IBM Turbonomic vs. VMware vSphere

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Turbonomic
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
IBM Turbonomic is a performance and cost optimization platform for public, private, and hybrid clouds used by cloud, infrastructure operations, and architecture to assure application performance while eliminating inefficiencies by dynamically resourcing applications through automated actions. One of the key features of IBM Turbonomic is its ability to continuously adjust application resources in real time. By monitoring resource utilization and application performance,…N/A
VMware vSphere
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
An enterprise workload platform, vSphere is used to improve the performance for a data center. It is used to boost operational efficiency, supercharge workload performance, and accelerate innovation.
$995
per year
Pricing
IBM TurbonomicVMware vSphere
Editions & Modules
IBM® Turbonomic On-Prem
Varies - Request a Quote
per month IBM Turbonomic On-prem optimizes data center resources in real time, ensuring app performance at the lowest cost by aligning infrastructure supply with dynamic application demand.
IBM® Turbonomic Cloud Standard
Varies - Request a Quote
per month For customers with more than USD 1.6 million in annual cloud spend or 50 Managed Virtual Servers (MVS) or greater
IBM® Turbonomic Hybrid Standard
Varies - Request a Quote
per month Advanced hybrid cloud optimization capabilities for customers with 200 managed virtual servers (MVS) or more
Standard
$995.00
per year
Enterprise
$3,995.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM TurbonomicVMware vSphere
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsVolume discounting available.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM TurbonomicVMware vSphere
Considered Both Products
IBM Turbonomic
Chose IBM Turbonomic
We already had the Turbonomic license acquired.
Chose IBM Turbonomic
Unlike VMware Operations Manager, Turbonomic has the ability to monitor and manage other virtual environments. This provides the support team a central management point for each environment. It also provides planning capability for each one of these based on the average virtual …
Chose IBM Turbonomic
  • Better reporting.
  • VMTurbo Operations Manager not only monitors but also executes improvements based on policies.
  • Good support.
Chose IBM Turbonomic
Turbonomic was the unique platform to manage virtual infrastructure and make decisions to put the Application VMs where the resources are available/free, working with vsphere, xenserver and hyperV. Other applications aren't multi Hypervisor and we will have to install several …
Chose IBM Turbonomic
The problem we had with products like vCOPS, is that the environment should be in a healthy position when implementing them. If placed into an under-performing environment, it assumes and learns off that state being the norm, rather than making a recommendation, then measuring …
Chose IBM Turbonomic
VMware DRS is a mini-me of VMTurbo/Turbonomics, if you have a small environment I can see VMware DRS being fine for you, but once you grow to these larger environments you need a more powerful tool such as VMTurbo/Turbonomics.
Chose IBM Turbonomic
VMTurbo blows this product out of the water, and provides much more detailed analytics as well as cross platform compatibility. Being in a company where the client makes the decision, we need flexibility and VMTurbo provides that for us.
Chose IBM Turbonomic
We switched because of of deployment, cost, ease of handling, along with administration and reporting.
Chose IBM Turbonomic
We were using vROPs (vRealize Operations Manager) but felt it was too cumbersome to maintain without a dedicated resource. VMTurbo is much easier to use and maintain. Even though there is overlap in the 2 tools, we have kept vROPs as a "tactical troubleshooting tool" at the ESX …
Chose IBM Turbonomic
Turbonomic by far out performs the competitors. Through its intuitiveness and less verbose notification system, I know that if I'm receiving a notification from Turbonomic, something is needing my attention. This holds true especially in recent events where competitors have …
Chose IBM Turbonomic
We looked at the native VMWare vCops (now called something else) and found that VMTurbo provided a more relevant set of information for our environment. The interface was easier to use, easier to recognize what was happening in the cluster. The pricing was also significantly …
Chose IBM Turbonomic
We have looked at VMware's vCenter Operations solution and while it is great to show you where the issues are it does nothing to mitigate the issues. You still have to manually move VMs or increase vcpus etc. VMTurbo Operations Manager sees the issues and proactively resolves …
Chose IBM Turbonomic
Honestly, at the time I purchased the product in 2009, there were no competitors to the product and today there still aren't. There are alot of products that will analyze your environment and spit out a report, but nothing that is fully automated out of the box and ready in 5 …
VMware vSphere
Chose VMware vSphere
You'll never need to look at another package, vSphere is all you need, works great, you will notice the improvement.
