Likelihood to Recommend I would recommend IBM Instana based on its strengths in automating application performance monitoring, dynamic tracing, and its ability to handle modern, containerized environments effectively. The automatic discovery and mapping feature, along with AI-powered anomaly detection, provide valuable insights for proactive issue resolution. However, I would consider factors such as the organization's specific technology stack, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Conducting a thorough evaluation, including a trial or proof of concept, would be essential to ensure that IBM Instana aligns with our unique needs and contributes positively to our technology and business objectives.
Read full review 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. Read full review Pros Collecting Kubernetes and Infra level logs and presenting in easy to understand visuals. Tracing the end-to-end journey of an event and also categorizing by technology and Endpoints Built-in and custom alerts help to monitor almost all of scenarios without much additional configuration. Ability to create Applications to logical group important flows Read full review 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. Read full review Cons I believe that the "live" option in monitoring does not truly update the status in real-time, thus I must manually update to feel comfortable. The call analysis tool might be improved, third-party resources are restricted, and the pricing is slightly more than competitors in comparable categories. Read full review 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. Read full review Support Rating Hard to get support. The product is not being actively developed anymore, so it is hard to get new features for the product.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We chose IBM Instana for several reasons, and the most important one is that we didn't have to make changes in our code for nearly all of our applications for it to work. We are happy with the decision we made to use IBM Instana.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment System down time is shortened as our ability to troubleshoot issues goes up. Potential downtime is stopped as we are able to slow down calls/ availability of calls in response to monitoring the dashboard. We are able to react to issues quickly through the smart alert system rather than manual checks. Read full review 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 Read full review ScreenShots