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Microsoft System Center vs. SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft System Center

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft System Center is an enterprise-grade IT Operations Management (ITOM) suite designed for the centralized administration of data center infrastructure, virtualized environments, and hybrid cloud workloads. The platform provides unified management across heterogeneous environments, including support for Windows Server, Linux, and Azure Stack HCI. System Center is Microsoft's ITOM stack for organizations that maintain a significant on-premise footprint, vs the company's Azure-based…

    $1,323

    per month

    SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/AAustin-based SolarWinds offers Internet Protocal address management (IPAM) networking service.N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    Editions & Modules
    Standard Edition
    $1323
    Datacenter Edition
    $3607
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details—SolarWinds professional support is included to help customers on active maintenance 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    Sorry.. this is the only real IPAM I have used. The old-fashioned way has always been a spreadsheet. So, IPAM is much better than the manual approach.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    I don't know of another solution that is as well-rounded and efficient as SolarWinds IPAM.
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    SolarWinds IPAM is easy to use and has a lot more features than most options. The pricing is better suited to small to mid-size companies. Notifications are easy to setup and provide enough information to track down any issues. We also do not see a lot of false positives in …
    Incentivized
    Chose SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    The integration of IP management, DHCP and AD DNS in one package makes IPAM so much more than just a DNS or just an IP tool.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    91%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    68 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    57 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    69 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    28 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    57 Answers
    User Ratings
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.3
    (58 ratings)
    8.0
    (94 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    8.0
    (14 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    10.0
    (58 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft System CenterSolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    For companies with more than 10 Windows devices and needing to standardize the OS, AV, access, share resources, and install software. SCCM is the way to go. This software is unnecessary if the business is all remote users and not in an office-type setting. There are cloud offerings or none to accomplish what a business needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds IP Address Manager is very useful the bigger and more complex the environment. Smaller organizations will have to consider the cost as it provides little benefit over monitoring maybe 2-3 servers. But I have over 24 DHCP servers with on average 15 subnets each so tracking and monitoring all that was very time-consuming. As a result, it was generally ignored until there was an issue. With SolarWinds IP Address Manager, I was able to set alerts to monitor scope utilization and duplicate IP addresses.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Allows the grouping of devices by user.
    • Allows controlling updates being deployed to user devices.
    • Allows for the repurposing of machines by being able to load new or updated software on machines that already are in the system.
    • Allows us the ability to wipe a machine clean and restore it back to the configuration that was assigned the machine.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • With IPAM automated address scanning, we can be confident that we are looking at an up-to-date, accurate snapshot of our network.
    • The built-in alerts are a great safety net. We know that even if we aren't paying close attention to our IP address space, IPAM is. If a range is nearly full, IPAM lets us know before it becomes a real problem.
    • IPAM's event logging gives us insight into any and all changes made by our network engineers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • The product could improve in the area of having better mechanisms in place with how the SCEP client is deployed/installed from the server on the management side. We have run into this firsthand with the client not installing on an endpoint, and then having to take the time to investigate why it was not installing.
    • A second improvement that can be made is to keep trying to improve the products detection rate for finding malware/viruses. The case can be made that there are some products out there that do a better job at this and have a higher detection rate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • The user experience is not as intuitive as other products. We have to be more restrictive around level 1 help desk access compared to NCM or NPM in SolarWinds.
    • Making and enforcing changes, not just monitoring, has been hit or miss in some instances.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is tightly integrated to Microsoft Windows servers os monitoring with great product support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    We are heavily invested in SolarWinds. We currently own Network Performance Monitor, Netflow Traffic Analyzer, User Device Tracker, Server Application Monitor and Network Configuration Manager. We have NOC mode setup for deskside support for monitoring any down devices that may effect our network across the globe. This application gives us the information we need when we need it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds IPAM is like what SolarWinds itself says, i.e. easy to use and simple. SolarWinds has really made their orion and non-orion platform products so simple that any newbie can give a try and make the best use out of it. I learned SolarWinds IPAM by myself in a POC environment, and not just IPAM but other modules and now I own 6 certifications. You see how easy to use this product is.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We don't have any issues with availability. Our cluster setup provide us a 99,9% availability that is enough for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We do not integrate IPAM into other systems other than the standard Orion integration. The performance is reasonable, however, we are running all the SolarWinds applications on a very large server.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    There is a fair amount of documentation out there to help you when you have questions or run into issues with this product as well as tutorials on some of the more common tasks. Between the documentation and the overall ease of use we haven't had to deal with direct Microsoft support for this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I have not contacted customer support and therefore have no experience in this area. I know we have some issues with our VAR support at this time for Orion, but I don't know if the IPAM falls into the same support structure. Perhaps others in the organization may know more regarding the support area.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    Easy to install with intuitive interactive interface during the installation process a and integration to MS SQL was smooth
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Know the full scope of what you will be installing. Solarwinds can be a very complex installation. IPAM is just one fairly simplistic piece.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds IP Address Manager was cheaper than both alternatives and far easier to manage. Device42 interface is years behind what Solarwinds offers. It is very outdated; BT Diamond required remote management and we constantly had to message support, it reached a point where it was better not to have the product at all.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We have not experienced any scalability issues with this product. However, SolarWinds needs to allow users to scale horizontally without any license restrictions. For example, we would like to separate Netflow and Orion onto different platforms but are unable to due to license restrictions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • It has allowed the enterprise to standardize on a single platform for monitoring.
    • Easier troubleshooting of issues with Microsoft platforms.
    • Greater visibility of issues across platforms when applications are hosted in a mixed environment.
    • Additional costs for monitoring systems that are not directly supported with additional packs (iSeries, Linux on Power).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • IPAM has saved countless hours of running scripts and gathering data to compile reports to plan re-subnetting globally.
    • IPAM has reduced helpdesk incidents by immediately spotting bad DNSR and IP conflicts.
    • IPAM has helped eliminate blocks on projects whereas there is not currently enough address space requiring major changes to accommodate more IP'ed servers, gear, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Customize your IP address management dashboard to quickly focus on your top priorities.Screenshot of Manage your DHCP and DNS services in one place.Screenshot of Streamline IP requests with a simple intake and approval wizard.Screenshot of Automatically scan for subnets or manually add.