Features
IBM TurbonomicVMware vSphere
Cloud Management
Comparison of Cloud Management features of Product A and Product B
IBM Turbonomic
8.0
22 Ratings
9% below category average
VMware vSphere
-
Ratings
Cloud Management Security7.416 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation and Orchestration8.721 Ratings00 Ratings
Cost Management8.022 Ratings00 Ratings
Cloud Management Performance Monitoring8.422 Ratings00 Ratings
Governance and Compliance7.520 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management9.321 Ratings00 Ratings
Systems Integration6.821 Ratings00 Ratings
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM Turbonomic
-
Ratings
VMware vSphere
7.2
67 Ratings
11% below category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings7.062 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings7.067 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings6.160 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings8.065 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.062 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM TurbonomicVMware vSphere
Small Businesses
VMware Cloud Director
VMware Cloud Director
Score 8.5 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cohesity
Cohesity
Score 8.4 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
vRealize Operations (discontinued)
vRealize Operations (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
IBM TurbonomicVMware vSphere
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(147 ratings)
7.0
(70 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(24 ratings)
7.0
(7 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(21 ratings)
8.0
(11 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(25 ratings)
8.0
(25 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.7
(18 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.1
(2 ratings)
8.4
(5 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.7
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM TurbonomicVMware vSphere
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Datacenter Consolidation and Hardware Optimization: This scenario is relevant to you as a hardware manager. It applies when you have physical servers (like Power or System z) and want to maximize virtual machine density. Why it works: IBM Turbonomic analyzes the peak usage times of each VM. If VM "A" is active during the day and VM "B" at night, it places them on the same physical host. Ideal scenario: Data migration projects or when you're told, "[...], there's no budget for more servers this year, make everything fit on what we have." Consolidación de Datacenters y Optimización de Hardware,Este escenario te toca de cerca como encargado de Hardware. Cuando tienes servidores físicos (como los Power o System z) y quieres maximizar la densidad de máquinas virtuales.Por qué funciona: IBM Turbonomic analiza las horas pico de cada VM. Si la VM "A" es activa de día y la VM "B" de noche, las coloca en el mismo host físico.Escenario ideal: Proyectos de migración de datos o cuando te dicen: "[...], no hay presupuesto para más servidores este año, haz que quepa todo en lo que tenemos". This review was originally written in Spanish and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.
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VMware by Broadcom
vSphere is well suited for multiple VMWare hosts and can be very useful in larger enterprises where vMotion is used to load balance and failover running virtual machines. In smaller businesses with one or two hosts then the features can be overkill. The addition of virtual TPM support is a very nice addition to provide vm security in a more Microsoft supported methodology.
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • Presentation is nice. Its easy to understand what your looking at and the data that is being presented to you.
  • Properly identify resource utilization and recommendations for action on how VMs can be improved and resources can be better utilized.
  • It was also able to tell us the same information and analysis for cloud resources. I was not expecting that.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • vMotion that provides seamless movement of Virtual Machines between physical hosts and datastores.
  • Ease of Manage: vCenter provides very good management experience to the users.
  • It provides hassle free upgrade of versions, which requires good planning.
  • Easy to manage datastore, networks, CPU and memory resources.
  • It also allows to convert the physical machine and bring it to vSphere Environment with minimum effort.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • It would be nice if the UI included a break-down of features that are both licensed as well as un-licensed. That way, you could not only see what you have, but what you don't.
  • The right-sizing recommendations are great, but very little info is given about why the recommendation is being made. More info would not only increase understanding, but would also help drive decision-making.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • Allow enable EVC without requiring host shutdown
  • More detail in recent tasks. Instead of just showing a task called "Reconfigure virtual machine" also have a link to more detailed information as to what was reconfigured, changed or removed.
  • Allow searching tasks or events
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
We are certainly happy with Turbonomic as a whole and have invested quite a bit of time and effort into learning the ins and outs of the product. We have our reporting setup the way we want it and have gained definite value from these features. I will say though that many products nowadays are offering more native monitoring, reporting, and alerting features which may eventually steer us away from this product
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
We are constantly looking for change that will benefit our company. We are not ones to stick with a product simply because it is what we know, but rather looking for what fits us best. We can't imagine another product on the market today doing a better job of handling our infrastructure than vSphere.
Read full review
Usability
IBM
Excellent approach to larger VM organizational management. They have an very clean integrated dashboard that allows us to see everything in our environment and what that is doing in real-time. It works on multiple hyper-visors really well and integrates capacity planning on my local site as well as my cloud locations.
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VMware by Broadcom
Very useful for environments where space and energy consumption are issues and management is not very keen on upfront spending on hardware every time whenever requirement comes from any dept for provisioning a machine for their occasional use, easily can be done in case of VMware vSphere in few clicks. Backup, security, monitoring and management everything is covered but at additional cost.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
IBM
VMTurbo has not caused any outages by not doing what we expect it to do.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Performance
IBM
It allocates resources among applications by showing more on the cost breakdown by cloud service, with metrics on cloud provider information like Azure Management, Identity, Networking, Storage with costs per day, and total services costs. This then could facilitate and show the corresponding actions thereafter upon scaling.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
When I contact support I get a quick response and they are able to solve my problem quickly. I also get a sense that they want to make sure that we are getting value from the product and walk me through whatever steps are needed to accomplish my goals.
