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Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 10, 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

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (38th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (17th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (23rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (16th), Software Supply Chain Security (14th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (9th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (9th)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Cloud Management (1st), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Nuno-Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has improved real-time threat detection and unified cloud protection through AI and automation
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent. They changed the names of the products and are now clarifying their offer. The family of the products is not easy to follow because it's very recent. Regarding the generative AI security tool, I know for sure it's Agentic. Based on my experience with Palo Alto, I can suggest what Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could make better or what additional functions could be added. This is the best tool in the market. It's not the time to tell what they could do better because it's a recent tool. The market is now adopting it. Our experience doesn't show that they need to do more.
Phani Venkata Sai BKD - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
Manages hybrid infrastructure seamlessly with flexible cluster scaling and comprehensive oversight
The most important aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it helps us manage the infrastructure as a hyperconverged infrastructure in HCI mode. If I have different physical servers, I can map them into a cluster and manage the storage together. It provides flexibility to make use of storage in a clustered format instead of using it in an individual storage endpoint. We have the flexibility to have Nutanix-based licensing based on the core model, instead of having a specific cost on the cluster. The costing on a core model gives customers flexibility to add multiple cores to a single physical host and adjust the infrastructure accordingly, and we can scale up the cluster as needed. While other cloud providers, AWS or Azure, are mostly into cloud-based solutions, and Azure has introduced Azure Stack HCI for managing on-premises infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides flexibility from day one. We can manage both on-premises and Azure solutions using a single pane of glass, eliminating the need to navigate different windows or screens. It provides a comprehensive view of the infrastructure and highlights specific areas through alerts, giving us good visibility of infrastructure conditions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a technically strong product, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"The AI and automation features in detecting and responding to high-risk threats are impressive; it's one of the best tools regarding AI technology and unifies security in one platform in real-time, improving vulnerability analysis, incident response, and compliance reporting."
"I have absolutely seen improvements in our incident close rates, with mean time to detect and respond reduced significantly, sometimes by at least forty to fifty percent."
"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has impacted our organization positively by keeping our machines secure and our team using the dashboard to find issues quickly."
"I have seen several benefits from using Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks: It was easy to use and easy to migrate from the IBM platform."
"Compared to other cloud management solutions such as VMware, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) offers a single pane of glass where a single service can manage everything, thanks to Prism Central and Prism Element metrics."
"The most valuable features are the compliance features and the chargebacks."
"The single pane of glass is valuable. Seeing all my clusters there and getting all the alerts in one place helps to manage our global infrastructure. To me, the ability to view or see everything in one single place is very valuable."
"It's easy to set up."
"Using NCM's built-in playbooks has helped free up time for my IT team to focus on other projects, saving approximately 20% of time."
"It saves time since it is a single pane of glass. Our efficiency has increased because of that. We don't have to log into multiple servers when we do upgrades. We can do it on one console. This saves us eight to 10 hours a month. Upgrade activity on servers, which was offloaded to the Nutanix platform, used to take hours on our Legacy platform."
"The administration components are the most useful since, with them, we have been able to win and perform preventive measures in the administration of the hyper-converged Nutanix infrastructure."
"I am quite happy with the outcomes we have received using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) so far."
 

Cons

"Overall, I rate Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks as an eight out of ten. I think that it could improve on price, as I know that the Google solution has the best price, and this is one of the conditions."
"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent."
"Some aspects of the GUI can be confusing and make it difficult for me to find certain options or navigate where needed."
"The pricing is high, making ROI challenging to justify, especially during transitions between solutions."
"The one thing I wish it had was that it worked more closely and more cleanly with custom data inputs, which I know is a lot to ask."
"There are some load-balancing features that are currently missing in the flow network security and could potentially be added in the future."
"Scaling with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is not as straightforward as they claim, largely due to the assumption that you have IPv6 enabled on your switches, which we did not."
"The web interface could be improved at some points."
"When we tried to migrate an application from the old cluster, we couldn't run it on Nutanix’s native hypervisor."
"We need to get more training and achieve much more consistent training. There is training, and there are courses, but in local terms, we are missing something that would allow us to have a more widespread training program."
"I would like to see a P2V feature like Move or Xtract. The interface for migrating from one VM infrastructure to another is one of the best but going from a physical machine to a Nutanix VM is a bit too challenging."
"If you're still running tiered architecture for the storage, it would be good to give stats on the amount of data that is warehoused in the cold tier versus the hot tier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Its price is correct."
"The solution is a bit high in price for what we are receiving as features. I feel they are overcharging us at approximately 25 percent. That is something that they should change."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is cheaper than VMware and other products."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"The pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market."
"In my opinion, the pricing is reasonable."
"We primarily work with mid-level customers in India rather than enterprise clients. These mid-level customers are interested in services that are priced more moderately. In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups. As a result, we have approximately 3,000 customers using VMware, while Nutanix has around 1,800 customers."
"Prism Pro is a bit more upfront. It costs a bit more for some of the features that you get. We have four clusters, and two of them don't have Prism Pro because they weren't even available with what we bought. Those two clusters also run well, but they don't have all the features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise65
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
The solution is costly, with high-end capabilities suitable for enterprises. It is less affordable for startups or small-scale vendors.
What needs improvement with Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Regarding areas for improvement, the tool performs its functions well, but frequent name changes across Palo Alto Networks products can be frustrating for technical teams who must continually adapt...
What is your primary use case for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks serves as our primary tool for understanding our assets and performing API integration between our multi-cloud infrastructure, specifically AWS and Azure, to gain...
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...
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...
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...
 

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, Nutanix Software Subscription
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.