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CloudZero vs Google Cloud Billing comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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 Cost Management
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Cloud Management (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), AIOps (5th)
CloudZero
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
18th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Cloud Billing
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
NaveenPathak - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for compliance and tagging with cost optimization but have complex workflow
We wanted it for compliance and tagging purposes. They could not satisfy our needs because we were looking for something in a graphical form, like pie charts, and for untagged tech. We were applying various filters that they did not support. It is good for cost optimization but ineffective for tagging compliance and budget allocation. I rate cost optimization as three-point five out of five. I give budget allocation a two out of five. Tagging Compliance is the main reason we decided not to go with it. I would rate it two out of five. The tool charges one percent of cloud users, which is too much based on the capabilities they are providing.
PradeepKumar3 - PeerSpot reviewer
Simple to set up with helpful for cost management and good reliability
The only issue I faced was a while ago. My card was debited, or rather it was showing as debited when in actuality, it did not debit my card. After six months, they came back with back billing. Somebody should have verified the billing and immediately informed us. So yeah, However, six months is too late to identify such fault sightings. When I want to analyze the information, it would be better, since Google knows what I have used, to only show those items for analysis purposes. Especially when I look at a previous month's billing or usage across services. It's better to show the services which are used, not everything.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using this product helps us to reduce performance risk because it shows us where resources are needed but not yet allocated."
"The recommendation of the family types is a huge help because it has saved us a lot of money. We use it primarily for that. Another thing that Turbonomic provides us with is a single platform that manages the full application stack and that's something I really like."
"The proactive monitoring of all our open enrollment applications has improved our organization. We have used it to size applications that we are moving to the cloud. Therefore, when we move them out there, we have them appropriately sized. We use it for reporting to current application owners, showing them where they are wasting money. There are easy things to find for an application, e.g., they decommissioned the server, but they never took care of the storage. Without a tool like this, that storage would just sit there forever, with us getting billed for it."
"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."
"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."
"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."
"We have a system where our developers automate machine builds, and that is constantly running out of resources. Turbonomic helps us with that, so I don't have to keep buying hardware. The developers always say, "They don't have enough. They don't have enough. They don't have enough," when they just configured it improperly. Therefore, Turbonomic helps us identify configuration issues on their side so it doesn't cost me money on the other end to buy resources that I don't really need."
"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."
"The best part of CloudZero is the UI for creating dashboards."
"What I like most about this solution is that it's easy."
"It is a stable product."
"We use Google Cloud Billing to pay for or renew the license of our Google Workspace products."
 

Cons

"After running this solution in production for a year, we may want a more granular approach to how we utilize the product because we are planning to use some of its metrics to feed into our financial system."
"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."
"Remove the need for special in-house knowledge and development."
"The one point is the reporting. We do have reports out of it, but they're not the level of graphical detail I would like."
"The deployment process is a little tricky. It wasn't hard for me because I have pretty in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, and their software runs on Kubernetes. To deploy it or upgrade it, you have to be able to follow steps and use the Kubernetes command line, or you'll need someone to come in and do it for you."
"We're still evaluating the solution, so I don't know enough about what I don't know. They've done a lot over the years. I used Turbonomics six or seven years ago before IBM bought them. They've matured a lot since then."
"The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer."
"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."
"I would not recommend it to small setups."
"At times you will find that the computer engines are freezing or it's about to freeze without any notification or information and it's unable to diagnose where it is hung."
"Google Cloud Billing should have a more user-friendly interface."
"When I want to analyze the information, it would be better, since Google knows what I have used, to only show those items for analysis purposes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."
"When we have expanded our licensing, it has always been easy to make an ROI-based decision. So, it's reasonably priced. We would like to have it cheaper, but we get more benefit from it than we pay for it. At the end of the day, that's all you can hope for."
"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."
"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."
"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."
"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."
"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."
Information not available
"The licensing fees are monthly and cost approximately $100.00."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
No data available
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with CloudZero?
There is a need for UI improvements. We are in discussions to provide feedback for changes and enhance the dashboard ...
What advice do you have for others considering CloudZero?
I would not recommend it to small setups. It is preferable for larger enterprises with significant financial needs on...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudZero?
I'm not sure about the exact pricing since we have an enterprise segment. It is quite cost-friendly compared to other...
What do you like most about Google Cloud Billing?
We use Google Cloud Billing to pay for or renew the license of our Google Workspace products.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Billing?
Google Cloud Billing should have a more user-friendly interface.
What advice do you have for others considering Google Cloud Billing?
Google Cloud Billing is a cloud-based solution. Only administrators, directors, and the finance or marketing departme...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
No data available
No data available
 

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.
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Find out what your peers are saying about CloudZero vs. Google Cloud Billing and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.