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AWS Control Tower vs VMware Cloud Director 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
AWS Control Tower enhances governance and security, streamlines account management, and reduces costs, providing significant value to organizations.
Sentiment score
5.8
Organizations using VMware Cloud Director experience mixed ROI, with benefits in efficiency and cost management but variable expenses.
AWS Control Tower significantly reduced the time required to onboard new AWS accounts, as what previously could take days of manual configuration can now be completed in a matter of hours with a standardized setup.
Head Of IT, Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.0
AWS Control Tower's support is highly rated, despite some delays and self-managed technical issues, with frequent praise for quick responses.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware Cloud Director's support is helpful yet occasionally slow, with effective documentation aiding independent troubleshooting, but response time varies.
In case of VMware Cloud Director or any other VMware product, 70-80% of problems we can easily troubleshoot by leveraging public documentation and the available KB articles.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Regarding the technical support team of VMware for vCloud Director, I would rate them as good and I would give them a nine out of ten.
Consultant at Lenovo India
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
AWS Control Tower offers scalable, centralized account management with customizable features, albeit with limitations like single account provisioning.
Sentiment score
7.3
VMware Cloud Director offers impressive scalability for cloud providers, suitable for medium to large enterprises, but needs private cloud enhancements.
It is beneficial because it is totally managed by AWS, meaning I do not have to worry about scalability or durability.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
The solution is scalable enough; it just has limitations in terms of commercial pricing.
Head Of Platform Engineering at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
VMware Cloud Director is quite scalable; I would rate it nine out of ten.
Senior System Engineer & Project Manager at TechnoPeak
I would rate scalability for VMware Cloud Director as 8, especially from the on-premises environment.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
AWS Control Tower is generally stable and effective but occasionally faces feature malfunctions, security issues, and regional disruptions.
Sentiment score
7.6
VMware Cloud Director is stable and reliable, with minor upgrade concerns, improving over time to gain user confidence.
It is a stable solution managed by AWS.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
There are occasional problems when trying to increase the parameters of a virtual machine.
Senior System Engineer & Project Manager at TechnoPeak
 

Room For Improvement

Users desire enhanced AWS Control Tower features, including security, customization, integration, regional support, and simplified setup with comprehensive guidelines.
VMware Cloud Director faces criticism for integration issues, outdated features, high pricing, and installation complexity, deterring hybrid cloud use.
It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiring me to manually choose sync options.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
More advanced reporting and governance dashboards.
Head Of IT, Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Cross-cloud migration refers to if a customer has something on Azure, wanting to bring it up on VMware or maybe from VMware to AWS, vice versa.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The console methods make management difficult until VMware tools are installed.
Senior System Engineer & Project Manager at TechnoPeak
At Layer 7, the load balancing does not have many features compared to other technologies such as NetScaler from Citrix or F5.
Ingeniero De Preventa De Cloud Y Servicios Profesionales at licenciasonline
 

Setup Cost

AWS Control Tower offers valuable operational and security enhancements, with cost efficiency varying by usage and region.
VMware Cloud Director is costly but considered valuable for its features and flexibility, with varying licensing models and discounts.
It is free and does not incur additional charges.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
The pricing for VMware Cloud Director is more or less reasonable, especially when compared to Cisco, which is significantly more expensive.
Senior System Engineer & Project Manager at TechnoPeak
From a pricing perspective, I would rate VMware Cloud Director as 7 because being the available feature set, Broadcom always offered more price compared to another product.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

