Temporal vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

Temporal Technologies and VMware are both solutions in the Process Automation category. Temporal Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6, while VMware is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.1. Additionally, 94% of Temporal Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Temporal

Read 17 Temporal reviews

1,417 Views
1,108 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

vCenter Orchestrator

Read 50 vCenter Orchestrator reviews

165 Views
127 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Temporal

vCenter Orchestrator

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

vCenter Orchestrator and Temporal compete in workflow automation and management. Temporal has the upper hand due to its developer-focused features like microservices support and retry mechanisms.

Features: vCenter Orchestrator manages virtual environments with features like HA, DRS, and robust backup tools. It integrates seamlessly with VMware products for comprehensive management. Temporal offers extensive workflow management tools, retry mechanisms, and scalability, ideal for handling long-running workflows and distributed transactions.

Room for Improvement: vCenter Orchestrator users mention high costs, integration challenges with non-VMware products, and the need for better user-friendliness. Temporal could improve its resource documentation and security features, with users noting a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar with distributed workflows.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vCenter Orchestrator is mostly used in on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, with mixed reviews on technical support. Temporal supports both on-premises and cloud deployments, though it could enhance its support and documentation. Temporal's deployment versatility suits varied environments well.

Pricing and ROI: vCenter Orchestrator is considered expensive, with escalating costs for additional features, yet it provides substantial ROI for large enterprises. Temporal, as an open-source tool, offers flexibility and scalability without licensing fees, though infrastructure management costs may vary in cloud settings.

To learn more, read our detailed Temporal vs. vCenter Orchestrator Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Temporal vs. vCenter Orchestrator

April 2025

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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

Temporal

Ranking in Process Automation

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

vCenter Orchestrator

Ranking in Process Automation

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

AbhishekDash

Senior Software Engineer at A.P. Moller - Maersk

Orchestrates infrastructure tasks like deployment, deletion, and management

Temporal focus on developers rather than business users. In contrast to older workflow orchestration engines like Camunda, which are more business-oriented and strongly emphasize UI and workflow authoring, Temporal is geared toward developers. It provides extensive capabilities for building complex workflows. A standout feature of Temporal is its handling of long-running workflows, a significant advantage over many other solutions. Temporal excels in managing distributed transactions and application state durability, especially in microservice environments where transactions might fail due to network issues. Temporal simplifies these challenges by managing retries, fail-safes, and circuit breakers. As a result, developers don't need to implement these features manually; Temporal handles them implicitly, though it also allows for tuning based on specific needs.

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David Villota

EMEA Hosting Engineer at Yanfeng Automotive

Provides automatic monitoring capabilities that save time for users

In my company's IT environment, we use the tool to deploy production environments for products, including live manufacturing systems. The product improves my company's IT automation processes since we can use fewer resources currently. In my company, we need to spend less time considering that vCenter Orchestrator monitors everything. In general, we don't have to be present in our company to do active monitoring. Automatic monitoring is available for everything with vCenter Orchestrator, so we have proactive alerts in our company. The most valuable feature of the product in streamlining our company's workflow stems from the fact that we need to spend fewer resources and less time in general. Our company can spend time on more effective tasks like working with the plans to improve processes and so on, instead of taking care of the systems. The benefits of the product's integration capabilities were useful for HPE. My company has HPE infrastructure, and we are keen to integrate everything into the host, VMware ESXi. It is really important to have an easy integration method that allows for everything to be installed easily in a matter of minutes. I was not involved in the product's setup process. My colleague took care of the product's setup process. From what I know, I can say that the product's setup phase was straightforward. Some custom setups were to be done manually in the tool, but everything was well documented. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. One of the benefits of the product is that it is a low-cost and stable solution that offers a lot of resources. I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to retry from an interrupted state."

"The initial setup is easy."

"What I like best about Temporal is its durable execution, which means you don't need to write many boilerplate code for critical pieces, especially for retries. It also has great observability and a nice dashboard to see issues without digging into logs. The interface for viewing activities is excellent, with good tracing that shows how long activities took and what ran, making it almost perfect for debugging."

"Temporal allows retryability for different workflows whenever they fail. It helps ensure idempotence and that things get done."

"The most valuable feature is its ability to manage and automate workflows without manual intervention efficiently."

"Temporal focus on developers rather than business users."

"The tool is easy for a beginner to learn. The documentation covers activities, workflows, workers, servers, and more. While more examples could be beneficial, the existing resources are good enough to help you get started. There are also YouTube videos available that can provide additional context. The Slack community for Temporal is very active and helpful, similar to Stack Overflow, where you can find answers to a wide range of questions from basic to advanced levels. If you have a unique question, the community is responsive and provides knowledgeable support."

"It's easy to get started and user-friendly."

More Temporal pros

"In regards to the workflows, the fact that we can actually have a full dashboard library of all the existing workflows on this is great. We can see all the workflows and what all the actions do and can work with scripts."

"The solution is stable."

"Technical support is helpful."

"The technical support services are excellent."

"I like the tool's DNS feature."

"It has the best workflow feature."

"vCenter Orchestrator is very reliable and stable."

"The DRS feature from VMware is very valuable to us because it balances workloads."

More vCenter Orchestrator pros

Cons

"One issue is that we don't have enough resources in the community to get answers when we face problems. We once had a cross-cluster persistence issue, which we solved using different keys. I think Temporal is good right now, but I'm part of the community and will let you know if I think of any improvements."

