Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs IBM Spectrum Computing comparison

Sponsored
 

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)
Flexera Cloud Management Pl...
Ranking in Cloud Management
23rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Spectrum Computing
Ranking in Cloud Management
22nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 6.0%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Computing is 0.7%, up from 0.5% 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.
reviewer2035479 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good CMPs for cloud provisioning and excellent scalability
There is a problem with integration due to invalid private node security certificates. However, the issue can be resolved by correcting the certificates. Getting OEMs like Huawei or Morpheus to change their products is difficult, but we found a middle ground where both Huawei and Morpheus can integrate seamlessly through Terraform. So far, the integration has been successful, but it may create a problem when the platform is under a huge load of 46 million students. We have already requested the World Bank and universities to build their case. If that kind of situation arises, they can approach Huawei and Morpheus or go with Plexadera in the end. Although the RSP or SMAX are built around Morpheus specifications specifically, we still have more certified engineers in Pakistan to win that project. The higher education commission of Pakistan has already taken up the matter with both Morpheus and Huawei. VMware refused to do anything, but Huawei has agreed to change the certificate if there is an issue. We have already identified the issue, so they will correct it if the cloud solution is finally deployed for that number of students.
Avra Jyoti Ghosh - PeerSpot reviewer
One of the best tools in the data management and services area
I mainly used Spectrum Computing for data management, governance, quality, and ETL activity Spectrum Computing's best features are its speed, robustness, and data processing and analysis.  Spectrum Computing is lagging behind other products, most likely because it hasn't been shifted to the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the cluster utilization reports and the resource capacity planning. We can simulate how much capacity we can add to the current resources. The individual DM reports and VM-facing recommendations report are also helpful."
"The tool provides the ability to look at the consumption utilization over a period of time and determine if we need to change that resource allocation based on the actual workload consumption, as opposed to how IT has configured it. Therefore, we have come to realize that a lot of our workloads are overprovisioned, and we are spending more money in the public cloud than we need to."
"It has automated a lot of things. We have saved 30 to 35 percent in human resource time and cost, which is pretty substantial. We don't have a big workforce here, so we have to use all the automation we can get."
"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."
"Turbonomic helps us right-size virtual machines to utilize the available infrastructure components available and suggest where resources should exist. We also use the predictive tool to forecast what will happen when we add additional compute-demanding virtual machines or something to the environment. It shows us how that would impact existing resources. All of that frees up time that would otherwise be spent on manual calculation."
"Using this product helps us to reduce performance risk because it shows us where resources are needed but not yet allocated."
"With Turbonomic, we were able to reduce our ESX cluster size and save money on our maintenance and license renewals. It saved us around $75,000 per year but it's a one-time reduction in VMware licensing. We don't renew the support. The ongoing savings is probably $50,000 to $75,000 a year, but there was a one-time of $200,000 plus."
"On-premises, one advantage I find particularly appealing is the ability to create policies for automatic CPU and memory scaling based on demand."
"The most valuable feature is Optima, which is something that we use quite extensively."
"With this platform, users could migrate to the cloud on the go and use public cloud services like Oracle database while integrating with their own local storage."
"The comparison was challenging, but the IBM Spectrum Scale offered a balanced solution. Our engineers rated itsanalytics capabilities equally high as Pure Storage. For workload management, Spectrum Computing provided effective solutions that met our needs. Workload management is part of a complete solution that uses different tools. There were the cloud and HPC parts; within HPC, there were parts like liquid cooling, simple computing, storage, and orchestration. The orchestration team handled the workload management."
"Easy to operate and use."
"We are satisfied with the technical support, we have no issues."
"The most valuable aspect of the product is the policy driving resource management, to optimize the computing across data centers."
"Spectrum Computing's best features are its speed, robustness, and data processing and analysis."
"The most valuable feature is the backup capability."
"IBM's ability to cluster compute resources is impressive, with built-in support for scenarios like VR and active-active configurations,"
"This solution is working for both VTL and tape."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement [with] upgrades. We have deployed the newer version, version 8 of Turbonomic. The problem is that there is no way to upgrade between major Turbonomic versions. You can upgrade minor versions without a problem, but when you go from version 6 to version 7, or version 7 to version 8, you basically have to deploy it new and let it start gathering data again. That is a problem because all of the data, all of the savings calculations that had been done on the old version, are gone. There's no way to keep track of your lifetime savings across versions."
"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."
"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."
"They have a long road map when we ask for certain things that will make the product better. It takes time, but that's understandable because there are other things that are higher on the priority list."
"It would be good for Turbonomic, on their side, to integrate with other companies like AppDynamics or SolarWinds or other monitoring softwares. I feel that the actual monitoring of applications, mixed in with their abilities, would help. That would be the case wherever Turbonomic lacks the ability to monitor an application or in cases where applications are so customized that it's not going to be able to handle them. There is monitoring that you can do with scripting that you may not be able to do with Turbonomic."
"Some features are only available via changes to the deployment YAML, and it would be better to have them in the UI."
"The planning and costing areas could be a little bit more detailed. When you have more than 2,000 machines, the reports don't work properly. They need to fix it so that the reports work when you use that many virtual machines."
"It sometimes does get false positives. Sometimes, it'll move something when it really wasn't a performance metric. I've seen it do that, but it's pretty much an automated tool for performance. We've only got about 500 virtual machines, so lots of times, I'm able to manage it physically, but it's definitely a nice tool for a larger enterprise that might be managing 2,000 or 3,000 virtual machines."
"There is a problem with integration due to invalid private node security certificates."
"Technical support is an area that can be improved."
"We have not been able to use deduplication."
"In Pakistan, IBM's disadvantage is the lack of OEM support and presence."
"SMB storage and HPC is not compatible and it should be supported by IBM Spectrum Computing."
"IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging."
"Lack of sufficient documentation, particularly in Spanish."
"We'd like to see some AI model training for machine learning."
"This solution is no longer managing tapes correctly."
"Spectrum Computing is lagging behind other products, most likely because it hasn't been shifted to the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."
"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."
"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."
"The product is fairly priced right now. Given its capabilities, it is excellently priced. We think that the product will become self-funding because we will be able to maximize our resources, which will help us from a capacity perspective. That should save us money in the long run."
"In the last year, Turbonomic has reduced our cloud costs by $94,000."
"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."
"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."
"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 price is higher than an open-source product, or CloudForms, or IBM Cloud Pak, but it is still not very high."
"Spectrum Computing is one of the most expensive products on the market."
"This solution is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
831,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
41%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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 do you like most about RightScale Cloud Management Platform?
With this platform, users could migrate to the cloud on the go and use public cloud services like Oracle database whi...
What needs improvement with RightScale Cloud Management Platform?
There is a problem with integration due to invalid private node security certificates. However, the issue can be reso...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Computing?
IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging. To work on an IBM deal, you often need to involve multiple spec...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
RightScale Cloud Management Platform, MultiCloud Platform
IBM Platform Computing
 

Learn More

Video not available
Video not 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.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Rackspace, Softlayer, Cloudstack, OpenStack, Vmware
London South Bank University, Transvalor, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Genomic
Find out what your peers are saying about Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs. IBM Spectrum Computing and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.