PeerSpot user
IT Coordinator at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
The whole platform overall is very powerful.
Pros and Cons
  • "Best feature of all is detailed monitoring of services, processes, ports and SSL certificates and or web content."

    What is most valuable?

    The whole platform overall is very powerful. Best feature of all is detailed monitoring of services, processes, ports and SSL certificates and or web content. SSL certificate monitoring function is really great, one does not need to use third party software or worst ... spreadsheet.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The EM7 platform allows one to allocate resources and point them in the right direction when needed. We can monitor 6000k devices with only handful of people 24/7.

    What needs improvement?

    Ticketing improved dramatically from when I started working with the EM7 platform. Guys at ScienceLogic are always open to new suggestions and their voting system allows them to develop tools that are truly needed.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    6 Years

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    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    Not at all. Deployment was pretty straight forward and ScienceLogic engineers were able to deploy EM7 quickly and efficiently. We are about to migrate to Virtualized system which I'm sure would be even easier.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    No, even with 6000 devices we did not encounter any stability issues. Our system worked perfectly from day one.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability is pretty easy. You have few different option of hardware (Dell) that you can use to expand your system by adding more collectors or expand your database.

    How are customer service and support?

    Customer Service:

    Customer service is amazing, ScienceLogic is growing quickly however it still has a small company feel what allows their engineers to know your system well from the ground up. They are always flexible with scheduling and allow you to choose best dates that fit your calendar.

    Technical Support:

    Technical Support is always there. If its small or big question I never had to wait in a queue. Usually it take them 2-3 rings to pick up the phone. Once a call is initiated they log in to your system within 5 minutes and start resolving issues and answering questions where needed.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    No, ScienceLogic is the first solution that we used since there is no one out there that provides monitoring and ticketing in the same system.

    How was the initial setup?

    Initial setup is very straightforward. Appliances with prebuild system are being shipped to you (either All in one for smaller customers or collector, database and API for anyone with few thousand devices.) System is pretty much plug and play and required only few hours of setup.

    What about the implementation team?

    We have implemented our system via in house team. Their experience is great and they always have answers and solutions at their fingertips.

    What was our ROI?

    Unfortunately I do not have information on this subject since ROI is not being calculated by me. If I had to guess ROI would be around 150%

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Calculate your devices and decide how many SNMP and PING devices you needed. Pricing between the two is quiet large therefore you can save some money if you don't require to collect all info on each device.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    No other options were on the market at the time when ScienceLogic came out with their Em7 platform. Their product is specializing not only in monitoring but also in Ticketing.

    What other advice do I have?

    ScienceLogic is a great company! I worked with them for the past 6years and their growth shows that they are the leader in monitoring segment for small to medium companies. Keep up good work.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    PeerSpot user
    Member of Technical Staff at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees
    Vendor
    Includes the ability to write custom dynamic applications, and custom dashboards.

    What is most valuable?

    The ability to write custom dynamic applications, and the ability to create custom dashboards to display multiple device graphs in one place.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We have been using EM7 as our monitoring solution since our product was launched 7 years ago. EM7 has allowed us to respond quickly to service outages, and has been a great help in identifying the cause of these outages.

    What needs improvement?

    The upgrade process occasionally proves to be exciting. ScienceLogic Support is always able to resolve the exciting issues promptly, but I'd rather seem them not appear in the first place.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    My company: 7 years

    Me personally: 3 years

    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    No. Initial deployment is always quick and easy. I'be deployed more than a dozen appliances and not encountered any issues.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Not with EM7, just with my hardware. Even in those instances, ScienceLogic support has been a great help in getting things running again.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The only scalability issues I've encountered have been due to bugs in my hardware. When I have followed heir published hardware recommendations and used reliable hardware I have seen no scalability issues.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    Excellent. I've only called to address licensing issues, and they have always been able to resolve my issues quickly.

