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IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 6, 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

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
12th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (1st), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.8%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

Juergen Albrecht - PeerSpot reviewer
Combining tools for effective data analysis while customization and integration need improvement
The most valuable feature is how IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) allows me to present to the customer what the actual software, even hardware, will do. It helps them gain an impression of the complexity of the functionality and find an easier way to decide whether to implement it. A picture says more than one thousand words, which is why I work with the combination of ELM and the specification of DOORS. The automation capabilities I built use column-based scripts for analysis to search, fetch, and transfer information. When I open modules, it automatically analyzes the changes since the last opening by me.
Vipin Kumar Sha - PeerSpot reviewer
Stands out with auto-scaling, auto-scheduled snapshots, and single-vendor support
The areas that could be improved include the Nutanix Move tool, which is presently used for migrating VMs from one setup to a private cloud. It can be improved by adding some other setups, such as Citrix Xen, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat OpenShift. There are many other cloud products that need to be added to the Nutanix Move tool, which would be really helpful for us in India, where we use different setups such as Red Hat Virtualization, OpenShift, Citrix XenCenter, Hyper-V, and VMware. The second suggestion is regarding the different clusters in Nutanix. Although Nutanix is very user-friendly and codeless, the individual clusters cannot be logged in at the same time via Prism, which takes time and can be wasteful. We have multiple clusters within Nutanix. Prism serves as the central management interface, allowing us to access these different clusters. When we log in through Prism, it takes a certain amount of time—sometimes several minutes—to log into each individual cluster. This can be quite time-consuming. Another important issue, especially for our customers in India and other data centers, is the need for proper VM tool reports. We require detailed information such as VM names, IP addresses, CPU assignments, and CPU utilization. This data should be exported in an Excel format. For example, if a virtual machine has four CPUs, the Excel report should include entries like: VM name, IP address, 4 CPUs, and current utilization (e.g., if 2 out of 4 CPUs are being used). We also need to capture other parameters, such as memory and disk configurations (e.g., hard disk 1 and hard disk 2), whether any ISOs are mounted (like CD/DVDs), USB drives attached to the VM, storage types (like NVM), and any RDMs associated with the VM. By extracting all this information into an Excel file, we would create a handy inventory for all the engineers. This detailed VM list would be extremely beneficial for cloud engineers and managers working with Nutanix.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helped us contain critical things, like source code and several documents, which is very important to us."
"One of the key advantages of IBM Rational ALM is its workflow capabilities, which enable seamless collaboration between development and production teams and ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the progress and readiness of the solution. Additionally, the solution is good for integration."
"The most valuable feature is how IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) allows me to present to the customer what the actual software, even hardware, will do."
"We have something called the GC (global configuration), which is a unique feature compared to any other competitor we have in the ALM space."
"You can customize the board according to your needs."
"It's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting of the CPU usage on the dashboard."
"The tools for requirement capture we have found very useful."
"I recommend my teammates and others to choose Nutanix because it is very user-friendly, and we have multiple ways to enhance our knowledge related to infrastructure."
"The customer service and technical support of the platform has been great."
"Using X-Play is simple. In three steps you can define things and there is also a wizard to guide you... The wizard is the simplest way to automate and the resulting automation saves us time."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automate. Nutanix has made it really easy to automate everything that we do. That's important to me and our organization. We can get more done every day by automating tasks."
"One of the solution's greatest strengths is its "Single pane of glass" feature, which allows users to access all pertinent data in one location immediately upon logging in. Additionally, the solution's ease of deployment and mobility are notable aspects that I personally find appealing."
"It's easy to use. Self-service is beneficial because it's easier for developers to assign themselves resources."
"The most valuable features are the compliance features and the chargebacks."
"It's easy to control resources and govern the resources, and it frees up support to focus on other things without having to help developers."
 

Cons

"The interconnectivity between packages is a major support problem and can be improved."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"The GUI is a little bit outdated."
"Some improvements to the user interface (UI) would be helpful, such as exposing more services to make it easier to customize to the needs of each customer."
"I would like to see better reporting features. The out-of-box reporting is - I don't want to say limited - but the focus is on the Scrum and Sprint reports. We need more reporting features regarding the history of the work, tracking it more deeply."
"The solution can improve in the development area and the customized applications."
"The user interface requires significant improvement as it is overly complex."
"The directory designer manager is uncivil. The design manager is clearly really unstable."
"The biggest issue we've run into is not being able to quickly share information."
"We have faced some issues during operations, but when we log a case with Nutanix support, they help us to resolve them."
"I would like to see integrated analytics in the dashboard that accurately displays graphics, such as CPU usage, the overall health of the infrastructure, and specific virtual machines that we refer to frequently."
"Compatibility with multiple clouds and a single control would help us. We are also getting onto GCP, and there is limited compatibility with GCP in the areas we need. We are using GCP primarily for data analytics."
"What could make Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten would be tighter integration of the agentic behavior."
"Currently, users can only attach a new ISO to their VMs for a partial reinstall, but a full reinstall feature is unfortunately unavailable."
"The licensing procedures are not smooth and easy."
"The integration with Splunk is a little lacking, and this is something that we've worked on with Nutanix quite extensively in the last year or two. It didn't really have a good integration. They built some dashboards, where they were trying to kind of recreate Prism. Prism is its own utility; it works well for what it does. But it doesn't provide us quite the detail that we are looking for or the historical data that we were after. So we had to build our own custom apps for Splunk."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not cheap."
"This product is a little expensive and we had to pay extra to have them set it up for us."
"IBM Rational ALM has both monthly and yearly licensing options."
"We have a contract, but I am not aware of the details."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. Many of our customers are not using all the features and this could be why our clients feel the price is too high."
"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."
"In my opinion, the pricing is reasonable."
"It is a nightmare to keep up with all the licensing. I would prefer everything to be in one price."
"Licensing is always a hot topic. We haven't had any challenges around licensing and costs. Everything was within budget and our expectations. It's a hot topic because renewals and licensing costs are high. Managing costs is always a concern, as we're always being asked to do more with less."
"Its price is correct."
"The product is expensive...When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless."
"Its licensing is cheaper than VMware. However, the price for certain licenses or use cases is not clearly indicated. For example, replication of the cluster to switch from one VM to another when one is down is not included in the standard price. It requires an additional license, but it is not clearly indicated."
"Nutanix costs more than Hyper-V, but the price is reasonable for the features we're getting. We have better support, analytics, reporting, and other capabilities that we didn't have before. That is more than enough to justify the cost. The hardware we purchased from Nutanix was priced fairly. The primary costs are software and support. It's a subscription-based service, which can be bad or good, depending on how you look at that. For me, it makes perfect sense. We get regular updates and can get support when we need it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
24%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
12%
Transportation Company
7%
Computer Software Company
33%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Rational ALM?
Improvement is needed in bridging DNG and Rhapsody and vice versa for better data exchange from both sides with some trigger technologies. This would provide a visual reminder of changes in a modul...
What is your primary use case for IBM Rational ALM?
Most of my primary use cases involve the combination of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) ( /products/ibm-engineering-lifecycle-management-elm-reviews ) and DOORS, including both Classic D...
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

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS
Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tennis Australia, WeCloud AB, Port Otago Limited, Logicalis US, Valmer, The Chevrolet Volt, Ashurst
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 IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.