"While the tool can be a bit daunting initially, especially if you're not used to async programming models, it's generally a pleasure. There's always room for improvement, though. I've noticed some limitations with the .NET SDK regarding dynamic workflows, but this might have been improved in recent versions. Overall, I think Temporal could be more open about implementing features in a more—.NET-friendly way, especially in how you add workers and clients."

"Temporal doesn't have built-in data storage to store the state of the ongoing execution."

"Temporal could be improved by making it more user-friendly for beginners and non-technical staff, ensuring easier integration and usability across different use cases."

"Configuring workflows can be improved —the solution could offer more options, but it's not a must-have."

"Developers often mention the desire for a more intuitive visualization of workflow states."

"Temporal lacks many resources, like YouTube videos, which users can use to learn or refer to if they get stuck with the solution."

"Retro compatibility needs improvement. Sometimes, when we make new changes to a workflow, it fails if it is not configured properly due to compatibility issues."

More Temporal cons

"Its technical support team takes a long time to escalate the issues."

"Enhancing the platform's setup process intuitiveness and offering more flexible pricing options could further improve its accessibility across different company sizes."

"Storage has room for improvement. It's a big problem for our solution. The interface also needs improvement, it should be simplified."

"I liked the previous client better than the current web client of vCenter Orchestrator, though my colleagues like the client now. The technical support for vCenter Orchestrator needs improvement."

"The price of this product is high and could be improved."

"The licensing is expensive and should be improved."

"After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed."

"The only point for improvement is the price, which has increased by 135%, making it very expensive."

More vCenter Orchestrator cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is worth the price."

"The savings weren't as big as we initially expected, but they were pretty great from a developer's perspective."

"Temporal is a free, open-source tool."

"The tool is open source under the MIT license, so there are no hidden fees. You can freely use everything on their GitHub and Docker images."

"Temporal is open-source and free to use, which is great. We didn't have to pay for any premium features."

"vCenter Orchestrator could be more affordable."

"The product is expensive."

"My organization didn't have to pay extra for vCenter Orchestrator. It was already included, so it's basically free. Even VMware regular support is included."

"The licensing module is somewhat complex. Calculating the cost is complicated. Many of our clients are unclear about the billing system and the traffic metering."

"We provide the VMware solution to our clients, for which they pay a perpetual license."

"vCenter Orchestrator is an expensive solution."

"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."

"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. We pay for the license and then we pay the support every year."

More vCenter Orchestrator pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

18%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Temporal?

Temporal OSS is expensive in infrastructure, but it brings back the reliability that companies need.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Temporal?

The actual user interface is still in its early stages. It’s very basic. Users don’t really have a complex permission model yet. Users don’t really have ways to automate things like, for example, p...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Temporal?

We [my company] use it to run a large workload. We have a set of security scans we want to perform, and we distribute them over a full day, that’s over 24 hours. We use it to orchestrate all the st...

See all answers

What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?

The stability of the product is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?

We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?

After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.

See all answers

Comparisons

Camunda vs Temporal

Compared 50% of the time

Flowable vs Temporal

Compared 16% of the time

Orkes vs Temporal

Compared 13% of the time

Pega Platform vs Temporal

Compared 5% of the time

Control-M vs Temporal

Compared 4% of the time

More Temporal Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 55% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 22% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 11% of the time

More vCenter Orchestrator Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Temporal

March 2025

Download Temporal product report

Buyer's Guide

vCenter Orchestrator

March 2025

Download vCenter Orchestrator product report

Overview

Temporal automates and manages workflows efficiently, offering resilience in distributed systems with features like retry and fault tolerance. Its capabilities in handling complex workflows and integrating with programming languages make it a valuable tool for managing diverse business logic.

Temporal excels in workflow orchestration, automating tasks across multiple platforms, and ensuring durability in asynchronous operations. It supports long-running workflows and simplifies handling distributed transactions, reducing boilerplate code. Temporal is noted for its durable execution and built-in retry policies, enhancing resilience. Despite its complexity and steep learning curve, it is valued for its integration with popular programming languages and relatively easy setup process, though it requires improvements in user-friendly features, documentation, community support, and security.

What are Temporal's key features?

Automation and Efficient Management: Automatically handles workflows without manual intervention.
Resilience and Fault Tolerance: Features built-in retry policies for increased reliability.
Integration: Supports various programming languages, easing development.
Distributed Transactions: Simplifies complex transaction handling with reduced boilerplate code.
Durable Execution: Ensures long-running workflows are reliably managed.

What benefits or ROI should users evaluate?

Scalability and Reliability: Enhances IT environments through robust workflow management.
Ease of Integration: Supports seamless multi-platform automation.
Improved Operational Efficiency: Reduces need for extensive coding, streamlining processes.
Durability and Fault Tolerance: Provides reliable asynchronous operations.

Temporal is implemented in sectors requiring robust workflow orchestration, such as managing data pipelines, API integration, and scheduling tasks. Organizations in a Kubernetes environment leverage it for its scalability and infrastructure management capabilities, securing integrations and enhancing reliability across IT operations.

Temporal Technologies

VMware vCenter Orchestrator simplifies the automation of complex IT tasks and integrates with VMware vCloud Suite components to adapt and extend service delivery and operational management, effectively working with existing infrastructure, tools and processes.

VMware

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Beiersdorf Shared Services

Buyer's Guide

Temporal vs. vCenter Orchestrator

April 2025

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