    Technical Support:

    The best I've ever experienced. No matter whether my issue has been due to system configuration, operator inexperience, or hardware problems, they have always been able to guide me to a prompt resolution.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I've used Nagios a number of times, and have tried Zabbix and a couple others. All of the other solutions make generating graphs and configuring alerts a painful process. With EM7 it's painless.

    How was the initial setup?

    Very simple. With the auto-discovery capability, I didn't have to created complicated configuration files like with Nagios.

    What about the implementation team?

    In-house. The solution was initially implemented by my boss, but I took over 3 years ago. Since then I have thoroughly enjoyed supporting EM7.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The product is a bit expensive, but impressive capability and expandability comes at a price. My management team has never hesitated to approve my requests for new licenses.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    My boss tells me that they looked at Nagios and Zabbix, and discovered that they didn't offer nearly the capabilities offered by EM7. The fact that our primary provider of satellite communications services also uses EM7 was an additional big help in making the choice.

    What other advice do I have?

    I highly recommend on-site training from ScienceLogic's staff. They convey a great deal of information very quickly and painlessly.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
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    ScienceLogic
    April 2024
    Learn what your peers think about ScienceLogic. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
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    PeerSpot user
    Associate IT Infrastructure Specialist at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Event creation, device relation building, and customization are excellent aspects of ScienceLogic for infrastructure and application monitoring.

    What is most valuable?

    Event creation, device relation building, and customization are excellent aspects of ScienceLogic for infrastructure and application monitoring. Dashboards are another excellent feature as that provides a visual representation to application owners and support teams.

    How has it helped my organization?

    ScienceLogic has helped us to create a structural view of our infrastructure and applications that also details trending usage. Correlating the usage with logged events is useful in troubleshooting and knowledge creation.

    What needs improvement?

    One of the main areas for improvement would be the reporting section of ScienceLogic. There is a lot of great information that ScienceLogic collects but the current reporting option are very limited without extensive customization.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Two years

    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    Initial issues in deploying with vlan tagging due to changing network environment. Most of the deployment is very intuitive.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Initial issue involving the hard drive specs created some issues but support was very helpful in solving and assisting us through this issue.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    There was a few issue involving the quantity of devices to be monitored, including the interfaces, versus the amount of collectors required. Larger quantities of interfaces was the biggest issue but just required recalculating how many devices per collectors were necessary.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    Excellent. The customer service and support has been the best of any vendor I have had experience dealing with in my professional history.

    Technical Support:

    I would also rate technical support as excellent. They have stayed with us through every issue we my face and provided consistent updates. The level of skill is exceptional for troubleshooting and has been an incredible resource.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Multiple tools were previously used but limited view, lacking features, and failed support caused use to switch.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was straightforward with the assistance of deployment support. It was a very educational setup.

    What about the implementation team?

    The initial deployment was through ScienceLogic but additional deployments were done through our in-house group. In both cases, deployment was easy and intuitive.

    What was our ROI?

    I believe the prevention and ability to quickly troubleshoot issues is the main ROI. The less time taken to deal with major issues, the more time teams can focus on other issues regarding services provided.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Pricing and licensing is fair depending on how you plan to use ScienceLogic. The range of options ScienceLogic provides makes the cost flexible and reasonable.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Some other options consisted of Nagios and SolarWinds. The reason ScienceLogic was chosen is for it's functionality and customization. It's growing integration with other tools and the ability to grow per customer needs makes it an excellent tool.

    What other advice do I have?

    ScienceLogic is a tool that you can appreciate to multiple levels of technical experience. The ability to customize and grow the tool to the company needs is a huge benefit.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Sr. Director, MSC Technologies at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
    MSP
    Covers a lot of different products and the company generally responds quickly when we reach out to them.

    Valuable Features

    I see the biggest features of EM7 is that it is can cover a lot of different products very quickly and without a ton of effort. In my book, the second biggest feature is the company behind the product, they generally respond quickly to issues with some level of urgency and they seem very motivated to innovate the software.

    I have thought long and hard about the following statement but if I had to setup another shop all over again EM7 would be the first tool I would fire up #truestory.

