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My main use cases for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) involve managing infrastructure and looking at dashboarding performances.

I am currently using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to manage my infrastructure.

The specific functionalities I am utilizing with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) include offsite replications, between site replication, load balancing, and regular management creations.

We haven't started with self-service, Intelligent Operations, or cost governance yet; we haven't looked at that too much.

What I find most valuable about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the single pane of glass.

A single pane of glass means one place to go look at everything.

The biggest benefit Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has provided my company is a more overall encompassing area where I can go look at and review workloads and get an early jump on any indications of problems.

The biggest case and need regarding full stack visibility for operations to create a single pane for the entire virtual infrastructure, including both Nutanix and non-Nutanix environments, is monitoring, alerts, and reporting.

It makes it easier than having to find the individual servers, and I can have an executive summary for myself.

It cuts down the number of tools that we have to use or go to, allowing us to see anything else that's going on while we're managing our infrastructure, providing a single place where we could start consolidating.

I don't know yet how Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) can be improved; I'm still new enough into it and still reviewing it.

For the use case that I use Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for, it works fine and great; I don't have a specific improvement aside from general feedback.

Better AI would be a feature I would want to see in the next update.

I've been using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for about a year.

The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent; we've never had a problem, and we were pleasantly surprised with how well the image upgrades went.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company; it's been fine.

I don't know that we're big enough to see that kind of scalability or improvement with self-service because we're such a small shop, but it is nice not having to call an engineer.

The customer service and technical support I've received have been phenomenal.

I would rate the customer service a 10, absolutely.

Positive

Having come from a VMware shop straight over to pure Nutanix, I find Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) to be more intuitive.

The biggest differences between VMware, Cisco, and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the UI; I feel the UI is more intuitive across the board with Nutanix, and that is the biggest difference.

The initial setup of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) was seamless and perfect.

Nutanix sent their partner to help cut us over and assist with the transition, which was flawless.

We actually saw a decrease in our budgeting and cost management coming from VMware over to Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), with a year-over-year decrease of about 10% to 15%.

For me, the biggest return on investment when using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is product stability, having everything in an all-in-one package with cloud availability there and not having to manage multiple tools.

I've seen more efficient IT management from using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), with efficiency improvements increased by about 10 to 15%.

Better pricing would help improve Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

Having come from a competitor, I appreciate the pricing model of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM); it's very easy to understand, so I wouldn't change anything.

I didn't consider another solution before adopting Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM).

NCM Security Central has helped my team have visibility into our security posture across our infrastructure.

We're just now exploring low-code automation driving remediations, such as Xplay or Crossplay, since we've only had Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) for about a year.

The cost governance feature gives me a projected path, allowing me to get ahead of potential cost escalations and understand why they may be happening. I can better manage my budgeting standpoint for the next year and stay on top of those costs.

It's another tool for managing multi-cloud costs; I use it in the same aspect as everything else, as a report I can review to future plan my organization's costs.

Overall, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a nine.

I am still working with PTC Integrity because we have a lot of customizations and we have been working for the past 10 years on it. We are planning and proposing to go to a different tool such as Codebeamer, but since our customers are still using Integrity, we cannot have a one-to-one replica or mirror replica of Integrity with Codebeamer because our customization is very high. That is the reason I am still working with Integrity itself.

PTC Integrity's key use case is document management and requirement management. However, the use case which we are using is glossary management, test order management, and product chain management, which means document product chain management. These are the things which we use it for primarily: document chain management, glossary management, and requirement management. As a generic ALM tool, we use it for all three of these, and also for test order management. The reason is because we had test order in some other tool and we wanted a fast way to import it into a reliable tool five to six years back. The only reliable tool at that time was PTC Integrity, and nothing such as Codebeamer existed at that time, and we did not have any AI during that period. PTC Integrity was something which was used in NASA and by companies such as Boeing and all the major aeronautical manufacturing industries. This was the go-to tool for everything, particularly for whoever had indulged in customization.

PTC Integrity provides some set of APIs which makes it very flexible to build an end-to-end SaaS product and an end-to-end software product. For example, I currently work with Java and .NET, and we are using PTC Integrity as one layer on top of Java and .NET while trying to build upon our business modules. Java and .NET are just very raw languages where you have a language but nothing else, and you need to code everything out. I can take PTC Integrity as another box on top of Java, .NET, or Python, and on top of that box, we are building our own module. This gives us one more level of granularity for us. I don't need to do everything from scratch. I don't need to create a text box from scratch, and I don't need to create a relationship field. Whether I am doing it in Python, Java, or .NET, I would have to create a relationship field from scratch, but I don't need to do it with PTC Integrity. The amount of APIs which PTC Integrity gives is also valuable.

PTC Integrity should get rid of the old thick client and move everything to the thin client. The thin client should be made the single source of truth, the way it is for Codebeamer. PTC Integrity should try to integrate this with AI and should have automatic requirement to test case mapping and other AI features that are in Codebeamer.

It is not easy for people to migrate from one tool to another, even though it is from the same product. PTC took over the In-Link product, so if I have to migrate my Integrity to In-Link, why would I replicate everything here? People are happy with what they have. The only headache is the thick client, which is a problem for the installation team. By having a thin client, people can directly open it from the web browser and it would be much easier and much better than a thick client on the system. With a thick client, you have Java installation that needs to be done and you have all those certificates to be installed for SSL. With a thin client, it would be much better and you could do all the administrative things also in that. I don't understand why they want a thick client. They could replace it with a thin client, the way it is for Codebeamer. They should incorporate all the AI things. PTC Integrity should become another tool with all the new features and new enhancements, and they should eliminate the thick client altogether.