AWS Control Tower improves governance, security, and efficiency with features like guardrails, SSO, and automated account provisioning across AWS environments.
VMware Cloud Director offers efficient multitenancy, user autonomy, flexibility, scalability, and robust security features in a user-friendly interface.
The unified security management is a crucial aspect, and whenever an AWS organization is used, Control Tower is typically included to ensure comprehensive compliance fulfillment.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
The best features AWS Control Tower offers are automated landing zone deployment, Account Factory for standardized account provisioning, preventive and detective guardrails, integration with AWS Organizations, centralized logging and audit capabilities, well-built-in security governance, a dashboard for compliance monitoring, and multi-account management at scale.
Head Of IT, Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
A notable feature is the Independent Disk, which allows detaching a virtual drive from one virtual machine and attaching it to another, enabling more flexibility in operations.
Senior System Engineer & Project Manager at TechnoPeak
I believe the best feature of VMware Cloud Director is the multitenant capability because I use only one deployment and can configure many clients.
Ingeniero De Preventa De Cloud Y Servicios Profesionales at licenciasonline
The most valuable feature of VMware Cloud Director is segregating the underlying infrastructure for the end user.
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Control Tower
Ranking in Cloud Management
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Cloud Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.4%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Director is 2.5%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Cloud Director2.5%
AWS Control Tower1.4%
Other96.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sharkrit Impat - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Platform Engineering at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
Streamlines governance and security management but requires effort in managing hidden costs
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one single account, but in AWS, you have to separate many accounts. You end up with maybe 20 or 30 accounts if you try to separate. It has limitations; you pay a fixed amount for 15 accounts, but if you exceed that, you have to pay more. It could be useful for implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) for multiple organizations, but for one organization, I would advise against it; it is too much overhead and adds hidden costs. There are limitations on the Landing Zone feature as well. If we implement AWS Control Tower, we need to implement Landing Zone and the security policy, guardrails, and Account Factory; it is not one single product. Using another cloud's enterprise project, you can just create the project and manage it already. It requires some learning curve to get hands-on. For pricing and licensing of AWS Control Tower, it has hidden costs. The Control Tower itself does not cost much, but the child accounts created from AWS Control Tower add costs for checking all configurations, logging, and metrics.
KuldeepSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Experienced users benefit from resource isolation and valuable self-service portal while seeing potential in enhanced infrastructure visibility
VMware is not going further with VMware Cloud Director. They are integrating the VMware Cloud Director feature with Aria Automation only for the upcoming versions, primarily with the VCF 9, and slowly they are integrating some of the parts they have already integrated, and they might not continue with VMware Cloud Director in the future. They can make it more granular to ensure hardware-level segregation, the underlying infrastructure level of segregation for the end user, and a separate security boundary where users can access the end-to-end layer. End-to-end layer means my software layer along with the hardware layer. If they want to do a certain level of troubleshooting primarily on the ESXi part, that is what I feel is lacking for now because for an end user accessing the SSP, the underlying infrastructure is a kind of black box for them. For VMware Cloud Director, it can be more comprehensive if we enable public cloud integration as well. In today's date, customers are adopting a multi-cloud environment where VMware Cloud Director is much feasible to leverage the underlying VMware backend architecture. If VMware Cloud Director could be made to have more integration with the public cloud and do the day one, day two jobs for public cloud interface as well, that would be beneficial. Additionally, I recommend leveraging the VMware Cloud Director layer if a customer has a multi-cloud environment and is planning some cross-cloud migration capability. Cross-cloud migration refers to if a customer has something on Azure, wanting to bring it up on VMware or maybe from VMware to AWS, vice versa. In that case, VMware Cloud Director should provide some cross-cloud migration capability as well.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Control Tower?
Control Tower within the AWS Organization does not have a charge. It is free and does not incur additional charges.
What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?
I would like to see greater customization and flexibility for the landing zone, easier integration with existing enterprise environments, more advanced reporting and governance dashboards, and expa...
What is your primary use case for AWS Control Tower?
My primary use case for AWS Control Tower is multi-account governance, as it provides a standardized landing zone that allows us to provision accounts consistently, enforce security guardrails, cen...
Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?
VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a single thing comes to mind when I think of improvements and that is integration. In...
What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?
For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few years ago, my organization was using another cloud management tool. We switched...
Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?
When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For example: Your DevOps team is supported through Infrastructure as Code services w...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vCloud Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Control Tower vs. VMware Cloud Director and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.