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Cisco UCS Director vs ServiceNow IT Operations Management comparison

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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
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (5th)
Cisco UCS Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
20th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ServiceNow IT Operations Ma...
Ranking in Cloud Management
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), AIOps (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 5.7%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.1%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is 1.6%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation
It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. 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. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.
OR
Managing extensive VoIP services becomes efficient and seamless
We use Cisco UCS Director primarily for managing our VoIP service to maintain seamless service delivery. We operate in an enterprise government environment Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate. It helps save time by making it quicker to roll out new call…
RichardG - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortlessly blends management systems for comprehensive infrastructure insight
ServiceNow IT Operations Management brought together Intune and SCCM or MECM really well. It provided out-of-the-box integrations, requiring only minimal effort, typically a couple of days, to massage those systems into a seamless operation. Additionally, the performance analytics of ServiceNow was especially beneficial for setting thresholds, aggregating, and correlating infrastructure data.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Turbonomic has helped optimize cloud operations and reduced our cloud costs significantly. Overall, we are at about 40 percent savings, and we spend about three million a year just in Azure. It reduces the size of the VMs, putting them into the right template for usage. People don't realize that you don't have to future-proof a virtual machine in Azure. You just need to build it for today. As the business or service grows, you can scale up or out. About 90 percent of all the costs that we've reduced has been from sizing machines appropriately."
"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."
"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."
"Using this product helps us to reduce performance risk because it shows us where resources are needed but not yet allocated."
"I like Turbonomic's automation and AI machine learning features. It shows you what it can do, but it can also act on recommendations automatically. Integration with an APM system makes the AI/ML features truly effective. Understanding what the application is doing and the trends of application behavior can help you make real-world decisions and act on that information."
"My favorite part of the solution is the automation scheduling. Being able to choose when actions happen, and how they happen..."
"Turbonomic can show us if we're not using some of our storage volumes efficiently in AWS. For example, if we've over-provisioned one of our virtual machines to have dedicated IOPs that it doesn't need, Turbonomic will detect that and tell us."
"Rightsizing is valuable. Its recommendations are pretty good."
"I can manage multiple workloads whether it's on AWS, Azure, or on-premises. They can be managed by using the UCS Director."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"Cisco's knowledge base is extensive."
"This is a user-friendly solution that is very good and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."
"The solution is helpful for centralized management."
"It is flexible. You can tune it, more or less, as you want."
"I like the tool's discovery feature."
"The most valuable feature of ServiceNow IT Operations Management is the user interface."
"Our ROI since implementing ServiceNow ITOM has been significant."
"The dashboard maintenance is very good, and the tool doesn't get stuck."
"The most important features of ServiceNow IT Operations Management are the discovery service mapping and orchestration."
"It is a stable solution. I have not experienced any system outages during my time using the solution."
"The solution is saving time by providing templates, reducing duplication in rule configuration, and offering efficient alert management."
 

Cons

"We don't use Turbonomic for FinOps and part of the reason is its cost reporting. The reporting could be much more robust and, if that were the case, I could pitch it for FinOps."
"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."
"I do not like Turbonomic's new licensing model. The previous model was pretty straightforward, whereas the new model incorporates what most of the vendors are doing now with cores and utilization. Our pricing under the new model will go up quite a bit. Before, it was pretty straightforward, easy to understand, and reasonable."
"Enhanced executive reporting standard with the tool beyond the reports that can be created today. Something that can easily be used with upper management on a monthly or quarterly basis to show the impact to our environment."
"While the product is fairly intuitive and easy to use once you learn it, it can be quite daunting until you have undergone a bit of training."
"Recovering resources when they're not needed is not as optimized as it could be."
"The issue for us with the automation is we are considering starting to do the hot adds, but there are some problems with Windows Server 2019 and hot adds. It is a little buggy. So, if we turn that on with a cluster that has a lot of Windows 2019 Servers, then we would see a blue screen along with a lot of applications as well. Depending on what you are adding, cores or memory, it doesn't necessarily even take advantage of that at that moment. A reboot may be required, and we can't do that until later. So, that decreases the benefit of the real-time. For us, there is a lot of risk with real-time."
"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."
"Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."
"The product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"The time for deployment of ServiceNow IT Operations Management depends on many factors. It's a SaaS application, it should not take too long, but if you want to define the tool based on your processes, then it would take some time. It fully depends on the company's complexity. There are out-of-the-box product flows and if you want to use them, you can from day one. However, if you want to customize it and change it to your company's practices, then it will take more time. The setup could be faster."
"ServiceNow could be more prescriptive on how customers can leverage some of the benefits."
"The setup and deployment could be simplified, and the pricing could improve."
"The solution's subscription model could be improved."
"There are not enough apps in the app store to expand functionality. There should be more made available."
"The licensing model of the product is a bit rigid, and it can be a bit difficult to downscale if your needs change while also being expensive."
"There are some limitations with Discovery; some areas are not available in the installation. I would like the solution to be able to discover more devices. That will remove the need to have multiple tools."
"Regarding ServiceNow, there is room for improvement in terms of customization, particularly in the area of self-customization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I consider the pricing to be high."
"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."
"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."
"If you're a super-small business, it may be a little bit pricey for you... But in large, enterprise companies where money is, maybe, less of an issue, Turbonomic is not that expensive. I can't imagine why any big company would not buy it, for what it does."
"We felt the pricing was very fair for the product. It is in no way prohibitive for larger deployments, unlike other similar product on the market."
"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."
"In the last year, Turbonomic has reduced our cloud costs by $94,000."
"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing around five to six out of ten."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"I rate Cisco UCS Director's price a three out of ten. Cisco UCS Director is not an affordable product. With Cisco UCS Director, there is a need to pay an overall price, which consists of the product, software, and support."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We obtained discovery licenses at about seven dollars Australian per unit, which we found to be reasonable and competitive."
"The cost of ServiceNow is much higher."
"The pricing is high and may be excluding the small to medium-sized enterprise businesses."
"The solution is costly compared to the products offered by its competitors."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and a subscription model for add-on features."
"It has different subscription models."
"It is expensive. It is around 10 Euros per server per month."
"It is moderately expensive. The pricing itself and the licensing options are depending on the model and the customization."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
34%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Healthcare Company
7%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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...
What do you like most about Cisco UCS Director?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Director?
While the pricing might be seen as expensive, it provides value for money due to reliable service and excellent techn...
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Director?
There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind.
What do you like most about ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
From my perspective as an asset manager, the most valuable feature of the solution is the configuration management po...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
We obtained discovery licenses at about seven dollars Australian per unit, which we found to be reasonable and compet...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow IT Operations Management?
There is room for improvement in service mapping within ServiceNow ITOM. When we have more time, we'll look to extend...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
No data available
ServiceNow ITOM
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
servicenow, TransAlta, NATS, Symantec
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. ServiceNow IT Operations Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,959 professionals have used our research since 2012.