IBM Spectrum Computing vs VMware Cloud Director comparison

IBM and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. IBM is ranked #26 with an average rating of 8.0, while VMware is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8. IBM holds a 1.1% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 6.3% mindshare. Additionally, 57% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of VMware users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Computing

Read 9 IBM Spectrum Computing reviews

565 Views
350 Comparison Views

57% willing to recommend

VMware Cloud Director

Read 68 VMware Cloud Director reviews

2,778 Views
2,334 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Computing

VMware Cloud Director

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM Spectrum Computing and VMware Cloud Director are competing products in data management and virtualization. VMware Cloud Director holds the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and high user satisfaction, making it a better investment despite IBM Spectrum Computing's competitive pricing.

Features: IBM Spectrum Computing provides workload management, high-performance computing, and robust support for complex environments. VMware Cloud Director offers advanced virtualization features, seamless multi-tenant support, and integration with other VMware solutions, demonstrating its adaptability to diverse cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Computing could simplify its overly complex clustering compute resources and improve the ease of use for less experienced users. Additionally, expanding its integration capabilities with third-party tools could boost its market presence. VMware Cloud Director could enhance its data protection and disaster recovery features, improve cost efficiency, and continue evolving its user interface for even better user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Cloud Director simplifies deployment with extensive documentation and excellent customer service, enhancing user experience. While IBM Spectrum Computing offers reliable support and straightforward deployment, it may require more system knowledge.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Computing features competitive pricing and strong ROI, attracting cost-conscious users. VMware Cloud Director, although requiring a higher initial investment, offers significant ROI with its extensive features and scalability, making it appealing for organizations seeking long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Cloud Director Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Cloud Director

July 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

IBM Spectrum Computing

Ranking in Cloud Management

26th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (6th)

VMware Cloud Director

Ranking in Cloud Management

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Computing is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Director is 6.3%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

OmarIsmail1

Infrastructure Technical Specialist II at Clicks Group

Senior Technical Specialist appreciates intelligent workload management, strong support, and scalability

The best features of IBM Spectrum Computing are common across many of their storage products. The software is solid, meaning that the code is stable. They take business seriously, which is what IBM stands for - International Business Machines. They always maintain a business-oriented approach in their software development. It's not simply clicking through interfaces; in IBM software, they consider their actions, process flows, and workflows around business processes. It requires understanding IBM and their methodology, as the software operates accordingly. I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature. We use Insights, which is connected to the cloud. This provides AI capabilities for analyzing the configuration, offering smart recommendations on new code, warning about bugs in current code, and suggesting configuration improvements through its advisor tool. The predictive analytics feature in IBM Spectrum Computing enables optimal software performance through Insights. However, being a storage administrator requires foundational knowledge and understanding beyond these tools. For troubleshooting, it's efficient in spotting bottlenecks, but understanding the terms and metrics is essential as it provides answers that need interpretation.

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NiteshKumar1

Principle consultant at Infosys

Provides crystal clear dashboarding and allows you to manage and monitor your infrastructure

The overall dashboarding is very crystal clear. The ability to switch from one infrastructure to another infrastructure and get into detailed information, whether it is compute, storage network, or whatever. That helps you get a holistic view of the overall infrastructure running in your landscape. This also helps the leadership and management be aware of the right potential investment strategy by looking at the potential utilization. vCloud Director also provides ways and means through which you can make a prediction or a forecast of the infrastructure that would be needed in the future, depending on what you are currently running. That does not take away the fact that we have to be completely aware of our pipeline projects in our schedule so that you can plan your infrastructure requirements accordingly. vCloud Director provides multifold features that have been beneficial to the end users.

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

"We are satisfied with the technical support, we have no issues."

"This solution is working for both VTL and tape."

"Spectrum Computing's best features are its speed, robustness, and data processing and analysis."

"I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature through Insights, which is connected to the cloud."

"The most valuable aspect of the product is the policy driving resource management, to optimize the computing across data centers."

"IBM's ability to cluster compute resources is impressive, with built-in support for scenarios like VR and active-active configurations,"

"The best features of IBM Spectrum Computing are common across many of their storage products."

"Easy to operate and use."

More IBM Spectrum Computing pros

"It helps ensure security across our cloud environments."

"The product allows us to add or remove features."

