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BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs CloudStack comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (5th)
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management
Ranking in Cloud Management
36th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (47th)
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 5.6%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 5.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation
It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.
it_user790746 - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates Java EE Application Deployment from an SCM system
Total build time has been reduced from four weeks to one week, then later to 24 hours. * Threat remediation: Combine with SecOps to link vulnerabilities to identified patches and create a remediation plan. * Compliance: Integrates role-based access control with pre-configured policies for CIS, DISA, HIPAA, PCI, SOX, NIST, and SCAP documentation and remediation. * Provisioning: Supports unattended installs and image-based, script-based, or template-based provisioning. * Configuration: Consistently manage change and configuration activities across a broad range of server environments with one tool. * Reporting: Assesses change impact or completes an audit using multiple dashboard views. * Patching: Supports and follows Maintenance Window Guidelines to ensure timely delivery of patches.
Wido Den Hollander - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution that strikes a balance between user-friendliness, scalability, and stability
The market keeps changing, and so does technology. I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved. Regarding container technology, Kubernetes is something many people want to use and something which, as of now, many are using currently. However, there is still room for improvement in Kubernetes, particularly with networking functionality and network virtualization. When it comes to what needs to be improved in CloudStack, I would say that it should stay the way it is currently. It should continue being a stable product that people can rely on since many may be inclined to follow the latest trends and hype, which is not always good for a solution's stability. It is crucial to prioritize stability, which is a key factor that companies seek. In my view, the platform could benefit from adding more metrics. More metrics would offer more insights and data on the platform's performance, utilization, and usage. Overall, I believe that having more metrics available would be highly desirable.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The system automatically sizes and moves resources based on the needs of the applications."
"It helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single dashboard, allowing us to identify opportunities to improve their current spending."
"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."
"The notifications saying, "This is a corrective action," even though some of them can be automated, are always welcome to see. They summarize your entire infrastructure and how you can better utilize it. That is the biggest feature."
"We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time."
"It became obvious to us that there was a lot more being offered in the product that we could leverage to ensure our VMware environment was running efficiently."
"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."
"Using this product helps us to reduce performance risk because it shows us where resources are needed but not yet allocated."
"Supports unattended installs and image-based, script-based, or template-based provisioning."
"Assesses change impact or completes an audit using multiple dashboard views."
"By allowing end users to request their own services, the request process for systems is much quicker and more accurate."
"Integrates role-based access control with pre-configured policies for CIS, DISA, HIPAA, PCI, SOX, NIST, and SCAP documentation and remediation."
"Automates Java EE Application Deployment from an SCM system."
"You can tie together your public and private cloud infrastructure into a "single pane of glass"."
"CLM has a multi-cloud portal because they have the resources to implement in various environments in various ports."
"The product gives us the ability to orchestrate large virtual environments and is flexible enough to allow us to configure it for what we need. We value the flexibility of the networking feature set as well as the ability to build virtual private clouds."
"We like the virtualization capabilities."
"You can use a single API to get things done, rather than multiple APIs on multiple modules."
"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."
"The platform is very simple to scale-out.​"
"It has become easy to deploy new devices with no or minimal hardware changes. Now, a user can be ready to use a firewall within a few minutes, as compared to the traditional physical model which involved purchase, shipping, hardware configuration, cabling, power, etc."
"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."
"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."
 

Cons

"Since the introduction of a HTML 5 based interface, our main - but minor - criticism of a less than intuitive operation managers' GUI would be the area of improvement."
"It would be nice for them to have a way to do something with physical machines, but I know that is not their strength Thankfully, the majority of our environment is virtual, but it would be nice to see this type of technology across some other platforms. It would be nice to have capacity planning across physical machines."
"If they would educate their customers to understand the latest updates, that would help customers... Also, there are a lot of features that are not available in Turbonomic. For example, PaaS component optimization and automation are still in the development phase."
"I would love to see Turbonomic analyze backup data. We have had people in the past put servers into daily full backups with seven-year retention and where the disk size is two terabytes. So, every single day, there is a two terabyte snapshot put into a Blob somewhere. I would love to see Turbonomic say, "Here are all your backups along with the age of them," to help us manage the savings by not having us spend so much on the storage in Azure. That would be huge."
"I do not like Turbonomic's new licensing model. The previous model was pretty straightforward, whereas the new model incorporates what most of the vendors are doing now with cores and utilization. Our pricing under the new model will go up quite a bit. Before, it was pretty straightforward, easy to understand, and reasonable."
"Before IBM bought it, the support was fantastic. After IBM bought it, the support became very disappointing."
"The one point is the reporting. We do have reports out of it, but they're not the level of graphical detail I would like."
"The issue for us with the automation is we are considering starting to do the hot adds, but there are some problems with Windows Server 2019 and hot adds. It is a little buggy. So, if we turn that on with a cluster that has a lot of Windows 2019 Servers, then we would see a blue screen along with a lot of applications as well. Depending on what you are adding, cores or memory, it doesn't necessarily even take advantage of that at that moment. A reboot may be required, and we can't do that until later. So, that decreases the benefit of the real-time. For us, there is a lot of risk with real-time."
"The installation and configuration can be tricky due to it being built on Remedy."
"One of the major problems is that support is not so good."
"Needs integrations with other providers to provide a custom public cloud environment."
"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."
"It would be great to have a couple of “external” networks for VPC and have the possibility, for each domain, to choose they type of “external” network."
"I encountered some stability issues. When I tried to remove high-capacity virtual machines it took a long time to update, and sometimes the VM status failed to update properly in the cloud database. This occurred multiple times, even though I had sufficient resources."
"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."
"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."
"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."
"The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."
"Environment is sensitive, so, unlike VMware, you can not afford middle-skilled engineers, they will ruin everything."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We felt the pricing was very fair for the product. It is in no way prohibitive for larger deployments, unlike other similar product on the market."
"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."
"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."
"We see ROI in extended support agreements (ESA) for old software. Migration activities seem to be where Turbonomic has really benefited us the most. It's one click and done. We have new machines ready to go with Turbonomic, which are properly sized instead of somebody sitting there with a spreadsheet and guessing. So, my return on investment would certainly be on currency, from a software and hardware perspective."
"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."
"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."
"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."
"The product is fairly priced right now. Given its capabilities, it is excellently priced. We think that the product will become self-funding because we will be able to maximize our resources, which will help us from a capacity perspective. That should save us money in the long run."
Information not available
"The solution is open-source and free."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
21%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?
It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about CloudStack?
The initial implementation process was quite good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is an open-source product without any inherent costs. Service and support are available through various ve...
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization.
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
BMC CLM
Vmops, Cloud.com
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
JDA Software, Morningstar, Orange Business Services, Wipro
GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. CloudStack and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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