We compared IBM SevOne Network Performance Monitoring and SolarWinds NPM across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: IBM SevOne NPM users like its modular design, performance management reports, and real-time insights. The solution is also praised for its SNMP data collection and integration with ITSM solutions. SolarWinds NPM is commended for its adaptability and extensive network surveillance functionalities.
Room for Improvement: IBM SevOne NPM could benefit from better SD-WAN capabilities and live maps. Users say the solution could also improve its AI/ML modules and provide more actionable insights. SolarWinds NPM needs improvement in edge computing capabilities and data reporting. Users also said the performance could be better and that they would like to see expanded IPAM functionality.
Service and Support: Customers reported generally positive experiences with IBM customer service, praising the support team's availability and responsiveness. However, some users said they would rather not have to rely so heavily on support for upgrades. While some customers described SolarWinds support as helpful and responsive, others reported delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for IBM SevOne NPM is described as quick and uncomplicated, although some users may require extra configuration. Some users said SolarWinds NPM was straightforward to set up, while others perceived it as complex.
Pricing: IBM SevOne NPM is seen as costly, particularly for smaller businesses. The cost of SolarWinds NPM varies depending on the customer’s size and requirements. Some users find it expensive.
ROI: IBM SevOne NPM offers features such as device maintenance and out-of-the-box reports that contribute to its value. Some users reported immediate benefits from using SolarWinds NPM in terms of security and business outcomes, while others have not.
Comparison Results: IBM SevOne NPM stands out for its real-time insights, integration capabilities, straightforward setup, and top-notch customer service. Users say the solution could improve its AI/ML capabilities and lower its pricing to be more affordable for smaller businesses. SolarWinds NPM is a customizable solution that’s easy to deploy and features comprehensive network monitoring capabilities. However, some users consider it costly and voiced concerns about technical support and user experience.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"It also gives us the closest thing to real-time insight into network performance that we have, with just a 10-second delay. It's very important for us to know the health of the infrastructure very quickly."
"Its ability to monitor practically any type of network device via SNMP is most valuable. This is the main functionality that we're using. If a network device exposes a metric, such as interface utilization, SevOne will monitor it for us."
"SevOne provides support for all universal connectors. They internally work with other data sources to get features implemented. We have an SD-WAN implementation and use other app data to monitor performance. If you pull that data into one centralized location, that is very useful for management."
"It's a great solution for highlighting and discovering useful information regarding our network's elements."
"One of the solution's biggest strengths is its capacity management performance, with out-of-the-box reports through NMS, as well as its ability to collect NetFlow-related data from devices. The collection of network performance and flow data is important because we have many critical business applications."
"The most valuable feature as of late has been the API integration with ServiceNow."
"Data Insight reporting tool is the most valuable feature. They came up with it a couple of years ago. The most pleasing factor is the dark theme. You don't have a white background. It has templates that you can create for all kinds of reports that you can hit on the fly. It's much better printing of the reports. If you want to send PDFs to people, the reports are actually decent. Whereas for years, the old architecture of the PDFs was rubbish and even our customers said, "We have to manipulate your PDFs because they all have bad margin breaks. SevOne fixed that a couple of years ago with the new Data Insight. It's fantastic."
"The out of the box reports and workflows are pretty good and they meet our requirements well."
"The people in technical support are very good."
"The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"The solution is easy to install and it takes a couple of hours."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds NPM is the performance monitoring to see the memory, and CPU utilization."
"We found that it was easy to operate, and it was simple if anyone has entry-level working experience or even if someone is not experienced."
"We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The GUI: both the dashboard/user view and the admin tool."
"With the administrative management of the appliance, if some object appears from SevOne because something changed in the network or whatever, then as an administrator you will not be aware. If you are using this object in a report, this object will disappear from the report and you will not be aware of it. So, if you have 1,000 reports, you cannot always check these reports everyday to see if objects are missing or information has disappeared. We don't have any information on alerts, saying that something is happening there and maybe we need to take action. If an object was replaced by another one, or if a link was replaced by another one, then the graph needs to be changed because it doesn't exist in the graph anymore. However, we don't have this information."
"The user management features need to be improved. It would be nice if we had more granular control, or layers of control, out of the box."
"NMS has several areas for improvement. It should be more user-friendly inside of NMS for some of the functionality in there. It's been getting better the last version or two, but the there have been bugs in there whenever I've gone to new versions."
"We need to be thinking about streaming telemetry protocols. They already have the port for enhanced visualization, which they already have through Data Insight."
"I'm not really sure if this was the software's fault or a server issue, but a couple of years back the disks were failing on our SevOne physical server every month and the server would go down. The secondary server took over from the primary until the disk issue was resolved. That was annoying."
"Would benefit with the addition of AI modules for proactive data insights."
"High-frequency polling is data-intensive because you're pulling more. If SevOne could figure out a way to manage the impact of high-frequency polling on the system, that would be very popular."
"The scalability can be better."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data. SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed. Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature. I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited."
"This product could improve by adding cloud monitoring. I want SolarWinds NPM to do much more integration, and have more involvement in cloud monitoring, like AWS or Google, or Azure. I feel like it requires lots of improvement for cloud monitoring in NPM."
"The price of the solution can be improved."
"The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"I would like to see integration with antivirus or other security endpoint solutions."
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IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is ranked 27th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 52 reviews while SolarWinds NPM is ranked 6th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 147 reviews. IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is rated 8.6, while SolarWinds NPM is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) writes "We can get a new vendor certified and monitored in our system significantly faster than before". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds NPM writes "High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface". IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) is most compared with Instana Infrastructure Monitoring, LogicMonitor, SolarWinds Network Device Monitor, Splunk Enterprise Security and Dynatrace, whereas SolarWinds NPM is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, ManageEngine OpManager, ThousandEyes and Entuity. See our IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs. SolarWinds NPM report.
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