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IBM PowerVM vs Spot by Flexera comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM PowerVM offers cost savings and efficiency, especially in Oracle licensing, while proving more cost-effective than physical servers long-term.
Sentiment score
7.6
Spot by Flexera enabled substantial savings in compute costs and enhanced efficiency, though ROI may take longer for some.
If calculated over a five-year period, IBM PowerVM is 30 to 40% more cost-effective than physical servers despite initial costs seeming high.
Solution Sales Specialist at TD SYNNEX
The return on investment is substantial, though other platforms may offer a better ROI, primarily due to lower costs involved in setup and maintenance.
Drirector at a construction company with 201-500 employees
I have seen a return on investment as I was able to reduce my compute cost by 60 to 65% for some of my applications that needed light temporary processing tasks with ephemeral storage and stateless applications.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Our technology predicts demand, selects the cheapest instance mix, sizes the workloads appropriately, and scales it automatically based on policy, resulting in significant savings by reducing manual work and enhancing our flexibility, which has helped accelerate our deployments.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
IBM PowerVM's support is responsive and efficient, with knowledgeable staff, though some users seek improvement in specific areas.
Sentiment score
8.4
Spot by Flexera's customer service is highly rated for its excellent technical support, responsiveness, and reliability, ensuring customer satisfaction.
IBM provides strong support.
Drirector at a construction company with 201-500 employees
IBM's technical support is outstanding, with seamless global coordination and prompt resolutions.
Brand Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
IBM offers excellent customer support.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
I would rate the customer support a nine out of ten.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
IBM PowerVM is praised for its scalability, seamless virtualization integration, workload compatibility, and ease of resource adjustments without performance loss.
Sentiment score
7.4
Spot by Flexera is highly scalable, effectively supporting multiple users across environments, particularly with AWS services, boosting user confidence.
An IBM server can handle up to sixty-four terabytes of RAM.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
The product is scalable due to PowerVM's virtualization features, such as shared processor functionality and partition mobility.
Brand Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's very scalable; if you want to add some memory or processors, it's very useful to change some resources on the system.
Service Delivery Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Spot's scalability is quite good, and it can be expanded to multiple environments.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
IBM PowerVM is renowned for unmatched reliability and security, outperforming competitors and receiving top ratings for high-performance workloads.
Sentiment score
7.0
Spot by Flexera is mostly stable and reliable, though some users report occasional bugs indicating room for improvement.
The stability of IBM PowerVM is exceptional, as industry reports have named IBM Power and Z as the most stable platforms globally for 15 consecutive years.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Our clients in India using Power Servers have been running their servers for the last four to five years without any reboot.
Solution Sales Specialist at TD SYNNEX
The product operates reliably, and following IBM’s best practices ensures robust stability.
Brand Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

IBM PowerVM users seek better management, performance, pricing, GUI enhancements, VMware-like integration, and improved cloud strategies and support.
Spot by Flexera needs OCI support, better multi-cloud integration, and UI improvements, though it's stable and mature.
We have a strong relationship with IBM, which aids decision-making in transitioning clients from mainframe to other platforms.
Drirector at a construction company with 201-500 employees
PowerVM should integrate some capabilities of VMware vCenter to improve its management features.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Maybe an automatic installation of patches would be great to see as an additional functionality in IBM PowerVM.
Service Delivery Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Spot could be improved by adding features that help identify data to optimize storage costs by detecting datasets within our environment based on criteria such as age and usage.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

IBM PowerVM pricing is high but offers all-inclusive licensing and flexible terms, justifying costs with performance and reliability.
Enterprise users praise Spot by Flexera's pricing and setup, with structured management of licensing, via AWS Marketplace.
While initially costly, the ROI over five years proves IBM PowerVM is cost-effective, resulting in a 30 to 40% reduction in costs compared to a physical setup.
Solution Sales Specialist at TD SYNNEX
PowerVM itself is free with the purchase of an IBM server.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Pricing is a concern in Argentina due to the higher cost of mainframe solutions.
Drirector at a construction company with 201-500 employees
The pricing is reasonable and convenient, and the value it offers is completely in line with what I am spending.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Valuable Features

