SCOM vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

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Read 78 SCOM reviews
1,404 views|856 comparisons
86% willing to recommend
SolarWinds Logo
1,677 views|1,085 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SCOM and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, ServiceNow, Microsoft and others in Event Monitoring.
To learn more, read our detailed Event Monitoring Report (Updated: June 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I like the historical reporting of observer metrics.""The solution is used for monitoring the hardware inventory. For instance, it helps with the whole operational monitoring view for the company's infrastructure.""The ease of deployment, especially on Windows platforms, is valuable.""I enjoy its integration with the Microsoft Active Directory functions, which means users, computers, or other group policies can connect with Windows Active Directory.""The most valuable features for us are the monitoring, the health explorer, and the console.""The most valuable feature is the monitoring of Windows and Linux servers.""It can send messages to our ticketing system.""SCOM's most valuable features are the network path feature, reporting, and integration with business intelligence."

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"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management.""Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer.""Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time.""It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services.""The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager.""The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value.""I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users.""SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"

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Cons
"Application monitoring must be improved.""There could be more integration of SIM in the solution.""In terms of features that could be improved, I would say the agent integration into the operating system. We are having difficulties integrating Linux into some of the networking devices.""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.""The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult.""It lacks certain details that other products do better, like granular access and better application monitoring.""There are some negative points about this product. Sometimes, the capabilities of the software don't appear, and you can't directly see the results. You have to wait for a long period to refresh the policy to push it to the software or other patches.""It'll help if they can provide real-time or closer to real-time monitoring."

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"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts.""When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed.""Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based.""Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed.""Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance.""The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us.""It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle.""SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing and licensing are fair."
  • "Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
  • "If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
  • "It is more expensive than the competition."
  • "SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
  • "We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
  • "The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
  • "We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
  • More SCOM Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
  • "When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
  • "Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
  • "I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
  • "Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
  • "SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
  • "Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
  • "The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
  • More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
    Top Answer:It is the cheapest product available in the market. I rate the pricing a one out of ten.
    Top Answer:SCOM needs to improve its usability.
    Top Answer:The price is too high. The tool is overpriced. We don't need all the features. The product must minimize the features and reduce the price. It all comes down to pricing. The customers find it pretty… more »
    Top Answer:The biggest pain point is root cause analysis. It is difficult to analyze, assess, and warn my IT department about what will happen in the next five hours. It is also difficult to use AIOps to reduce… more »
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 20 in Event Monitoring
    Views
    1,404
    Comparisons
    856
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    426
    Rating
    8.2
    10th
    out of 42 in Server Monitoring
    Views
    1,677
    Comparisons
    1,085
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    443
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
    SolarWinds SAM
    Learn More
    Overview

    SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) is a cross-platform data center monitoring and reporting tool that checks the status of various objects defined within the environment, such as server hardware, system services, etc. The solution allows data center administrators to deploy, configure, manage, and monitor the operations, services, devices and applications of multiple enterprise IT systems via a single pane of glass. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes.

    SCOM Features

    SCOM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Application monitoring
    • Database monitoring
    • Threshold alerts
    • IT Asset Discovery
    • Predictive capabilities
    • Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting
    • Application performance management console
    • Server availability and performance monitoring
    • Collaboration tools
    • Virtualization monitoring
    • Patch management
    • Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications
    • Application dependency mapping and thresholding

    SCOM Benefits

    There are several benefits to implementing SCOM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Management and monitoring of Windows as well as Unix/Linux platforms
    • Remotely connect to Windows machines and perform administrative tasks from the console itself
    • Custom dashboard creation to help monitor the datacenter with ease
    • Agent based monitoring
    • Integrates well with other Microsoft products
    • Easy to use and reliable

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SCOM solution.

    A Manager at a financial services firm says, “The feature I like most about SCOM is that it is easy-to-use. I find it very user-friendly. I also like the knowledge base which it has. You can find the resolution to questions or issues directly within the SCOM itself. It will alert you with a recommendation of what you need to do at the same time. This sort of self-diagnosis or prompting is one of the great values you get from SCOM compared to other solutions.”

    PeerSpot user Zahari Z., Information Technology Auditor at a financial services firm, mentions, “Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications. There is a mechanism to set up a notification from the SCOM and whenever there is a drop in the availability the notification alerts not only for availability but for other issues as well. You can align thresholds according to the speed of your environment and you can have a threshold related notification, which is one of the useful features.”

    Bill W., Sr. Systems Engineer at Arapahoe County Government, comments, “ I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time. When we patch, things are automatically put into maintenance mode so that the numbers for our systems being down, do not count against us.”

    A Project Manager at a tech services company explains, “The feature I have found most valuable is the book feature. While we run the Sprint one we can add some setups for multiple sprints.”

    A Systems Engineer at an educational organization states, “Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it.”

    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

    Sample Customers
    Dialog Telekom
    Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Retailer13%
    Government10%
    Healthcare Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Government11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Construction Company13%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization41%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise69%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise48%
    Large Enterprise41%
    Buyer's Guide
    Event Monitoring
    June 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, ServiceNow, Microsoft and others in Event Monitoring. Updated: June 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    SCOM is ranked 3rd in Event Monitoring with 78 reviews while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked 10th in Server Monitoring with 38 reviews. SCOM is rated 7.8, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of SCOM writes "Has a good reporting engine, but its monitoring of the cloud-based environment could be improved". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor writes "We use this product for base and application monitoring. ". SCOM is most compared with Dynatrace, Zabbix, Datadog, Nagios XI and AppDynamics, whereas SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus and Lenovo XClarity Controller.

    We monitor all Event Monitoring reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.