"Good features of extensibility, which allows integration of other services."

"The tool has a self-provisioning feature, which helps us manage projects easily. The solution is easy to use, secure, and reliable."

"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director is its ability to host customers on their own cloud."

"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director for me is its user-friendly UI, which is much easier compared to other platforms."

"It optimizes the process for cloud structure."

"vCloud Director requires less knowledge to get into in the first place. Therefore, when we bring in new members of staff, we can always give them the customer experience straightaway, and they can pick it up quite easily."

More VMware Cloud Director pros

Cons

"In Pakistan, IBM's disadvantage is the lack of OEM support and presence."

"This solution is no longer managing tapes correctly."

"We have not been able to use deduplication."

"We'd like to see some AI model training for machine learning."

"IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging."

"Lack of sufficient documentation, particularly in Spanish."

"SMB storage and HPC is not compatible and it should be supported by IBM Spectrum Computing."

"Spectrum Computing is lagging behind other products, most likely because it hasn't been shifted to the cloud."

More IBM Spectrum Computing cons

"Database services need to go beyond what they are currently doing."

"If you have a deployed environment and lose it, you can't easily deploy it back with vCloud Director. Because of this reason, we don't have the data protection, disaster recovery, and container features."

"The initial setup is not straightforward; it can be complicated. The deployment can take one to two weeks."

"The solution's pricing is high, and VMware should consider lowering it."

"Lacking additional services reduces the level of cloud integration companies just love with Amazon and Azure."

"Cloud Director has room for improvement in many areas. One critical thing that comes to mind is the hyperscalers. They could be more seamlessly integrated into the hybrid cloud."

"We use vCloud Director along with Terraform, and it's difficult to make them work together. It takes a long time to deploy virtual machines with Terraform in vCloud Director. For example, it can take about one or two hours to create 10 machines. It takes up a lot of our DevOps' and engineers' time in comparison to that with other solutions. This is an area that they should work on and improve."

"Improvements could be made in the building feature since there isn't a real building feature associated with the product. We require a building feature to integrate with other solutions."

More VMware Cloud Director cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spectrum Computing is one of the most expensive products on the market."

"This solution is expensive."

"This is an expensive solution."

"The licensing costs are pretty high, but it might depend on the size of the company."

"The solution is costly, efficient, and robust versus alternative solutions."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing eight and a half to nine out of ten."

"It runs our company in the millions of rand every month."

"The solution's price is the market standard and depends on usage."

"It enables us to provision new clients more quickly."

"It's a costly product. The licenses may not be costly, but with every new development in their product, we need to purchase deployment services, and the deployment services are quite costly."

More VMware Cloud Director pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

35%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Transportation Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Computing?

It is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Computing?

IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging. To work on an IBM deal, you often need to involve multiple specialists, each knowledgeable about only part of the product, rather than having a...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Computing?

It is big on resilience and security. Their focus is on providing robust and secure solutions. Due to their high-end server models, IBM products are often more expensive than competitors. While IBM...

See all answers

Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?

VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a single thing comes to mind when I think of improvements and that is integration. In...

See all answers

What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?

For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few years ago, my organization was using another cloud management tool. We switched...

See all answers

Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?

When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For example: Your DevOps team is supported through Infrastructure as Code services w...

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Comparisons

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs IBM Spectrum Computing

Compared 32% of the time

Cloudera Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Computing

Compared 27% of the time

Morpheus vs IBM Spectrum Computing

Compared 26% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs IBM Spectrum Computing

Compared 15% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Computing Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 22% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 20% of the time

OpenNebula vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 9% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 8% of the time

More VMware Cloud Director Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Hadoop

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Computing product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Cloud Director

March 2025

Download VMware Cloud Director product report

Also Known As

IBM Platform Computing

vCloud Director

Overview

IBM Spectrum Computing uses intelligent workload and policy-driven resource management to optimize resources across the data center, on premises and in the cloud. Now up to 150X faster and scalable to over 160,000 cores, IBM provides you with the latest advances in software-defined infrastructure to help you unleash the power of your distributed mission-critical high performance computing (HPC), analytics and big data applications as well as a new generation open source frameworks such as Hadoop and Spark.

