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IBM Spectrum Computing vs IBM Turbonomic 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 Spectrum Computing
Ranking in Cloud Management
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (7th)
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 (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (5th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (11th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Computing is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 4.1%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Turbonomic4.1%
IBM Spectrum Computing1.5%
Other94.4%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

OmarIsmail1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Technical Specialist II at Clicks Group
Senior Technical Specialist appreciates intelligent workload management, strong support, and scalability
The best features of IBM Spectrum Computing are common across many of their storage products. The software is solid, meaning that the code is stable. They take business seriously, which is what IBM stands for - International Business Machines. They always maintain a business-oriented approach in their software development. It's not simply clicking through interfaces; in IBM software, they consider their actions, process flows, and workflows around business processes. It requires understanding IBM and their methodology, as the software operates accordingly. I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature. We use Insights, which is connected to the cloud. This provides AI capabilities for analyzing the configuration, offering smart recommendations on new code, warning about bugs in current code, and suggesting configuration improvements through its advisor tool. The predictive analytics feature in IBM Spectrum Computing enables optimal software performance through Insights. However, being a storage administrator requires foundational knowledge and understanding beyond these tools. For troubleshooting, it's efficient in spotting bottlenecks, but understanding the terms and metrics is essential as it provides answers that need interpretation.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM's ability to cluster compute resources is impressive, with built-in support for scenarios like VR and active-active configurations,"
"The most valuable feature is the backup capability."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the backup capability."
"This solution is working for both VTL and tape."
"The most valuable aspect of the product is the policy driving resource management, to optimize the computing across data centers."
"This solution worked as expected and it is reliable."
"Getting a better understanding on host utilization, providing better planning on infrastructure upgrades."
"Turbonomic's realtime environmental monitoring and aggregated dashboard have been instrumental in expansion decision making for our infrastructure."
"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."
"Working with Turbonomic is incredible."
"When it comes to cloud costs, to VMs, the solution is saving us about $30,000 a month."
"We no longer have to worry about cluster management, even in an environment with multiple hypervisor vendors."
"Customer service always responds quickly, and is knowledgeable and thorough."
"It is like we hired a junior system admin that works 24 hours a day to keep our environment in top form."
 

Cons

"SMB storage and HPC is not compatible and it should be supported by IBM Spectrum Computing."
"In Pakistan, IBM's disadvantage is the lack of OEM support and presence."
"We'd like to see some AI model training for machine learning."
"We are not fully satisfied with this product at the moment because we are having issues with reliability."
"Lack of sufficient documentation, particularly in Spanish."
"We have not been able to use deduplication."
"The deduplication software isn't quite up to speed with the market. While IBM has excellent compression technology, specifically on their FlashCore modules, they lag behind competitors such as NetApp in deduplication capabilities."
"This solution is no longer managing tapes correctly."
"I'd like to see an improvement in the reporting, from including more canned reports, to being able to more easily customize the existing ones (without needing to write SQL queries)."
"Like any software I use, I'm looking for the least amount of clicking needed to get to places. If I need to click 10 different windows to get a report, I'm done with the software."
"Finding help can be difficult if needed."
"I think the web interface could be better, I know they are working on a new one so I'm looking forward to seeing the final product when its released."
"The other area would be visibility into bandwidth utilization."
"Since the introduction of a HTML 5 based interface, our main - but minor - criticism of a less than intuitive operation managers' GUI would be the area of improvement."
"The implementation could be enhanced."
"If they would educate their customers to understand the latest updates, that would help customers... Also, there are a lot of features that are not available in Turbonomic. For example, PaaS component optimization and automation are still in the development phase."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spectrum Computing is one of the most expensive products on the market."
"This solution is 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."
"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."
"I don't know the current prices, but I like how the licensing is based on the number of instances instead of sockets, clusters, or cores. We have some VMs that are so heavy I can only fit four on one server. It's not cost-effective if we have to pay more for those. When I move around a VM SQL box with 30 cores and a half-terabyte of RAM, I'm not paying for an entire socket and cores where people assume you have at least 10 or 20 VMs on that socket for that pricing."
"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."
"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."
"In the last year, Turbonomic has reduced our cloud costs by $94,000."
"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."
"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Transportation Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise147
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Computing?
IBM Spectrum Computing consistently offers competitive pricing. When solutioning new implementations, IBM always presents the best solution and price. In a recent comparison with Pure Storage and N...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Computing?
IBM Spectrum Computing had limitations with remote copy services between head office and disaster recovery sites. In the last year, IBM has improved the code by re-engineering it to policy-based re...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Computing?
The typical use case for IBM Spectrum Computing is that it's an all-rounder. It can be used in various scenarios, such as the retailer I work for that has batch processing. It's on-demand when perf...
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...
 

Also Known As

IBM Platform Computing
Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

London South Bank University, Transvalor, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Genomic
IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Computing vs. IBM Turbonomic and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.