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Azure Stack vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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
5.7
Azure Stack showed mixed results, benefiting large user bases with quick returns, user-friendliness, and cost-effectiveness over alternatives.
Sentiment score
6.8
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure delivers ROI by reducing costs and simplifying management, enhancing resource efficiency and minimizing downtime.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Azure Stack support varies; enterprise customers with high-tier support report better experiences, while others face challenges.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's customer service is praised for quick, knowledgeable support and effective resolution despite some cost concerns.
Any support we receive is through Dell EMC, as that's a policy from Microsoft itself.
The technicians handling the tickets do not seem very technical.
The technical support from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is excellent, deserving a nine out of ten rating.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Azure Stack offers scalable solutions from small to large deployments, praised for flexibility despite some challenges in integration and scaling.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers seamless scalability, allowing effortless, efficient cluster expansion to accommodate diverse business sizes and needs.
Monitoring, changing plans, and consolidating things are necessary parts of the process to avoid excessive costs.
Our company seeks cost-effective and more flexible open systems, and we find it difficult to integrate with third-party hardware.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the scalability of Azure Stack as eight.
The scalability of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) deserves an eight out of ten rating, as there is no solution that is 100% efficient and there is always room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Azure Stack is praised for stability and reliable support, offering strong service availability despite minor, manageable issues.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers outstanding reliability and stability, with minimal downtime and prompt support addressing minor issues effectively.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
Regarding stability, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a seven out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Stack users seek enhanced feature parity, cost management, integration, technical support, AI capabilities, and user-friendly interfaces.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in pricing, setup, integration, user interface, performance, and multi-tenancy features for users.
Management looks for a balanced product that utilizes existing hardware, fulfills external customer demand, and leverages the scalability of the cloud model.
The precision of anonymous activity tracking should be improved, particularly in identifying the correct location because IP information is sometimes inaccurate.
Many resources get created in Azure Stack, and managing those resources can be challenging.
They should add AI features in the future.
I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
We hope Nutanix can integrate inside our current license module.
 

Setup Cost

Azure Stack pricing varies widely, with mixed cost perceptions influenced by deployment specifics, service requirements, and regional complexities.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides competitive pricing and flexible licensing, offering good ROI and TCO benefits despite hardware costs.
If Microsoft lowers the price, more small businesses would be able to adopt the Enterprise E5 license.
The pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
It is expensive to move to the cloud.
It costs more compared to VMware due to different licensing areas.
 

Valuable Features

Azure Stack offers scalable, flexible solutions with integration, AI tools, and hybrid cloud features, enhancing deployment and development efficiency.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance, user-friendly management, scalability, integration, and cost efficiency with seamless updates and monitoring.
I am very much impressed with Azure Stack, especially regarding security, complete compliance, data sovereignty, and data security.
They allow me to track all user activities.
We wanted to proceed with an integrated solution from the same cloud provider, so we are using Azure Stack.
When technology development or devops teams request server provisioning, the setup time has been reduced from hours to less than 20 minutes.
The replication method between Nutanix clusters is a valuable feature.
It is easy to use, and it's easy to maintain.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Stack
Ranking in Software Defined Data Center (SDDC)
2nd
Ranking in Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Ranking in Software Defined Data Center (SDDC)
1st
Ranking in Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) category, the mindshare of Azure Stack is 37.2%, down from 46.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is 28.8%, down from 32.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)28.8%
Azure Stack37.2%
Other34.0%
Software Defined Data Center (SDDC)
 

Featured Reviews

MohammedAbdulAleem - PeerSpot reviewer
Security and compliance shine but integration and pricing need work
The difficulties we face involve the lack of support, which is one reason the product isn't selling well in the market. Perhaps it relates to our sales team's strategy, but management looks for a balanced product that utilizes existing hardware, fulfills external customer demand, and leverages the scalability of the cloud model. An improvement for Azure Stack would be in third-party integration; it feels very restricted and closed concerning hardware. For example, I have Dell EMC hardware, but I want to integrate it with other major hardware such as Cisco, IBM, Lenovo, or Supermicro, and I can't do that. They should also improve third-party integration regarding security and new services such as AI as a service. I expect more towards AI-enabled models, and GPU as a service is also not offered.
MahendraPanchotiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates
Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface. While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members. We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX. Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product. Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs. We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix. Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform. Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10. Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise76
Large Enterprise82
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Stack?
For hybrid cloud operations, the seamless transition it enables is key. Most enterprises have a lot of workloads on-premises, and they want a smooth way to move into the cloud. Some things are on...
What needs improvement with Azure Stack?
We would appreciate a more competitive pricing model, as many new features are being introduced that we are not always aware of. The autoscaling functionality could be simplified. Many resources ge...
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
 

Overview

Information not available
 

Sample Customers

Weblink, Fathym, Sage, CFD Support Ltd, The UberCloud Inc.
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Stack vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.