Foglight vs. Microsoft System Center Service Manager

Strengths [Foglight]

• Monitoring, Alerting and Management of on-prem virtualization and physical servers
• Historical trending and baselining are excellent and being able to compare a problem period against the same sets of data for a period when there was no issue is especially helpful as part of troubleshooting.
• Ease of use for end users is appreciated

Weaknesses [of Foglight]

• Creation and management of custom monitors is a developer level activity requiring Groovy skillset
• Less useful for management of an environment where there is a large amount of custom implementations
• Commitment to longevity of cartridges/packs for specific subsystems
• Ability to create custom schedules/alerts/escalations is only available via a 3rd party product (from a former Quest developer) and is not particularly easy to manage/manipulate
• Lack of API accessibility for external integrations to other analytics (splunk, etc.)

Incentivized

We use Microsoft System Center Service Manager in the education sector. We believe this is the only real way to manage our IT systems and ensure compliance for not only today but tomorrow as well (what ever that brings!) Our IT management team significantly streamlined our working practices to mold a slick IT support service which serves our end users efficiently. Microsoft System Center Service Manager brought added automation and clarity for all major stakeholders in our organization through detailed reporting and scheduling, ensuring a complete realtime picture of the IT estate.

Incentivized

• Database monitoring
• Database management suite
• Customization (both monitors and dashboards)

Incentivized

• This tool is used to track support requests among our IT staff.
• We use this tool to automate some more routine tasks.

Incentivized

• There are not many problems with this product
• Limited ability to use Foglight itself to solve problems it identifies

Incentivized

• The software requires a lot of memory to run smoothly, otherwise it will be slow.
• It takes some time to learn, and training prices are a bit high.
• The price is a bit high; System Center is not a cheap solution.

Incentivized

As with all software, Microsoft System Center Service Manager has its quirks but it has more than made up for them with the sheer amount of functions the system brings to the table. Being based on the ITIL framework really shows with its design/terminology and, generally, we have found it 'just clicks' with our ITIL trained staff which makes operating our system straightforward and enables us to report to end users and all stakeholders consistently with ease.

Incentivized

The customer support service is excellent. They help from start/deployment through to any time later on. They responded quickly and resolved our issues professionally and in no time.

Incentivized

Incentivized

I can't really compare them as we haven't used an "all in one" tool like SCCM. There are other patch management software, other remote control applications, and to be honest, I find those work better when compared to SCCM. However, there hasn't been an application yet that does it all, so I feel it's unfair to compare. All of these tools that SCCM offers could/should be fine-tuned and made to be a bit more user-friendly.

Incentivized

• Foglight has a positive impact on my company by being a complete monitoring platform that specializes in risk assessment, user diagnosis and management, and server monitoring ensuring a secure business infrastructure through predictive analytics, query analysis, anomaly detection, behavior tracking, troubleshooting, automated discovery, and more.

Incentivized

• The tool has saved money in a transition from another 3rd party tool
• It simplifies the ease of use for users. This is similar to other Microsoft tools
• We are able to provide reports of system performance when questions arise about availability.

Incentivized