IBM

VMware Cloud Director, also known as vCloud Director, is a cloud management tool that offers secure, flexible, and efficient cloud resources to thousands of enterprises and IT teams across the world. The solution serves as one of the leading cloud service-delivery platforms for businesses that want to manage and operate their services effectively. By deploying this solution, companies can benefit from virtualized networking, computing, security, and storage. These benefits can be received in a timely manner, as the infrastructure of the product is operationally ready within minutes and clients do not need to install and configure physical infrastructure.

One of the biggest advantages of vCloud Director is that it allows users to build cloud-ready applications. In several ways, it facilitates the process for developers, including:

Open to DevOps: The product addresses the needs of DevOps teams by providing Infrastructure as Code services with vCD Terraform Provider. This allows developers to deliver infrastructure directly from code. Additionally, it provides capabilities from Python and vCD API as well as Object Storage API and App Launchpad APIs.
Customization: This solution is very customizable and extensible for cloud providers to deliver their own branding, themes, and services to their clients.
Dev-ready cloud: vCloud Director offers support for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid for vSphere and multicloud with a plugin for container service extension. Through these, native K8s Clusters or Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Clusters can be delivered and managed through a user interface (UI) and application programming interface (API).

vCloud Director Features

This VMware product has various features through which users can virtualize their data and benefit from quality management solutions. Among the popular capabilities of vCloud Director are:

Elastic secure virtual data centers: This vCloud Director feature provides tenants with securely isolated virtual resources, fine-grained control of their public cloud services, and independent role-based authentication.
Multi-site management: This feature allows companies to stretch data centers across sites and geographies as well as connect to existing dedicated vCenters for access and management or on-broad into VMware vCloud Director.
ISV ecosystem: This feature integrates leading cloud service vendors into the product using an open extensibility framework. Some of the partners of vCloud Director include Dell Data Protection, Veeam, Cloudian, AWS S3, and Dell ECS.
DRaaS workload protection: This feature allows users to deliver self-service tiered disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) on-premises to cloud and cloud to cloud.
Cloud migration: Part of this feature is the plugin VMware Cloud Director Availability, which enables simple migration to cloud, offering self-service cold or warm migration to users' vCloud Director clouds.
Operational visibility and insights: The product includes an accessible dashboard and a single pane of glass to provide centralized multi-tenant cloud management views.
Cloud-native applications and development: This feature makes the platform suitable for developers to sandbox or deploy apps as it natively supports Tanzu Basic, native K8s, and PKS.
Automation: Through various tools and deep integration, the solution allows users to automate complex infrastructure-as-code and tile UI-driven workflows. This allows them to deploy X-as-a-Service and maintain full access control and visibility at the same time.
Application Platform as a Service: This feature enables users to deliver their own catalog-based applications or VMware Cloud Marketplace-certified third-party cloud applications through the plugin App Launchpad VMware Cloud Director.
GPU as a Service: Utilizing Nvidia AI Enterprise, this feature provides support for GPU as a Service and delivers multi-tenant GPU services for customers who require high-performance compute for GPU-specific applications.
Secure cloud: The solution supports multiple security-centric features to deliver an enterprise-class cloud service, including NSX-T distributed firewalling, workload encryption, and integrated disaster recovery replication.

vCloud Director Benefits

VMware vCloud Director offers various benefits to its users. Some of these include:

The solution provides a highly efficient self-service model which consists of a virtual data center compute, network, storage, and security.
VMware vCloud Director offers its users multi-tenancy infrastructure with deep automation which facilitates their daily tasks.
The product is cost-efficient, as it is service-ready on its very first day and offers a high revenue from services.
Businesses can deliver services to their clients in a timely manner through this product, benefitting from its natively integrated solutions.
VMware vCloud Director provides users with high flexibility, as it allows businesses to stretch networks across virtual data centers globally.
The solution provides load-balancing capabilities, which facilitate the creation of new hybrid applications and digital transformation initiatives.

Reviews from Real Users

Ajit Y., a cloud architect at a computer software company, likes VMware vCloud Director because it is a stable, truly multitenant software and the go-to tool for infrastructure as a service.

Kashif F., a divisional engineer at National Telecom Corporatio, rates vCloud Director highly because the product can be used for infrastructure provisioning without using a platform service.

VMware

Sample Customers

London South Bank University, Transvalor, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Genomic

MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Cloud Director

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Cloud Director

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Cloud Director and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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