IBM PowerVM provides resource flexibility, stability, security, and cost efficiency, supporting complex workloads and multiple operating systems seamlessly.
Spot by Flexera offers cost optimization, Kubernetes management, and security compliance with intelligent autoscaling, AWS integration, and AI-driven insights.
IBM PowerVM is performing very well in supporting complex workloads.
Service Delivery Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Features like partition mobility enhance the machine's capabilities, making it an ideal tool for virtual environments with reliability, availability, and serviceability.
Brand Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
IBM PowerVM supports multiple operating systems such as IBM i, AIX, and Linux, allowing users to run various applications seamlessly in a cloud environment.
Solution Sales Specialist at TD SYNNEX
The fact that it can mix dozens of instance families dynamically is something which the AWS native autoscalers simply cannot do.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Spot's automated cost optimization works by continuously analyzing the workload and applying policies to minimize cloud spend without sacrificing performance.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
One use case we plan to implement within the next few months is the overall commitment savings, which we used to manage manually, but with Spot, it automatically helps us detect when and what kind of instances to purchase, making it easier for us to manage our overall commitment for the savings plan.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM PowerVM
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Spot by Flexera
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (23rd), Cloud Operations Analytics (1st), Cloud Analytics (2nd), Compute Service (9th), Containers as a Service (CaaS) (4th), Cloud Cost Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of IBM PowerVM is 1.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spot by Flexera is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM PowerVM1.4%
Spot0.2%
Other98.4%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2014950 - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Delivery Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Virtualization has simplified partitioning and currently supports secure multi-tenant workloads
The ease of use of IBM PowerVM provides key benefits such as the installation being very easy, and the VIOS is really, really stable. IBM PowerVM is performing very well in supporting complex workloads. It's simple regarding the initial setup for IBM PowerVM. We always create two VIOS servers in IBM PowerVM to be compliant for security and to be compliant also for redundancy.
KS
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Intelligent autoscaling has cut compute costs and now manages ephemeral workloads efficiently
I think overall Spot is quite good. The UI is powerful, but it can feel a bit dense for some new users. More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster, and deeper insights into Kubernetes resource usage would be beneficial. Overall, it is a really good platform that is quite mature and stable. I chose a rating of nine because it may sometimes be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, and there are also a few areas in which the EKS Kubernetes level granularity is a little missing. Overall, I think Spot is a really good and stable tool.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM PowerVM?
Managing other operating systems is also straightforward with IBM PowerVM.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM PowerVM?
IBM’s licensing model offers flexibility in subscription terms, now allowing one- to five-year options. They have introduced a subscription-based model for some systems, creating a more cost-effect...
What needs improvement with IBM PowerVM?
From a product perspective, I would like to see faster certification of open-source products on IBM Power Systems ( /products/ibm-power-systems-reviews ). While the product has robust features and ...
What do you like most about Spot Ocean?
The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow.
What needs improvement with Spot Ocean?
Spot can be improved by adding deeper multi-cloud integrations, enhancing real-time security automation, and continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.
What is your primary use case for Spot Ocean?
I have been using Spot for five years. My main use case for Spot is cloud optimization.We use Spot for optimization by leveraging real-time optimization as well as auto-optimization. The company al...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

PowerVM
Spot Ocean, Spot Elastigroup, Spot Eco
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sto, Soitec, SNO, Bundesrechenzentrum GmbH, Al Mansour Holding, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Huhtamaki, ELK Group, IT-Informatik, Arkansas Tech University, Pneuhage
Freshworks, Zalando, Red Spark, News, Trax, ETAS, Demandbase, BeesWa, Duolingo, intel, IBM, N26, Wix, EyeEm, moovit, SAMSUNG, News UK, ticketmaster
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM PowerVM vs. Spot by Flexera and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.