FortiManager vs. Tivoli Monitoring (legacy)

FortiManager is well suited for any environment with multiple and dispersed FortiGate firewalls. It will not manage other firewall platforms. Therefore, you either have to use multiple centralized management software, one for each firewall vendor, or invest in alternative tools such as Tufin, AlgoSec, FireMon, SolarWinds, etc. However, you will not get a more inclusive tool for your FortiGate firewalls other than FortiManager.

Incentivized

If you are looking for a software that looks decent but is not something you truly rely on, this is it. I have had bad experiences with IBM Tivoli Monitoring reporting on system errors that were not evident on the systems themselves at all. There is a lot of specific alerting you can set up which is nice.

Incentivized

• Centralized FortiGate FW Management in a single console
• Available physical, virtual, or cloud deployment
• Single console for next-generation FW features
• Multiple Administrative Domains

Incentivized

• The GUI is easy to read.
• The software is fairly easy to configure.
• Almost real-time.

Incentivized

• Support contracts are difficult to manage or make changes to
• Next Generation subscriptions are managed individually, i.e. pegged to specific firewalls
• Cumbersome to bring existing firewalls to be covered under a single contract

Incentivized

• The software is not reliable at all.
• Reports errors that are false-negatives.
• Hard to configure alarms/alerts.
• Bulky installation (takes up quite a bit of space).

Incentivized

FortiManager is the best choice for managing numerous FortiGate firewalls. It allows for easy integration into ServiceNow and automates simple repetitive tasks that are very straightforward. Role-based access control is easy to enable and you can get quite granular with user permissions. Administrative Domains help segregate firewall management and compliance within the FortiManager console, by almost any classification method that makes sense to your organization.

Incentivized

We selected IBM Tivoli Monitoring as a bundle deal, other than that I would have probably gone with another vendor. We use Brocade Network Advisor for our SAN also which I would suggest to anyone over this software. The software has not been that reliable for me since we started using it.

Incentivized

• Allowed for quick migration from legacy firewall platforms
• NOC and SOC visibility of entire threat surface
• Intuitive user interface
• Extremely quick learning curve

Incentivized

• I would not purchase this again.
• Other software monitoring tools have been more reliable and easier to manage.
• Difficult to manage, if you patch the server the software is installed on and have to reboot it, IBM Tivoli Monitoring does not come up clean.

Incentivized