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Azure Cost Management 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

Azure Cost Management
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Cost Management (3rd)
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 (29th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Infrastructure and Tools solutions, they serve different purposes. Azure Cost Management is designed for Cloud Cost Management and holds a mindshare of 6.8%, down 12.6% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Operations for Applications, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Monitoring Software, holds 1.7% mindshare, up 1.2% since last year.
Cloud Cost Management
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Joy Maitra - PeerSpot reviewer
Continuous monitoring and predictive analytics help provide insights into utilization
Continuous monitoring helps me detect anomalies in the pipeline, preplan resource scalability, and assist with cost management by offering good visibility into resource utilization. It also offers predictive analytics and some existing features, including dashboards. The AI prediction feature helps forecast based on current utilization trends and suggests improvements like the GenAI feature for interactive inquiries.
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

"The best thing about Azure Cost Management is the cost analysis functionality because it provides regular alerts."
"The cost analysis and exportability are the most valuable features of the solution."
"Microsoft Azure Cloud Cost Management is easy to use and we have a lot of insights about all of our goals."
"The interface is good, and it's easy to manage."
"What I like the most about Azure Cost Management is that it's similar to a native service, and it has very well-defined product features, particularly if a customer is moving to Azure, then it gives proper insight in terms of compatibility and what benefits a customer can get from the solution."
"It is easy to log in, and everything is graphical so that you can build on the published resources."
"We find the analytics available via this solution to be very useful, as it allows us to easily see detailed cost information for each of our various subscription elements."
"Microsoft's technical support is good."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"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."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"No issues with stability."
"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."
 

Cons

"It would be nice if they could introduce connections to other clouds. It would be good to connect to AWS and Oracle cloud."
"The product's licensing cost could be improved."
"Be wary of unnecessary costs."
"Cost Management could always provide more details. The more information, the better. They just need to build on what they have now."
"There are significant issues with Power BI integration at the moment, particularly with built-in applications for course management. Multiple features don't allow for efficient report generation. This is one primary concern. The second issue relates to reporting, even when using Power BI templates for course management. There are problems with data import that require manual entry. So, these are the two main challenges I'm currently facing. Another matter to consider is the removal of the markup option for partners. I'm not sure if it will be added back, but it used to allow marking up Azure usage for enterprise customers. I'm uncertain if there's an alternative way to achieve the same function. Partners need to mark up services when selling to customers, and it's currently unavailable for some products or services."
"The initial setup is a little bit complex."
"The technical support could be improved."
"The dashboard could be improved."
"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."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"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 solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's bundled in with the package. I have it as part of the package."
"Azure Cost Management is a free cost management tool."
"Compared to competitors, it's cost-effective. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The subscription fees are primarily tailored to larger enterprises, potentially leaving smaller and medium-sized customers with limited options."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The tool's pricing is yearly."
"The solution is free. It's part of having an Azure subscription."
"Customers do not need to pay for the product's license, and the product is free of cost."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Cost Management?
Gives visibility into the cost of cloud-based solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Cost Management?
The pricing part could be improved. I would rate it as six out of ten. It depends on the solution. We mostly pay for our licenses.
What needs improvement with Azure Cost Management?
Customization features could be added for Azure Cost Management ( /products/azure-cost-management-reviews ), but the dashboards are handy, and overall, everything is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
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.
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Cost Management, Cloudyn
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Quixey, Infomedia, Panaya, Wix.com, Mirabeau, Mi9, GetTaxi, Outsmart Studios, Bownty, BlazeMeter: The Load Testing Cloud, Irdeto, Effective Measure, Totango, Nextdoor, BranchOut, The BioTeam, Evolven, Netotiate, ClickSoftware
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 IBM, Nutanix, Microsoft and others in Cloud Cost Management. Updated: July 2025.
861,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.