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IBM Turbonomic vs Red Hat CloudForms comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Virtualization Management Tools (3rd), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (10th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), AIOps (17th)
Red Hat CloudForms
Ranking in Cloud Management
37th
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 4.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Turbonomic4.6%
Red Hat CloudForms1.8%
Other93.6%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1446966 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution reduced our operational expenditures and is able to identify points before we even noticed them
The management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens. When I change the resolution to 1080, I only see half of what I would on my big 4K monitor. It would be annoying to have to scroll to see the flow chart. They have a flow chart that goes top to bottom like a tree. On a lower resolution, it might be nice if that scrolls horizontally because it's long, narrow, and tall. It's only three icons wide, but it's 15 icons tall. I think it would be helpful to have the ability to change that for a smaller screen and customize the widget.
Ilhami Arikan - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji
A stable solution that helps to provision servers
We use the solution to provision servers.  I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs.   The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved.  I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.  I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"ROI can sometimes be quite subjective; however, with Turbonomic it’s genuinely evident from the get-go, with automation working toward maximum optimization, efficiency, and uptime, and capacity and future planning capabilities that offer the ability to generate the what-if scenarios using your own current environment as the model to build on."
"The automated memory balancing, where it looks at whether it's being used in the most efficient way and adds or takes away memory, is the best part. If it didn't do that, it would be something that I would have to do. We have too many machines for one person to do that. The automation helps me in that it is done in a really efficient way and a balanced way because of the policies. It really helps."
"Customer service has been amazing, the guys on the tech teams have been available and helpful every time we have had an issue."
"It has saved us from purchasing new hardware in four regional offices and had us extend the service for two years, instead of buying new servers (HPE Gen8 and Gen9 servers running on fifth year)."
"Cost effective solution that works."
"It allows our small team manage a larger infrastructure because we can focus our efforts in other areas."
"We have been able to use the planning feature to consolidate VMs on few hosts and have been able to show savings of several hundred thousands."
"Helps us get the most out of the hardware we have in place."
"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."
"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."
"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."
"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting."
"The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."
"The stability of the solution is very good, and we haven't had any issues with it."
"The multi-tenancy feature has been very helpful for our clients. It has been working fine and seamlessly for them. Its interface is also very simplified, and it is also an open and easy-to-scale solution."
 

Cons

"Turbonomic's current UI is coded in Flash though they have stated an HTML5 version is coming soon."
"I am not a giant fan of the new interface. I still use the older interface."
"Before IBM bought it, the support was fantastic. After IBM bought it, the support became very disappointing."
"There are charts and graphs in the dashboard that are confusing to read and understand."
"I like the detail I get in the old user interface and will miss some of that in the new interface when we perform our planned upgrade soon."
"The old interface was not the clearest UI in some areas, and could be quite intimidating when first using the tool."
"The only issue I had in the past is the fact that the manager was equipped with only one hard disk so excessive logging could cause an issue."
"Could be more user friendly, but the provided training provided the needed clarity."
"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."
"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."
"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."
"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."
"The problem is that the platform requires it to be maintained and updated. Also, a few cases are still pending with the Red Hat support team since they are not closed yet."
"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed."
"Red Hat CloudForms could improve by allowing more customization of reports. We have to do a lot of coding to accomplish what we want. Additionally, the compatibility with the multi-cloud could improve. The latter versions of the solution removed Google support and the cost comparison between other clouds was high."
"The solution is still quite immature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In the last year, Turbonomic has reduced our cloud costs by $94,000."
"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."
"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."
"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."
"We see ROI in extended support agreements (ESA) for old software. Migration activities seem to be where Turbonomic has really benefited us the most. It's one click and done. We have new machines ready to go with Turbonomic, which are properly sized instead of somebody sitting there with a spreadsheet and guessing. So, my return on investment would certainly be on currency, from a software and hardware perspective."
"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."
"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."
"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."
"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."
"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."
"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."
"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."
"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
9%
Transportation Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise147
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise8
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Turbonomic vs. Red Hat CloudForms and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
910,437 professionals have used our research since 2012.