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VMware by Broadcom
I rarely ever have to contact support and when I do need to resolve an issue, there is always an abundance of kb articles and research information available that can help quickly resolve the issue. Depending on the type of support contract you have, you may get support from some offshore group in another country and this could be a little challenging because of the language barrier.
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In-Person Training
IBM
Alex (from VMTurbo) has worked with the product for years and helped develop the product. He was very knowledgeable and was able to provide our support team with details knowledge on how to get our deployment configured correctly as well as help with another VMTurbo POC within another customers environment.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Online Training
IBM
After buying VMTurbo Operations Manager, I was invited to an online user training event. I felt this training was effective and dug just deep enough to be informative yet still keep my attention. Additionally, the webinar was free.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM
The implementation was very simple. Just upload an OVA file and power on the VM. Once it comes up enter some networking information and you can then access the web interface. From there, just begin configuring the system for your environment by adding you license and the various virtual environments and storage through the inventory tab
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VMware by Broadcom
Just make sure that when you implement, that the person implementing truly knows what they are doing and has a plan of action coming in. Since our initial implementation using a consulting service, I have implemented a few vSphere just from what I learned at the initial implementation and use over time, and the person implementing really needs to know what they are doing or you will miss out on features that may help you down the line
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
As the organization had experience of years in using IBM products, we had the confidence that they will provide us with great support. And we needed a reliable solution as a financial institute to ensure continuous operations. Even though the price was very high, we made the correct decision to go ahead with IBM Turbonomic as the feedback from existing users in the region was very positive. We needed a solution which was capable of handling our automation requirements. All these were green in IBM Turbonomic.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
vSphere has a lot more feature sets than Hyper-V but at a much higher cost of entry versus MS Hyper-V. I have not been able to play with Hyper-V as much as I would have liked, but the setup and ongoing maintenance seems to be easier in vSphere than with Hyper-V
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
IBM
No answers on this topic
VMware by Broadcom
The contract terms are very clear and can be updated as per the project requirement. Customer support is also included in the contract which help us to troubleshoot critical issues very easily. Training included in contract will really help the client team to empower and hands-on on the latest updates and enhancements
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Scalability
IBM
It’s very scalable.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
IBM
Professional services were always there to guide us in our transformation to the cloud. They understood our business model and then were able to provide guidance on what we needed from the tool.
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VMware by Broadcom
As I said earlier, they're always ready to understand our issues and propose the best and most appropriate solution for issues all the time. The security patches solution is accordingly to the business needs. Another scenario is their Knowledge Base where
they're many articles that help you in order to solve something which
is wrong.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • Application performance has been a big one. With Turbonomic keeping everything running at top performance, it can make changes when extra resources are need, quicker than somebody being notified and then making the necessary changes.
  • Turbonomic has been a great cost savings for us on multiple occasions. We use it every time we are improving servers.
  • With the planning feature we get the best performance form new hardware purchases
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VMware by Broadcom
  • Having vSphere helped my business quickly recover from a ransomware attack which would have crippled us for weeks if we were not virtualized. I think the ROI on something like that is immeasurable.
  • vSphere has allowed my company to purchase bigger server hardware to host 3 or 4 virtual servers, which was at a cost much lower than buying 3 or 4 server hardware boxes, saving us thousands each time we need to upgrade hardware.
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ScreenShots

IBM Turbonomic Screenshots

Screenshot of IBM Turbonomic Action Center, where it shows the list of optimization actions across the global environment—on-prem and cloud—that should be taken to minimize cost while assuring performance.Screenshot of IBM Turbonomic Application, a view that shows the global environment across private and public infrastructure from the context of individual application components. Users can optimize one application at a time by viewing each app's pending actions. The Supply Chain at left shows all of the entities across applications and their interdependencies.Screenshot of The IBM Turbonomic Cloud Executive Dashboard, an out of the box dashboard that allow users to rapidly communicate value to executives. This view shows the cloud cost savings opportunities realized and not yet realized over any time period.Screenshot of The IBM Turbonomic On-prem Executive Dashboard, an out of the box dashboard that allow users to rapidly communicate value to executives. This view shows the savings opportunities realized and not yet realized over any time period.Screenshot of an IBM Turbonomic Cloud view, where the public cloud environment(s) and all of the pending actions required to bring them into an efficient, performant state. The Supply Chain at left shows all of the entities in the public cloud(s) and their interdependencies.Screenshot of The IBM Turbonomic On-Prem view that shows the user's private data center environment(s) and all of the pending actions required to bring them into an efficient, performant state. The Supply Chain at left shows all of the entities in data center(s) and the interdependencies between them.