Harness vs IBM Turbonomic comparison

Harness and IBM are both solutions in the Cloud Cost Management category. Harness is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0. Harness holds a 2.1% mindshare in CCM, compared to IBM’s 9.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Harness users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Harness

Read 5 Harness reviews

2,388 Views
215 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Turbonomic

Read 205 IBM Turbonomic reviews

5,574 Views
2,230 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Harness

IBM Turbonomic

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

IBM Turbonomic and Harness compete in software optimization and application delivery. IBM Turbonomic has an edge in resource management, while Harness leads in integration and deployment.

Features: IBM Turbonomic is outstanding in resource optimization, making it suitable for cloud management and data centers. It focuses on cost efficiency and comprehensive resource control. Harness is notable for its pipeline management and automation, streamlining deployment. It enhances development processes and accelerates software release cycles.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Turbonomic involves a complex setup and a steeper learning curve. It provides thorough customer service, albeit slower. Harness is recognized for easy deployment and intuitive setup, offering responsive customer service for faster troubleshooting and integration.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Turbonomic requires a moderate initial cost with savings through resource optimization and reduced operational costs. Harness, with competitive pricing, offers a possibility for higher immediate return by reducing time-to-market, suiting organizations emphasizing deployment speed and agile approaches.

To learn more, read our detailed Harness vs. IBM Turbonomic Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Harness vs. IBM Turbonomic

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

Harness

Ranking in Cloud Cost Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (7th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (18th)

IBM Turbonomic

Ranking in Cloud Cost Management

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

205

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (7th), Cloud Management (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), AIOps (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Cost Management category, the mindshare of Harness is 2.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 9.8%, down from 15.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Cost Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Turbonomic	9.8%
Harness	2.1%
Other	88.1%

Cloud Cost Management

Featured Reviews

Linwei Yuan

Software Engineer at Citi

Streamline microservices deployment with integrated execution pipelines and comprehensive monitoring

Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place. It is very convenient since we have many microservices, so having one platform for all of them is beneficial. The dashboard allows me to monitor all core services' deployment status in one place, making it easier to find bugs and check logs.

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Dan Ambrose

Infrastructure Engineer 4 at Hyland

Helps visibility, bridges the data gap, and frees up time

We use IBM Turbonomic in a hybrid cloud environment. Although it supports multi-cloud capabilities, we currently operate in a single-cloud setting. Turbonomic offers visibility into our environment's performance, spanning across applications, underlying infrastructure, and protection resources. The visibility and analytics help to bridge the data gap between disparate IT teams such as applications and infrastructure. This is important for awareness collaboration, cost saving, and helping to design and improve our application. Enhanced visibility and data analytics have contributed to a significant reduction in our mean time to resolve. Tools like Turbonomic provide crucial visualization and insights, empowering us to make data-driven decisions instead of relying on assumptions as we did before. This newfound transparency translates to a massive improvement, going from complete darkness to having a clear 100 percent view of the situation. Although our applications are not optimized for the cloud we have seen some improvement in response time. IBM Turbonomic empowers us to achieve more with fewer people thanks to automation. Previously, customers frequently contacted us requesting resource increases to resolve issues. Now, we have a tool that allows us to objectively assess their needs, leading to a deeper understanding of our applications. This solution also generates significant cost savings in the cloud and optimizes hardware utilization within our data centers. Its AI algorithm intelligently allocates servers on hosts, maximizing efficiency without compromising performance. By fine-tuning resource allocation without causing performance bottlenecks, Turbonomic extends the lifespan of existing hardware, postponing the need for new purchases. This effectively stretches our capital expenditure budget. We started to see the benefits of IBM Turbonomic within the first 60 days. IBM is a fantastic partner. Their tech support has been outstanding, and the product itself is excellent - a very solid offering. By automating resource management with Turbonomic, our engineers are freed up to focus on more strategic initiatives like innovation and ongoing organizational projects. Previously, manually adding resources was a time-consuming process that interrupted workflows. Now, automation handles scaling efficiently, saving us thousands of man-hours and significant costs. It has illuminated the need for SetOps. It has highlighted areas of overspending, and the actions we've taken have demonstrated significant cost savings. IBM Turbonomic has positively impacted our overall application performance. IBM Turbonomic has helped reduce both CAPEX and OPEX. It has also significantly reduced cloud build times.

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

"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."

"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."

"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."

"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."

"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."

"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."

"With Turbonomic, we were able to reduce our ESX cluster size and save money on our maintenance and license renewals. It saved us around $75,000 per year but it's a one-time reduction in VMware licensing. We don't renew the support. The ongoing savings is probably $50,000 to $75,000 a year, but there was a one-time of $200,000 plus."

"The automation and orchestration components are definitely the best part, as you can tell it what it can do and when, and just let it be."

"Turbonomic can show us if we're not using some of our storage volumes efficiently in AWS. For example, if we've over-provisioned one of our virtual machines to have dedicated IOPs that it doesn't need, Turbonomic will detect that and tell us."

