SCOM and/or OMS? What is what?

I just came back from the F5 Forum Paris, another great event for the F5 customers and partners. The F5 team France made a great job of connecting customers with solution providers. We had so many interesting conversations with the customers and there was one question being repeated frequently:

What is the role of the SCOM now when the OMS is available and rapidly evolving?

In my opinion, the answer to this question is not difficult. The SCOM is best when it comes to monitoring. Aside from being a monitoring platform, it is also excellent when it comes to integration and automation. While the SCOM does have DWH too, coupled with reporting and analysis services, serves as a basic analytics platform, this really is not where the SCOM shines.

This is where the OMS takes the stage. By saving data to cloud-based OMS, you really stop thinking about storage and especially wasting it in your data center. You get speed for ad-hoc and predefined analysis and you get beautiful dashboards to observe the findings.

SCOM Strengths:

• Excels in monitoring
• Powerful integration capabilities
• Strong automation features
• Basic analytics with Data Warehouse
• On-premises solution

OMS Advantages:

• Cloud-based storage
• Eliminates on-site storage concerns
• Rapid ad-hoc and predefined analysis
• Visually appealing dashboards
• Ideal for large datasets

SCOM and OMS: A Powerful Combination

• SCOM focuses on monitoring and integration
• OMS specializes in data analysis and visualization
• Together, they provide comprehensive insights

Use Cases:

• SCOM for real-time monitoring and alerting
• OMS for long-term trend analysis and compliance checks
• Integrate both for a complete F5 monitoring solution

Benefits of Using Both:

• Leverage SCOM's robust monitoring capabilities
• Utilize OMS's cloud scalability and analytics
• Gain deeper insights into F5 environments
• Improve overall system performance and security

Future Outlook:

• SCOM remains crucial for enterprise monitoring
• OMS continues to evolve rapidly
• The combination offers a best-of-both-worlds approach

The SCOM for monitoring and integrations, and the OMS for analysis over a large set of data (i.e. security compliance) is what, in my opinion, makes the great mix!