solution."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"The integration needs to be improved."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds added some technical protocols like Modbus. The market needs a simple solution for monitoring a technical device."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"It is expensive."
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other products in the same category."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
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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
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
57%
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 SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
SCOM is not as straightforward in terms of user interface or general experience, which could be improved. Additionally, I would like to see a software-as-a-service version in Azure to eliminate the...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dialog Telekom
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about SCOM vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.