"It has automated a lot of things. We have saved 30 to 35 percent in human resource time and cost, which is pretty substantial. We don't have a big workforce here, so we have to use all the automation we can get."

"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."

"I have the ability to automate things similar to the Orchestrator stuff. I do have the ability to have it do some balancing, and if it sees some different performance metrics that I've set not being met, it'll actually move some of my virtual machines from, let's say, one host to another. It is sort of an automation tool that helps me. Basically, I specify the metric, and if I get a certain host or something being over-utilized, it'll automatically move the virtual machines around for me. It basically has to snap into my vCenter and then it can make adjustments and move my virtual machines around. It also has some very nice reporting tools built around virtual machines. It tells you how much storage, memory, or CPU is being used monthly, and then it gives you a very nice way to be able to send out billing structure to your end users who use servers within your environment."

"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 automated memory balancing, where it looks at whether it's being used in the most efficient way and adds or takes away memory, is the best part. If it didn't do that, it would be something that I would have to do. We have too many machines for one person to do that. The automation helps me in that it is done in a really efficient way and a balanced way because of the policies. It really helps."

More IBM Turbonomic pros

Cons

"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."

"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."

"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."

"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."

"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."

"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."

"It would be good for Turbonomic, on their side, to integrate with other companies like AppDynamics or SolarWinds or other monitoring softwares. I feel that the actual monitoring of applications, mixed in with their abilities, would help. That would be the case wherever Turbonomic lacks the ability to monitor an application or in cases where applications are so customized that it's not going to be able to handle them. There is monitoring that you can do with scripting that you may not be able to do with Turbonomic."

"They could add a few more reports. They could also be a bit more granular. While they have reports, sometimes it is hard to figure out what you are looking for just by looking at the date."

"Some features are only available via changes to the deployment YAML, and it would be better to have them in the UI."

"The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer."

"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."

"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."

"While the product is fairly intuitive and easy to use once you learn it, it can be quite daunting until you have undergone a bit of training."

"The old interface was not the clearest UI in some areas, and could be quite intimidating when first using the tool."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."

"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."

"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."

"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."

"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."

"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."

"If you're a super-small business, it may be a little bit pricey for you... But in large, enterprise companies where money is, maybe, less of an issue, Turbonomic is not that expensive. I can't imagine why any big company would not buy it, for what it does."

"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."

More IBM Turbonomic pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	41
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	147

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Harness?

It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Harness?

Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Harness?

In Harness, we are basically using Canary type deployments. We have applications, web applications, and web servers. Whenever we get the WAR file with 50 servers in a load balancer, Harness will de...

See all answers

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 set as a percentage of the consumption of some of our customers' services. The ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Turbonomic?

The implementation could be enhanced.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?

We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting. This helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single d...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Codefresh vs Harness

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Cloudability vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Harness

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

October 2025

Download IBM Turbonomic product report

Also Known As

Armory

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Harness

IBM

Overview

Harness offers a comprehensive toolset for automating deployment processes and enhancing software update efficiency. It's lauded for its CI/CD capabilities, feature flagging, and real-time deployment monitoring. Key features include an intuitive UI, secret management, and robust rollback functionalities, all contributing to improved productivity and reduced errors in DevOps environments.

Harness

IBM Turbonomic offers automation, planning, and right-sizing recommendations to streamline resource management, improve efficiencies, and optimize costs across virtualized environments and cloud platforms.

IBM Turbonomic is valued for its capability to optimize resource allocation and monitor virtual environments efficiently. It facilitates automated decision-making in VM sizing, load balancing, and cost optimization for both on-premises and cloud deployments. Users can leverage insights for workload placement, ensure peak performance assurance, and effectively right-size across VMware and Azure. The ongoing transition to HTML5 aims to improve visual and navigational ease, while expanded reporting features are anticipated. Opportunities for improved training, documentation, and integrations enhance platform usability and functionality.

What Are the Key Features?

Automation: Streamlines resource allocation and VM management.
Planning Tools: Supports capacity management and growth projections.
Right-Sizing: Optimizes VM configurations for efficient resource use.
Customizable Dashboards: Provides quick insights into environment health.
Reporting Capabilities: Offers valuable data for informed decision-making.
Cloud Integration: Ensures cost-effective resource utilization.

What Benefits Should Be Looked For?

Performance Enhancement: Improves application performance efficiency.
Cost Reduction: Minimizes operational expenses through optimizations.
Infrastructure Efficiency: Maximizes use of IT infrastructure resources.

In finance, IBM Turbonomic aids in maintaining platform efficiency during market fluctuations. Healthcare organizations leverage its capability for resource optimization during high-demand periods to enhance patient care support. Retailers use it for planning in peak seasons, ensuring resources align with fluctuating demand to maintain performance continuity.

IBM

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.

Buyer's Guide

Harness vs. IBM Turbonomic

September 2025

Free Report: Harness vs. IBM Turbonomic

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