Densify vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

Densify and NetApp are both solutions in the Cloud Migration category. Densify is ranked #19, while NetApp is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.1. Densify holds a 1.6% mindshare in CM, compared to NetApp’s 11.9% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Densify users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Densify

Read 9 Densify reviews

864 Views
173 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 63 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

4,403 Views
837 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Densify

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Densify and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP compete in cloud management and optimization, with Densify shining in competitive pricing and strong deployment support, while NetApp stands out for comprehensive features and a substantial investment.

Features: Densify offers cloud resource optimization with cost-saving analysis and performance insights. It focuses on resource efficiency, predictive analytics, and comprehensive visibility across platforms. NetApp provides advanced data management with secure storage capabilities, seamless data backup, and robust disaster recovery options. It enhances data protection, scalability, and flexible deployment across hybrid environments.

Room for Improvement: Densify could improve its data integration flexibility and scalability in larger enterprise environments. Enhancing reporting capabilities and expanding automation features would also be beneficial. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP might work on simplifying its deployment processes, reducing initial investment costs, and improving integration with third-party applications for enhanced data mobility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Densify features straightforward deployment with rapid implementation, offering efficient customer assistance. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP presents a more complex deployment requiring detailed configurations, but its strong support systems facilitate setup and ongoing management.

Pricing and ROI: Densify offers an attractive pricing model with a lower initial setup cost, encouraging quicker ROI through cost insights. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP requires a higher initial investment but provides long-term savings and extensive functionality, aligning with data-intensive enterprise needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Densify vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Densify vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

September 2025

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Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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

Densify

Ranking in Cloud Migration

19th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (33rd), Virtualization Management Tools (11th), Cloud Analytics (5th), Cloud Cost Management (16th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Cloud Migration

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (13th), Public Cloud Storage Services (8th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Migration category, the mindshare of Densify is 1.6%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 11.9%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Migration Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP	11.9%
Densify	1.6%
Other	86.5%

Cloud Migration

Featured Reviews

Amit Kantia

Infrastructure capacity & demand manager at Kyndryl

Its most valuable feature is the ability to capture attributes in the console, but it is not a stable solution

I recommend others to use Densify. They can not only use it for reporting but for automation as well. They can implement the policies on the console easily during the build-out procedure. Stability is the primary concern to us as it is causing lots of problems. We can only make significant decisions if Densify allows us, and it takes lots of time. Thus, I rate the tool as a six out of ten.

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Punit Waghela

Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited

Offers advanced features with notable emphasis on innovation

The best features of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP include deduplication, compaction, and autonomous ransomware technology that native cloud storage solutions in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud do not support. Moreover, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP allows the use of multiple protocols including NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI, whereas native options may only support NFS and iSCSI. Customers already using on-premises NetApp storage such as FAS, AFF, or ASA can experience the same functionality on the cloud with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which adds significant value. For data protection, customers can take advantage of the Snapshot technology available with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP. This technology facilitates data recovery by allowing snapshots to be stored either on the same storage or on a disaster recovery (DR) storage. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP helps us to take snapshots and store them on the same storage, with options for migration or replication of those snapshots to different storage, including on-premises DR storage or other cloud storage, providing excellent disaster recovery capabilities.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Densify Control Console, and Environment Status."

"I would say that the initial thing is that it provides us with a technological basis to expand capacity management beyond Excel."

"The tool will come back and tell us that we can operate with 1,000 minutes as an example, save 90% on the contractual rate and not run into any issues."

"The ability to increase server density inside of my environment, which has helped me drive reduction in costs."

"Densify's ability to aggregate multiple on-premise vCenters and multiple cloud accounts, gives it a level of visibility not found in many places."

"The Control Console is an incredible way to give a quick view of current capacity utilization allowing technical people to drill down quickly and allowing business/management people to get a quick overview of the environment."

"One would be the automatic rebalancing of the environment. That was one feature which helped. With that, we could improve our efficiency of our VMware infrastructure."

"The solution's tech support is excellent."

More Densify pros

"The feature which I like the most is that it has the capabilities that the traditional storage system offers. It provides all the functionality. The deduplication and compression work exactly like ONTAP's traditional storage. So people who have experience with that find it very easy to manage."

"The main benefit we get from this product is the ability to deploy it anywhere we want, whether that's on-prem, a remote physical location, or in the cloud. It doesn't matter from an operational perspective where it is. The command line and operating system are the same."

"The most valuable features are that it's reliable, simple, and performs well."

"We're able to use the SnapMirror function and SnapMirror data from our on-prem environment into Azure. That is super-helpful. SnapMirror allows you to take data that exists on one NetApp, on a physical NetApp storage platform, and copy it over to another NetApp storage platform. It's a solid, proven technology, so we don't worry about whether data is getting lost or corrupted during the SnapMirror."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it makes our data readily available and we don't have to go through a lot of trouble to access it."

"One thing I have noticed is that it is very simple to move the data where we need to move it, delete it, or archive it if we need to archive it to StorageGRID."

"The solution’s unified file and block-storage access across our infrastructure is invaluable. Without it, we can't do what we do."

"Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"The solution's stability is the primary concern for me."

"In terms of integration, the tool has great data. However, it's not always meaningful because the true business attributes of how most Fortune 500 companies operate are not maintaining in one tool, they're in a school of many tools."

