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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 (3rd), 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
36th
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 July 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 4.7%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.9%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Turbonomic4.7%
Red Hat CloudForms1.9%
Other93.4%
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

"Our ROI was less than 12 months as we would otherwise have needed to purchase additional hardware and VMware licenses during that time period, as we were previously adding at least 4 CPUs worth each year."
"The VM rightsizing tools and the intelligent placing of workloads have helped us to not only streamline what we have but, in conjunction with the sizing tools, has allowed us to look at future scenarios and potentially reduce our spend on physical kit in the DC."
"Customer service has been excellent, and during our very lengthy PoC they were always willing to answer questions quickly and offer ideas about how to tackle issues in our environment."
"We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time."
"Starting from the reporting and recommendations, every feature has been very helpful."
"Before implementing Turbonomic, we had difficulty reaching a consensus about VM placement and sizing. Everybody's opinion was wrong, including mine. The application developers, implementers, and infrastructure team could never decide the appropriate size of a virtual machine. I always made the machines small, and they always made them too big. We were both probably wrong."
"Turbonomic is easy to use, but has the ability to provide much more complex data and planning for projects and growth."
"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)."
"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting."
"I am impressed with the product's reports."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."
"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."
"The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."
"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting, as it means we can prepare a bunch of VMs with self-service provisioning."
"They are a very mature product."
"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

"The GUI and policy creation have room for improvement. There should be a better view of some of the numbers that are provided and easier to access. And policy creation should have it easier to identify groups."
"GUI is ugly."
"User interface could use a bit of tweaking."
"The UI could be improved."
"The implementation could be enhanced."
"Interface and navigation can be a challenge if you do not spend a lot of time with it."
"GUI can be more user friendly."
"Turbonomic's current UI is coded in Flash though they have stated an HTML5 version is coming soon."
"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."
"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."
"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."
"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."
"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."
"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."
"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."
"Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."
"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."
"I consider the pricing to be high."
"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."
"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."
"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."
"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."
"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."
"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 product's licensing is based on the number of servers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software 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
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?
It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is set as a percentage of the consumption of some of our customers' services. The ...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting. This helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single d...
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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: June 2026.
903,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.