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Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (2nd), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (1st), Software Supply Chain Security (1st), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (1st), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (1st), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (28th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (30th), Container Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is designed for Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) and holds a mindshare of 26.9%, down 27.7% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Operations for Applications, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Monitoring Software, holds 1.5% mindshare, up 1.3% since last year.
Cloud Detection and Response (CDR)
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes
Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.
ToniLindberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement
I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has improved the overall collaboration between SecOps and DevOps. Now, instead of asking people to do something, it is a default offering in the CI/CD. There is less manual intervention and more seamless integration. It is why we don't have many dependencies across many teams, which is definitely a better state."
"Visibility is a key feature. Integration with other technologies across the board, whether they are Palo Alto technologies, Windows technologies, or cloud technologies, is probably the biggest thing."
"The most valuable features are the alerts and auto-remediation because it allows us a lot of flexibility to customize and do things the Palo Alto team never intended. We faced some challenges with certificates because we also have next-gen firewalls. We would like to equip all the traffic because there have been many cases in which the developers have done things by mistake. Deploying certificates on virtual machines can be complex in a development environment, but we managed to do that with Prisma Cloud."
"The most valuable feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is the CSPM, which we use the most. Additionally, the investigation and alerts are useful, and the creation of queries."
"CSPM is very useful because it gives us good policies and violation alerts."
"The most valuable feature is its cloud security posture management."
"My favorite feature is the CWPP module. We can define various kinds of rules for vulnerabilities, incidents, or suspicious activities."
"Integrating with a CI/CD pipeline and incorporating a vulnerability assessment process are highly effective features, especially when combined with runtime protection."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
 

Cons

"Technical support could use some improvement."
"We face some GUI issues related to new permissions for AWS. So far, we don't have any automation to complete them through the GUI. We have to manually update the permissions. Our customers have faced some issues with that."
"It does not provide runtime security or protection for Windows Server. It is currently lacking in terms of Windows environment."
"This solution is more AWS and Azure-centric. It needs to be more specific on the GCP side, which they are working on."
"Currently, custom reports are available, but I feel that those reports are targeting just the L1 or L2 engineers because they are very verbose. So, for every alert, there is a proper description, but as a security posture management portal, Prisma Cloud should give me a dashboard that I can present to my stakeholders, such as CSO, CRO, or CTO. It should be at a little bit higher level. They should definitely put effort into reporting because the reporting does not reflect the requirements of a dashboard for your stakeholders. There are a couple of things that are present on the portal, but we don't have the option to customize dashboards or widgets. There are a limited set of widgets, and those widgets don't add value from the perspective of a security team or any professional who is above L1 or L2 level. Because of this, the reach of Prisma Cloud in an organization or the access to Prisma Cloud will be limited only to L1 and L2 engineers. This is something that their development team should look into."
"In terms of improvement, there are some small things like hardening and making sure the Linux resources are deployed well but that's more at an operational level."
"The regional cost of Prisma Cloud in South Africa is high and could be improved."
"The automation must continue to become much smoother."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Prisma Cloud is a value-back cloud-managed solution; cloud-native solutions are quite expensive."
"Prisma Cloud Enterprise is a costly solution. You need a license for all the components. At the same time, you have everything under one roof, so I think it's still justified."
"The Prisma Cloud pricing is good."
"The price is high. In the future, when there are more competitors at the same level with different clouds, maybe the position will be different."
"Prisma Cloud licensing works on credits."
"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has helped the company save some money. Cost-wise, it's okay."
"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than some other solutions, but when we consider all of its use cases, the cost averages out."
"The product is very expensive, but the cost is a necessary evil; I don't know how we could have any kind of cloud presence without this type of monitoring. The pricing is calculated by module and resource usage. Ultimately, it saves us money in the amount of time we would spend uncovering what it uncovers, and we might not make the required discoveries without it anyway. Prisma offers incredible value, though I wish it were cheaper."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks ?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The deployment is fast if you know what you're doing. The pricing could be a limiting factor as it's usually not cheap, but they bundle it so it might include additional services.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I am not sure what can be improved. The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor.
 

Also Known As

Prisma Cloud, Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, Orca Security and others in Cloud Detection and Response (CDR). Updated: February 2025.
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