The Big SCOM Survey 2022 Results

It’s another year and a new SCOM Survey from SCOMathon to discover how SCOM is being used, by whom, and for what. We want to know: 

The answers are all here. 

This year, we asked 14 questions and had 90 responses from the global community.  

SCOM has a vibrant community of users across the world and we’d love you to join in. You can join the SCOMathon community Slack and access the webinars, resources, and events put on by SCOMathon. 

The future is bright for SCOM and we hope this survey keeps you informed of the SCOM landscape. 

Key findings 

  1. SCOM is here to stay. 59% of respondents expect to be using SCOM for 5+ years. 
  1. SCOM MI is creating a buzz. SCOM in the cloud has captured interest in the cloud-first landscape. 
  1. Monitoring outside of SCOM continues to be diverse and organizations use 2.9 additional tools, on average. 

SCOM deployments 

  1. Who is using SCOM? 

‘System(s) Engineer’ was the most frequent response, but the answers were diverse. The previous year, ‘Infrastructure Engineer’ was the dominant title. There seems to have been a general trend over the past few years toward titles that reflect broader remits for those in charge of SCOM as the monitoring landscape changes.  

  1. Which version(s) of SCOM are run in production? 

It’s great to see a sizable group moved to SCOM 2022 already. There are some respondents still on much older versions, which is surprising, especially as SCOM 1801/1807 and 2012 are no longer supported. However, a few of these old versions are being run concurrently alongside newer versions. 

  1. How many management groups do you have in your SCOM landscape?  

As before, the majority of respondents have just one management group. This is interesting as most would want at least a test and production environment. However, there are more people in the 2MGs category this year–33%, up from 17% in 2021. 

  1. How many management servers do you have in your SCOM landscape? 

This question is helpful to see just how big the majority of SCOM deployments are. The vast majority responded that they have 1-10 management servers in their 1-2 management groups.  

  1. How many SCOM agents do you have in your SCOM landscape? 

The survey results show that most have mid-sized SCOM deployments with 500-3000 agents. It’s surprising to see so many respondents with 0-500 agents though, as SCOM is geared more toward those with 1000+ agents. 

  1. Where is SCOM hosted (management servers and databases)? 

As before, the vast majority of SCOM deployments are hosted on-premises. We had expected a slow increase in cloud-hosted SCOM but that hasn’t happened. It’s possible that people are waiting for SCOM MI to host SCOM in the cloud more easily.  

The monitoring landscape 

  1. What other tools do you use for monitoring? 

On average, organizations are using 2.9 monitoring tools, in addition to SCOM, to monitor all their applications and infrastructure. The most popular tools are Azure Monitor (39 users), VMware vCenter/vROps (35), Splunk (33), and SolarWinds (27). 

There has been growth in cloud-native monitoring tools to monitor applications and many organizations are modernizing and shifting to the cloud. We see this in the increased use of Azure Monitor. Given that there is significant overlap between Azure Monitor and SCOM for infrastructure monitoring, it’s interesting that use of Azure Monitor is so high.  

The future of SCOM  

  1. How do you expect your use of SCOM to change over the next year?  

The results show that all is well for SCOM for the next year. 86% of respondents are either keeping their use of SCOM the same or increasing their use of it. SCOM is still the best on-premises infrastructure monitoring tool and will continue to be heavily relied upon.  

  1. Reasons for your SCOM use over the next year 

The responses to why people selected their answer in the previous question reveals underlying change. Regardless of their answer about SCOM use in the next 12 months, many raised that their organization is going cloud-first and moving to cloud-native versions of tools.  

  1. How long do you expect to continue using SCOM? 

Those growing their SCOM usage are exploring how to monitor their cloud applications in SCOM. Those who are keeping their SCOM use the same are aware that there is a changing cloud landscape and tools are being consolidated but these changes won’t impact SCOM use within the next 12 months.  

SCOM is very embedded and still deemed the best on-prem infrastructure monitoring tool and will be used for many years to come. However, people are looking to use other tools for cloud applications. Nevertheless, though there’s an increase in cloud, organizations are not losing the core infrastructure that SCOM is best at monitoring. 

  1. On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend SCOM to a friend or colleague? 

SCOM sentiment is good: 96% voted for a score of 7 or higher with an average of 8/10. This gives SCOM an NPS score of 26.  

This is a drop from 2021’s score of 31, which probably reflects the lack of change in SCOM and the enormity of the change in the monitoring world around it. SCOM’s competition is stronger than ever so we’re hoping the Microsoft team brings useful and exciting updates through SCOM MI’s roadmap to keep SCOM competitive. 

  1. What other System Centre products does your company use?  

SCOM comes as part of a bigger System Centre package. This question reveals that the vast majority of SCOM users also use SCCM. Does this indicate that most people use SCOM because it’s free with SCCM? If Microsoft changed its licensing, would SCOM usage be in trouble?  

  1. & 14. Are you interested in SCOM Managed Instance (aka Aquila)? 

Microsoft recently released SCOM MI – SCOM hosted in the cloud. 53% are interested in SCOM MI, particularly as this will let Admins focus on monitoring rather than infrastructure management. 

Putting SCOM in the cloud can be done already by hosting it on a VM, but SCOM MI provides a new option to support organizations’ cloud-first strategies. SCOM MI is expensive if you already have SCOM for free through System Center but it could be good value if you don’t already use SCCM.    

Conclusion 

SCOM continues to hold a strong position in the monitoring landscape, particularly for on-premises infrastructure. The community is also keen to see how the new SCOM MI product positions SCOM competitively in the nearly universal move to cloud-first, particularly as monitoring outside of SCOM continues to increase and diversify. 

You can find out more about SquaredUp and SCOMathon, the creators of The Big SCOM Survey 2022.