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Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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
21st
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Cloud Management
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (14th), PaaS Clouds (12th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (5th), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.9%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco UCS Director1.9%
VMware Tanzu Platform1.1%
Other97.0%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

OR
Senior Telecommunications Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Managing extensive VoIP services becomes efficient and seamless
We use Cisco UCS Director primarily for managing our VoIP service to maintain seamless service delivery. We operate in an enterprise government environment Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate. It helps save time by making it quicker to roll out new call…
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Feature-wise, the solution helps one to add multiple environments in one place...It is a scalable product."
"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"UCS director enables us to be more productive and more agile, and also more self-sufficient because we don't have to depend on anybody else."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"I can manage multiple workloads whether it's on AWS, Azure, or on-premises. They can be managed by using the UCS Director."
"The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors."
"The solution is helpful for centralized management."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."
"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."
"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."
 

Cons

"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"It is not easy to add or expand the product."
"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."
"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"The product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)"
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."
"The infrastructure is quite challenging."
"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"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."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"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."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS Director?
Mainly in my region and country, large data center customers are using Cisco UCS Director, not the SMB or mid-market customers. More of the on-premise customers are utilizing Cisco UCS Director. Th...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.