I would rate the stability of PTC Integrity as a seven because when we were using a highly customized product, and we reached around 3,000 fields with relationship fields and all, the performance of the system became very slow. There is no way to optimize the fields. PTC says to minimize the fields, but our requirement is that we cannot go with one field and do magic because our customization will be more if we try to manipulate with one field. To simplify our customization, we try to use more fields. When we use more fields, the performance hits back and slows down. There is a limit in the way the database handles things. Any tool, even Codebeamer, does the same thing, but the only thing is that we cannot restrict a person from using many fields and tell them to not use this many fields because I want to use different fields and I cannot do my whole functionality with a single field. I want to use ten relationship fields and twenty IBPL fields, and then thirty IBPL fields because I want to minimize on the triggering scripts which I need to write. PTC Integrity is great in this way, but if the number of these fields increases, it takes a very slow time to load.

When we talk about scalability, we are currently trying it for 2,000 users, but as I mentioned, when the number of fields increases, it does not become scalable and becomes very slower. That is why I am giving both stability and scalability a rating of seven.

I would rate technical support from PTC around six to seven, but when it comes to customization, they wash away their hands and said that I should talk to their services sector and services group. They are not ready to share some inbuilt plugins which they have, which may be a violation of their intellectual rights, but support is only good for some small issues. I can do that with ChatGPT and get answers without needing PTC support for it. I only need help when we need to put some additional plugins into this thing. Nowadays, with AI coming up, PTC support is just okay. If they have an internal LLM and can share it, I don't think we would really need that support either. We could directly do it through a chat. I would say it is six or seven because that is their limitation. They support well, but only for some small things. That is okay for some smaller things because they also search through the documents and provide answers. What I had suggested is that they should give an AI LLM model for us which they are using internally. We would only find the answers based on the error message instead of putting a support ticket and then running behind them.

Positive

The initial setup process for PTC Integrity is very simple. I am not saying client setting is very simple. The only thing what I want is that PTC Integrity requires you to have SQL Server Enterprise Edition or Oracle Enterprise Edition. Why can't they have something like a community edition for PostgreSQL or MySQL? Why should a customer put money for having licensed Java on his system? Why should they go for an enterprise SQL Server or enterprise Oracle?

Additionally, PTC Integrity has something called an "Edit in Word" functionality where you can edit in Word. For that, you require Office 365 64-bit. Some companies, like ours, have Office 365 32-bit because we need it for some other applications which are in the company. These people in Integrity said we need a 64-bit system. What happens is that just for one tool, the whole 100,000 people cannot change their software. This is one more thing. These "Edit in Word" functionalities which are binded with the thick client, we don't want because they say you should use a 64-bit system, not a 32-bit Office 365. So we are using 64-bit Office 365. We cannot migrate all the 100,000 users of our organization to 64-bit because other applications such as SAP and ERP are using 32-bit. Just because of Integrity, we cannot do this. This is not flexible enough as a product.

Second, why should I have Java installed on my system? If a vulnerability exists in Java, I should push a new patch to all the 3,000 systems whose end users are using it.

I don't go with pricing for PTC Integrity because what happens is we have a series of PLM products. We have Windchill, Creo, SLM, PTC Integrity, and Windchill RV&V. For us, we may get it at a discounted price. That price only matters for people who only want PTC Integrity. For us, it comes at a discounted price because we use a PTC suite of products. We use the same license for Codebeamer as well. For you, if you want to do a standalone installation, you have different products and it may be costly. We are using it as a different thing and it comes at a discounted price for us.

Regarding the traceability feature, we don't use traceability to such a high level because, as I mentioned, we are not using any safety modules for our applications which are out-of-box. We use traceability at a very minimal level. We are using this ALM tool as a software development tool rather than an ALM tool. We are not exploiting the whole ALM features, but primarily we are using it as a module for our custom development.

We are not using the analytics function of PTC Integrity. What we do is we export the XLS of Integrity and put it into a third-party tool such as C-level procurement analytics. We have a third-party vendor and they display all the dashboards and indicate which zone is making which amount of profit. We don't use PTC Integrity or PTC in our application for this.

When we talk about collaboration, PTC Integrity is easy to integrate and collaborate with other solutions. Codebeamer has come because Integrity does not have AI-related features because it is a pretty old tool. PTC Integrity is causing us a headache. We have to install it in 3,000 different systems. You cannot install PTC Integrity through right-click and run as administrator. It has to come through iTunes or a LANDesk package from a central repository. What happens is that it uses Java. If there is a vulnerability in some Java, the LANDesk team or the central packaging team has to redeploy everything and push the new package when there is a vulnerability attack. This thick client is causing a lot of pain in the long run. We are looking for a thin client solution, but we have such a high level of customization that we cannot mirror it in a different tool. I want to mirror it in some Jama tool or a Codebeamer or IBM DOORS, but it is next to impossible because our customization is tied to this particular tool itself.

I would rate this product overall as an eight out of ten.