Cisco UCS Director vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

Cisco and Nutanix are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Cisco is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.7, while Nutanix is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Cisco holds a 1.4% mindshare in CM, compared to Nutanix’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 73% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS Director

Read 15 Cisco UCS Director reviews

602 Views
572 Comparison Views

73% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Read 109 Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) reviews

6,086 Views
3,895 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS Director

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Cisco UCS Director and Nutanix Cloud Manager are competing in the cloud management and orchestration category. Nutanix Cloud Manager has the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set, despite Cisco's more favorable pricing and support.

Features: Cisco UCS Director provides robust automation and strong integration across various platforms. It also offers chargebacks and compliance features and support for multi-cloud management. Nutanix Cloud Manager offers advanced monitoring and multi-cloud management, 1-click centralized upgrades through Prism Pro, and a user-friendly interface with self-service capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Cisco UCS Director could benefit from enhanced deployment flexibility, improved user interface customization, and expansion of cloud-native tools. Nutanix Cloud Manager might improve by offering more cost-effective options, enhancing interoperability with non-Nutanix environments, and refining its reporting features for better usability.

Ease Of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco UCS Director boasts a standardized deployment process and reliable customer service, making integration simple. Nutanix Cloud Manager is recognized for its intuitive deployment and efficient support, offering more flexibility in adjusting cloud setups and a smoother learning curve.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco UCS Director is more cost-effective upfront, appealing to budget-focused organizations, with ROI benefits from streamlined operations. In contrast, Nutanix Cloud Manager, requiring a higher initial investment, promises long-term ROI through reduced complexity and enhanced productivity, ideal for those prioritizing comprehensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Director vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Director vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

September 2025

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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

Cisco UCS Director

Ranking in Cloud Management

20th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Ranking in Cloud Management

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

109

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)	5.2%
Cisco UCS Director	1.4%
Other	93.4%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Sunny Nair

Solution Architect and Senior Consultant at Keysight Technologies

Good multi-cloud management capability, but third-party and legacy integration needs improvement

Normally, UCS Director is used primarily for orchestration, but when we look at a non-Cisco data infrastructure components, the UCS Director needs a bit more improvement in terms of integration with third-party systems and with existing older systems. I feel that more development or a more integrated road map should be set up so that it becomes a common platform for any infrastructure. In the next release of this solution, I would like to see changes in the navigation controls of UCS Director. That would be helpful. Modifying the icons that are available for use, as well as virtualization aspects.

Read full review

Kumargaurav Kadam

Senior Information Technology Advisor at Dell Technologies

Offers centralized management, cost-effectiveness, and scalability

The licensing is much cheaper than other competitors such as VMware, Cisco UCS, or Microsoft Hyper-V for on-premises data centers. It is very user-friendly and can be managed through Prism Central, a centralized console that allows management of multiple clusters. Due to the recent conversion from VMware to Broadcom, Broadcom has increased their prices five times the existing rates. Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused. The main differentiator from competitors is its cost-effectiveness, and customers have been running and upgrading their technologies for 10 to 15 years. In terms of client satisfaction, performance, upgrades, or protection against ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities, they are regularly releasing patches and upgrading the system. These activities contribute to customer satisfaction and differentiate them from competitors.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors."

"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."

"Feature-wise, the solution helps one to add multiple environments in one place...It is a scalable product."

"This is a user-friendly solution that is very good and easy to use."

"Cisco's knowledge base is extensive."

"Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."

"I can manage multiple workloads whether it's on AWS, Azure, or on-premises. They can be managed by using the UCS Director."

More Cisco UCS Director pros

"One of the great advantages is that it offers an extremely intuitive interface, but at the same time it manages to offer a level of control over all the underlying infrastructure that no other product provides. Options like One-CLick Update make the tool worthwhile on its own, as well as detailed performance metrics for each component in real time."

"The fact that these are non-technical people — they're experts in their fields but they're definitely not technical — and they can just log in to the portal and select the resource that they believe they need, and manage it themselves, speaks to the ease of use. It shows them their live costs, etc., as they're spending. The fact that they can do that without any problems, or having to engage the IT teams, is a true testament to it. There's no need for any user training at all."

"Nutanix gives us access to a single pane of glass by which we're able to see everything."

"The executive dashboard is valuable and provides a complete sense of the whole infrastructure."

"The convergence between the network and the storage is valuable."

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

"The most valuable feature is less or no implementation time. It should be up and running at any point in time so I don't spend time in transformation."

"The most valuable feature for me is being able to find a machine, regardless of which cluster it's located in, as quickly as possible, and being able to work on it. A lot of times we are called upon to troubleshoot an issue. That usually means there's a problem that needs quick attention. Being able to find machines, ascertain their status, and do so in a timely manner, are processes that are very critical to our business needs."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

Cons

"Normally, UCS Director is used primarily for orchestration, but when we look at a non-Cisco data infrastructure components, the UCS Director needs a bit more improvement in terms of integration with third-party systems and with existing older systems."

"Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand."

"The product's pricing needs to improve."

"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."

"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."

"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."

"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."

"I would like to see more integration with other solutions."

More Cisco UCS Director cons

"We'd like the demos to be longer - maybe two to three months. Some clients need much more time for a POC."

"One suggestion is for the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Prism Pro element to have a built-in support feature that allows you to simply click a button to get support from Nutanix whenever a new alert comes in, rather than needing to call support to ask about the new alert you received."

"We would like to be able to provision virtual machines at the computing level, as that would give us an added value against the competition."

