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IBM PowerVM vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.7
PowerVM saves costs by charging for allocated cores, proving more cost-effective and reliable than physical servers over five years.
Sentiment score
1.0
VMware Workstation enhances cost savings, enabling efficient application testing and integration, resulting in improved job performance and satisfaction.
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
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
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
IBM PowerVM's support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though challenges arise without subscriptions; stability minimizes service need.
Sentiment score
2.9
VMware Workstation's customer service is mixed, with varying responsiveness and reliance on community resources after HP acquisition.
IBM offers excellent customer support.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
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
On a scale of one to 10, I would rate their support or customer service a two or three since they never did anything.
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The documents provided for Workstation were not hard to understand.
Owner at Inforex
It's a very special way of working with VMware Workstation.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
IBM PowerVM excels in scalability and flexibility, efficiently managing resources and users for both small and large enterprises.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware Workstation is versatile, supporting multiple VMs, though opinions vary on scalability for larger operations and single installations.
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
I think IBM PowerVM uses a 'pay as you grow' model, allowing customers to scale their resources as needed.
Solution Sales Specialist at TD SYNNEX
VMware Workstation is scalable enough for larger companies, though it requires some skills.
Owner at Inforex
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
IBM PowerVM is praised for exceptional stability and uptime, outperforming competitors like SPARC, Nutanix, and VMware in reliability.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware Workstation is highly reliable, with improved stability post-v6, though minor virtual network issues may occur in specific scenarios.
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
We are using the network in a very specific way, and this network adapter causes crashes in the VM.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Room For Improvement

IBM PowerVM needs usability, pricing, automation, integration improvements, and a GUI to better compete and enhance user experience.
VMware Workstation needs performance, usability, and cost improvements, enhanced stability, better documentation, and streamlined integration and scalability.
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
From a product perspective, I would like to see faster certification of open-source products on IBM Power Systems.
Brand Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
PowerVM should integrate some capabilities of VMware vCenter to improve its management features.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Eventually, we had to get some licenses with Broadcom, and all the costs went up dramatically.
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
We faced challenges with backup due to limitations in the free version, requiring us to switch to a paid version.
Owner at Inforex
The problem we are facing with stability is that the network adapter causes crashes of the VM when we're using it for developing purposes.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Setup Cost

IBM PowerVM pricing is high but offers reliability, flexible licensing, and potential TCO savings despite cheaper alternatives.
VMware Workstation is pricey but offers integration benefits with cost-saving opportunities through sales and varies by user needs.
PowerVM itself is free with the purchase of an IBM server.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
They have introduced a subscription-based model for some systems, creating a more cost-effective solution for customers.
Brand Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Pricing is a concern in Argentina due to the higher cost of mainframe solutions.
Drirector at a construction company with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

IBM PowerVM offers stability, flexibility, and high availability with robust virtualization, cloud integration, and optimized workloads for Oracle and SAP HANA.
VMware Workstation offers user-friendly virtualization, multi-OS operation, and superior testing flexibility, outperforming alternatives like Oracle VirtualBox.
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
It supports specific workloads, like Oracle and SAP HANA, much better due to its shared processor pool feature which reduces licensing costs.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
I use it for a test machine for checking emails, so if the email has a virus in it, we can just destroy the machine and create a new one.
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
VMware Workstation works correctly and has more features compared to Oracle VirtualBox.
Owner at Inforex
Simply being able to run several Windows PCs with different development environments has had the largest impact on our operational efficiency.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM PowerVM
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (10th)
VMware Workstation
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM PowerVM is designed for Server Virtualization Software and holds a mindshare of 1.3%, up 1.2% compared to last year.
VMware Workstation, on the other hand, focuses on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), holds 13.9% mindshare, down 16.3% since last year.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM PowerVM1.3%
VMware vSphere17.4%
Hyper-V16.4%
Other64.9%
Server Virtualization Software
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Workstation13.9%
VMware Fusion Pro15.3%
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)14.6%
Other56.199999999999996%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

AS
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Achieves cost efficiency with optimized hardware-based virtualization
PowerVM stands out for me as a hardware-based hypervisor, which is optimized with less overhead. It supports specific workloads, like Oracle and SAP HANA, much better due to its shared processor pool feature which reduces licensing costs. In visualization, it offers a built-in accelerators feature to handle AI inference effectively while minimizing power requirements.
GC
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Creating and destroying test machines has simplified our operations and reduced manual recovery time
The Snapshot feature has helped with workflows by allowing us to more easily reconstruct something if we lose it or need it. We've been making Snapshots on a consistent basis, mainly of servers. The VX Rail has worked effectively because we can create machines as we need them. It's helpful for resetting and has helped with our operations because I had set up failover servers on Vertex, but we don't have to do that anymore since VMware will just create a new machine immediately if we have a problem. We're doing our domain servers on there, and we've been very happy with that. We appreciate that we can create machines simply to test things out and then destroy them. I use it for a test machine for checking emails, so if the email has a virus in it, we can just destroy the machine and create a new one. We're slowly moving into the VMware environment, although the pricing with Broadcom has been a disaster.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise17
 

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 ...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

PowerVM
No data available
 

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
Akademiska Hus
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