    Improvements to My Organization

    We can approach many different solutions without a ton of lift on developers which helps us a great deal. We still need to put time into tuning what is in the defaults, but we can get up and running in short order using EM7.

    Room for Improvement

    Reporting is still a gigantic pain point, we invest a lot of cycles in manufacturing reports off-board -#notfun. While EM7 covers a lot of ground quickly and is capable of consuming enormous amounts of event and performance data, EM7 ironically has a hard time reporting on it - basic reporting is there, but if you let's say want to run a report for the last 90 days how many Cisco 2900 routers had a critical power supply incident that for one isn't easy and two needs a developer to write a custom report.

    QA of their power-packs has been an uphill battle at times, and I feel like it's in part due to how EM7 is marketed. When a vendor claims they have a management pack for a given manufacturer, that doesn't necessarily mean its going to be dead on accurate for production use. If you need to make dead certain that the release is going to deliver I have come to learn every in step of the way to production needs thorough testing before putting it into a production environment - moral of the story here is make no assumptions and read your release notes. Also your team time for tuning the software release, like I said EM7 consumes alot of data, that always isn't a good thing.

    For me the UI lays out very logically, then again I use it every day, but for many of our users navigating the UI gets confusing quickly and before long the user gets lost and frustrated and they give up. The UI for any end user facing systems needs to welcome all walks of life, EM7 at present( I know they are working on the UI currently) is really geared to the end users who are professional engineers not necessarily the weekender admin - which if you are professional engineer you're going to feel right at home.

    Deployment Issues

    Deployment went very smooth, their installation engineers still engage with us with is a luxury not every vendor can handle.

    Stability Issues

    It's been a real workhorse for us, but you gotta take care of the horse.

    Scalability Issues

    As it relates to scalability : if you follow all the rules, take time to read the manuals, its infinitely scalable in my opinion. That said we haven't had any issues with scalability :)

    Customer Service and Technical Support

    Customer Service:

    Superior to most, they have a good account coverage plan, we get treated pretty well even when there is bad news.

    Technical Support:

    Probably some of the best in the business at getting to the root of the issue quickly.

    Implementation Team

    We implemented through a vendor team initially, our team seemed to have root level knowledge of the system. I haven't seen many of their engineers spending any time scratching their head on situations.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user3537 - PeerSpot reviewer
    it_user3537Director of Product Marketing at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
    Vendor

    Kalani – thanks for your review. As you know, we’re constantly enhancing the ScienceLogic platform in response to customer feedback. The reporting enhancements you referenced are an area of emphasis. In upcoming releases, expect to see revamped reporting as well as significant usability improvements for all (including casual users and the weekender admin) as we introduce new navigation and workflows. Feel free to reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more information. We sincerely appreciate your feedback!

    PeerSpot user
    Service Manager - Remote Monitoring and Management Center at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
    MSP
    The customizable dashboard is my favorite feature. Overall monitoring capabilities could be improved.

    What is most valuable?

    The customizable dashboard is my favorite feature. I have everything that matters to me in my role available immediately at sign on. I also love that we can customize a customers dashboard view, from analyst to C-level executive we can give the customer exactly what they want/need to see at sign on.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We have been able to utilize categories and grouping for both customers and devices to streamline our processes for both monitoring and management of those devices.

    What needs improvement?

    Overall monitoring capabilities could be improved. We run into instances where we are not able to configure monitoring for specific things and requires quite a bit of manual labor to accomplish these tasks.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have used this solution for about 3 years.

    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    I was not a part of the original deployment team so I am unsure. I have been involved in some customer deployments and things seem to run quite smoothly.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The main stability issues we encounter are during upgrades which tend to take longer to apply than scheduled. The stability tends to be fantastic.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We have found this solution to be quite scalable and at this price point it seems to be intended for enterprise level customers.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    The customer service at ScienceLogic is excellent. We have multiple routes we can use as escalation when needed but we really have not had the need to at this point.

