CA Application Delivery Analysis vs. Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)

Look no farther than this tool if you need an API testing solution that also includes service virtualization. This technology also forces you to move your testing lifecycle to earlier stages of development, which improves the overall SDLC.

Incentivized

More appropriate for:

• Pure Microsoft ecosystem environments (Windows Server and SQL server) and the most common Linux and UNIX platforms.
• Environments where cost is less of a factor than settling on a single platform for monitoring
• Environments where the administrators are familiar with the setup and installation of SCOM.

Less appropriate for:

• Pure UNIX/Linux shops, especially versions not supported out of the box by SCOM.
• Shops that cannot afford the engagement to setup/configure and maintain on a continuous basis.
• Shops that cannot dedicate personnel to the care and feeding of SCOM, especially when supporting larger environments.

Incentivized

• This is an excellent tool for implementing Service virtualization in your own and/or third-party web services. This ensures that our automation and performance test environments are always available and consistent.
• This application also aids in the setup and maintenance of test data, which is an important component of test automation.

Incentivized

• Allows us to visualize our systems in a single interface and see the status of health as well as relevant performance metrics.
• A flexible and powerful interface with active alerting covering domain controllers, SQL servers, etc...
• Allows you to customize your views and workspaces for specific tasks and needs.
• Reporting is powerful and flexible.

Incentivized

• This tool has a license fee and is not free. Many open-source tools provide free API testing solutions, therefore turning some of this tool's features open-source might be beneficial.
• The tool's load testing component is not integrated and instead relies on the free Blaze meter.

Incentivized

• One of the biggest drawbacks to SCOM is the sheer scope and complexity of the system. This can be a pro and a con. The system is very customizable, what you put into it is what you'll get out of it. That said, the learning curve is fairly steep. An organization needs to be committed to putting time and resources into SCOM to get the most out of it. I've heard stories from colleagues of several different companies that invested in SCOM and then abandoned it due to the excessive time and care required.
• SCOM is expensive. Not only is the enterprise licensing costly, SCOM requires it's own servers, operational and warehouse databases to be maintained.
• The OOB SCOM reports are a bit clunky and feel outdated.

Incentivized

Hard to get support. The product is not being actively developed anymore, so it is hard to get new features for the product.

Incentivized

Along with the Parasoft SOA tool, it is unquestionably among the top leaders in API testing and virtualization. Many open-source API testing libraries are free, including Rest Assured, Karate, and even Postman and SOAP UI, which goes against CA.

Incentivized

We used Altiris and WSUS and in the beginning Altiris had the better admin interface than SCOM, but it is no longer the case as SCOM has refined their admin interface. Altiris still has better and more robust group assignments for management roles and those two other tools can better manage non Windows OS devices than SCOM but for a large enterprise Windows shop, if you can afford it, SCOM is the way to go.

Incentivized

• In our group, this instrument produced a high return on investment. We saw a considerable reduction in downtime in our test environments thanks to service virtualization.
• In addition, service virtualization reduces the expenses of interacting with third-party services, which is common in low-cost contexts.

Incentivized

• It has allowed us to provide an Enterprise Event/Alert management solution to the Global company
• It has taken a long time to get it to provide valuable alerts and information, lots of user resources and investment.
• It assists with 24/7 monitoring and out of hours support

Incentivized