"It seems that the mechanism for integration is, it goes so far but I think there could be some standard integration to normal remedy service now etc. I think that should be out of the box."

"Some parts of the interface are rather complex and require a bit of time to navigate, but this has never stopped us as a Densify advisor is readily available to help with our "how to" queries."

"Initially we talked about some custom reporting, wherein our customer expected certain reports on a few areas, like how the storage is allocated, how the network performance is doing, and how the network utilization is happening for a virtual machine."

"Normalization of CPU utilization is required. At present, the data is available based on entitlement level."

"Unfortunately the tools and mechanisms which really came to maturity in the cloud, and were not mainstream on-premise, are still not implemented."

"A closer integration to the service management processes."

"The cost needs improvement."

"They definitely need to stay more on top of security vulnerabilities. Our security team is constantly finding Java vulnerabilities and SQL vulnerabilities. Our security team always wants the latest security update, and it takes a while for NetApp to stay up to speed with that. That would be my biggest complaint."

"One difficulty is that it has no SAP HANA certification. The asset performance restrictions create challenges with the infrastructure underneath: The disks and stuff like that often have lower latencies than SAP HANA itself has to have."

"I would like to see them improve the perspective of start and search in the panels. This would allow for better visualization of the contents that are captured in the tool."

"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."

"I would like to see more information about Cloud Volumes ONTAP using Google Cloud Platform on NetApp's website."

"There is room for improvement in tier one support, especially with potential language barriers and communication challenges."

"The data tiering needs improvement. E.g., moving hard data to faster disks."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Setup cost is negligible, as it scales fairly well."

"Densify has licensing setup so you can collect data without licensing. It gives you the ability to collect on everything, then choose later what you would like to license."

"There was some sticker shock, as this is not just another software product to spit out graphs."

"Cost is always involved, but then I feel that this solution is better than other products that we have."

"Cost is a big factor, because a lot of companies can't afford enterprise grade equipment all the time. They skimp where they can. I would recommend that they improve the cost."

"For enterprise customers, it's a very cost effective. But in the SMB segment, yeah, pricing is a little bit challenge for your time."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."

"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."

"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."

"For NetApp it's about $20,000 for a single node and $30,000 for the HA."

"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."

"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Retailer

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	53

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is actually quite reasonable in price compared to other native cloud storage options. For example, a customer using 100 TB of AWS storage would not benefit from deduplica...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP does have a bit of initial complexity for users who are new to the system. Although it isn't overwhelmingly complex, first-time users may find it challenging until they b...

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Comparisons

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Compared 32% of the time

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Compared 26% of the time

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Compared 23% of the time

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs Densify

Compared 19% of the time

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Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Densify

October 2025

Download Densify product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

September 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Densify is a hybrid cloud and container resource management platform that makes workloads self-aware of their precise resource requirements and automates the resource management and selection process. This solution helps you control your cloud spend and also helps your apps perform and scale better. Densify enables you to match your cloud requirements with the optimal cloud supply. Additionally, Densify is the only technology that leverages patented, predictive machine learning-powered analytics to perform advanced modeling of workload patterns, and provide precise optimization directives. It is ideal for cloud engineers, container platform owners, and IT finance.

Densify works by:

Establishing application demand patterns that are based on business cycles, seasonality, peaks, valleys, and other variables.
Building normalized models of cloud supply and ingesting the entire cloud catalog and latest technologies.
Considering numerous factors, such as performance benchmarks, cost, technical rules, tags, and policies. The solution uses business and functional tags, operational realities, and granular policy control.

Densify Features

Densify has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Integration with management and provisioning systems
Machine learning-based analytics
Automated resource optimization
App owner collaboration
Tailored efficiency reports
Observability
Controllability
Capacity optimization
Policy driven, automated governance
VM placement
Predictive analytics

Densify Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Densify. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Automated resource management: Densify provides your organization with automated resource management at scale, with elasticity at an affordable low cost.

Full stack visibility: The Densify solution offers full stack visibility with improved efficiency by determining container size and node resources.

Financial visibility: In addition to full stack visibility, one of Densify’s other advantages is that it offers full financial visibility and cost intelligence for both reporting as well as chargebacks.

Resizing and rebalancing: Densify analyzes your private cloud infrastructure, providing resizing and rebalancing recommendations.

Helps you choose the right host environment: Densify automatically routes workloads to the best hosting environment based on detailed workload requirements. For workloads not requiring immediate placement, it reserves capacity to ensure it is available when required.

A true SaaS implementation: Because Densify is a true SaaS implementation, there is no software to maintain or to learn.

Better for IT finance: The solution is good for IT finance because it collects and analyzes your detailed billing data, giving you visibility into your spending, what services you’re buying, and how to better manage your costs. In addition, it can also generate reports that cover your spending and your utilization of reservations and reserved instances and savings plans.

Reduce risk and costs: Machine learning-based analytics help your organization optimize consumption to eliminate waste and overprovisioning while ensuring performance.

Cost-efficient: The Densify solution is cost-efficient, helping you drastically reduce per-processor software license costs by placing workloads intelligently.

Densify

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

NetApp

Sample Customers

AIG, Bank of America, Cigna, Citi

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard

Buyer's Guide

Densify vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

September 2025

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