"The stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"NCM is a mature technology product, but it is more costly than some of the other solutions available, which leaves room for improvement."

"If they integrated more with GPT, that would be ideal."

"Nutanix's costs tend to be quite high...Indian customers don't like high-priced hyper clouds, so they invest in VMware, which offers the same features at a lower base price."

"There have been bugs. We've seen what looked like some storage inefficiencies in reports and, when we went in to look, we found they were false alarms. That was something they corrected on the fly."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing around five to six out of ten."

"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."

"I rate Cisco UCS Director's price a three out of ten. Cisco UCS Director is not an affordable product. With Cisco UCS Director, there is a need to pay an overall price, which consists of the product, software, and support."

"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."

"The cost of this solution is significant."

"The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive."

"Compared to Dell HCI, Nutanix is a lot cheaper."

"The solution is expensive."

"It's cost-effective. It's not necessarily cheap, but it's also not inordinately expensive. It comes down to how much you use it to offset some of the costs."

"In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is expensive."

"I was not involved in purchasing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), so I have no information on its pricing or cost. I do feel that it's fair that Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a product sold as one but with multiple tiers, though you need to make sure it isn't oversold in terms of client needs."

"At the end of the day, the product justifies the cost, and it leads to a conversation with management over whether we actually need this feature and if there are any use cases for why we would want to keep it."

"I rate Cost Governance an eight out of 10 for pricing. There are different plans, so you can pay monthly or yearly. You can also sign a three-year contract. It's quite flexible. I can't give it a perfect 10, because customers always want a cheaper solution."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

31%

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	64

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS Director?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Director?

While the pricing might be seen as expensive, it provides value for money due to reliable service and excellent technical support.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Director?

It should be more of a cloud-based architecture for Cisco UCS Director, and it should be affordable to small customers as well because the pricing is a major challenge when we talk about Cisco UCS ...

See all answers

Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?

For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...

See all answers

Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?

When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...

See all answers

Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?

Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Director

Compared 35% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Cisco UCS Director

Compared 28% of the time

Morpheus vs Cisco UCS Director

Compared 13% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs Cisco UCS Director

Compared 12% of the time

OpenNebula vs Cisco UCS Director

Compared 11% of the time

More Cisco UCS Director Competitors

VMware Cloud Director vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 17% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

Morpheus vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 9% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Director

October 2025

Download Cisco UCS Director product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

September 2025

Download Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central

Overview

Cisco UCS Director enables automated delivery of physical and virtual data center resources, empowering data centers to move at the speed of business.

Cisco

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a cloud management tool that drives consistent governance across private and public clouds for its users. The solution brings simplicity and ease of use to managing and building cloud deployments by providing a unified multicloud management that addresses common cloud adoption challenges.

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers four key value drivers:

Intelligent operations: They include monitoring, insights, and automated remediation.
Self-service and orchestration: This capacity category of the product includes tools for managing application and infrastructure workloads across multicloud environments.
Cost governance: NCM offers cost governance through accurate visibility into public and private cloud metering, cost optimization, and chargeback.
Security central: The solution facilitates users' security operations through alert automations with intelligent analysis and compliance controls.

Nutanix Cloud Manager provides coverage for Nutanix private clouds as well as for VMware's. The solution also supports several popular public cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). NCM provides additional flexibility for users, as it is also available as a fully managed Software as a Service (SaaS). This product allows companies to benefit from all of Nutanix multicloud self-services, application automation, security compliance, and governance, without depending on Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has features in the four key categories already mentioned. Some of the main capacities of the solution include:

Codeless task automation: This Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) feature allows IT teams to build automation and improve productivity with zero coding required.
Automated optimization: This feature detects the performance of VM deviates and raises an anomaly alert automatically without the need for configuration.
Capacity usage and scenario analysis: This feature’s runways enable pay-as-you-grow scaling and improves capacity usage with optimizations.
Self-service provisioning: This feature allows users to publish blueprints directly to end users through Nutanix Marketplace.
Application lifecycle management: Through this NCM feature, users can provision, configure, scale, upgrade, and delete applications across cloud environments as well as provide access to multiple teams at a time.
Hybrid multicloud orchestration: This Nutanix Cloud Manager feature allows users to automate the provisioning of hybrid cloud architectures from a single control plane.
Showback, chargeback, and budgeting: Nutanix Cloud Manager uses this feature to allow users to automatically create cloud consumption reports, define chargeback policies, and set up budget alerts.
Automated right-sizing and intelligent purchases: Through leveraging machine learning (ML) algorithms, users can benefit from the automatic detection of anomalous spending patterns.
Security monitoring and remediation: This feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager allows users to utilize over 250 audits for public clouds and over 500 for Nutanix on-premises.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Benefits

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides its users with several benefits. These include:

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers intelligent operations through the automation of operational tasks.
NCM gives users self-service opportunities and centralized role-based IT governance, which allows them the freedom to control their processes better.
Companies can benefit from cost and security governance with intelligent analysis and regulatory compliance.
The product has been made available across all regions in 2022, allowing worldwide access to its services without limitations.
NCM is suitable for beginners, as it offers low to no code actions.
Nutanix Cloud Manager provides real-time security, ensuring the cloud data of companies is protected at all times.

Reviews from Real Users

An IT Operations at an energy/utilities company likes Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) because the product provides visibility, simplifies operations, and saves time and cost.

Drew P., a network systems administrator at Moda Health, rates NCM highly because the product saves man-hours with excellent speed on outcomes and provides a continuous validation process.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Director vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

September 2025

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