    Technical Support:

    The technical support provided by ScienceLogic is above average. The built in programming is excellent. Sometimes it is difficult to apply to monitoring but when it works it is great.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I was not with the company I am now prior to us utilizing ScienceLogic and EM7 as a monitoring tool.

    How was the initial setup?

    Again, I was not part of the initial setup I joined my company after things were originally launched.

    What about the implementation team?

    Again, I was not part of the initial setup I joined my company after things were originally launched.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    This tends to be an expensive solution that is geared toward enterprise level customers. You will need to have an intermediate monitoring option as well.

    What other advice do I have?

    There are some very nice features built into this solution but it does seem to serve enterprise level customers more than any others.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    PeerSpot user
    System and Network Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
    Vendor
    Network monitoring in general is very important, having the ability to customize and being able to identify more than just a node is down.

    What is most valuable?

    Network monitoring in general is very important, having the ability to customize and being able to identify more than just a node is down.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Web monitoring, service and processes monitoring have saved and prevented more than just one outage.

    The product works great and I feel what the team is doing and how they are moving is a testimony to their success.

    What needs improvement?

    Outside of key to the kingdom they are doing a good job with updates and patches for adding new features.

    Product works great and I feel what the team is doing and how they are moving is a testimony to their success.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    2 Years

    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    At times but honestly the support staff is amazing.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    No.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    No.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    Amazing, at times the best it can be.

    Technical Support:

    5 stars

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    No

    How was the initial setup?

    Easy to follow plus they allow for a rep to assist with the install.

    What about the implementation team?

    Amazing.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Licensing is easy to follow but can get expensive for the more devices that you want to add.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Yes, but this was before my time as an employee.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user194697 - PeerSpot reviewer
    System Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
    Consultant
    We were using Nagios but switched to ScienceLogic to centralize our monitoring, graphing, and alerting systems.

    What is most valuable?

    The best feature is how customizable the platform is. It can be integrated into various systems, processes, and customized to the client's liking.

    How has it helped my organization?

    The product was able to centralize our monitoring, graphing, and alerting systems (including PagerDuty integration).

    What needs improvement?

    Usability is important. The interface is nice, but very complex and requires lots of learning involved in managing and navigating the product.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I used this solution for over a year, replacing an existing monitoring platform.

    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    No issues encountered with deployment.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    No issues encountered with stability.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Yes - scaling for thousands of servers requires a significant footprint of collectors to handle the load.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    Excellent customer service.

    Technical Support:

    Excellent technical support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Nagios - we switched because ScienceLogic is an all in one solution which is able to do more than Nagios.

    How was the initial setup?

    It was complex - it required their technicians to assist on setting up the system initially.

    What about the implementation team?

    Through ScienceLogic direct. They were very knowledgeable.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Setup and day-to-day cost is negotiable, but having a lot of devices can be expensive in the long run.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We compared ScienceLogic to Nagios, LogicMon, and Zabbix.

    What other advice do I have?

    Test the product thoroughly and do a cost analysis to see if the product is suitable long term.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user200604 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Senior Network & Datacentre Ops Eng at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Has improved our network infrastructure monitoring and reduces any unplanned outages.

    What is most valuable?

    1. Registry information for better inventory pull information
    2. Event information to granular level
    3. Adding support/KB notes to events

    How has it helped my organization?

    Improved network infrastructure monitoring which reduces any unplanned outages.

    What needs improvement?

    Need to have a better export data/copy to clipboard option to transfer the data to do more analytics on the events/trends/graph.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've used it for two years.

    What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

    Error information doesn’t have a good information if something goes wrong while doing a device discovery (I tried this a while back- couldn’t be more specific).

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Never got to know since we have two to three instances running.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    I haven't needed to call them.

    Technical Support:

    I haven't needed to call them.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Yes, and we switched because it had a heavy GUI and was impossible to suppress certain events.

    What about the implementation team?

    In-house.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free ScienceLogic Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: April 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free ScienceLogic Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.