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IBM Spectrum Computing vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
27th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (6th)
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Cloud Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
375
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Computing is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 7.4%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

OmarIsmail1 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Amar Sorro - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage and monitor crucial banking operations with deep logging and efficient alerting
The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include its excellent monitoring capabilities. It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email. These features help me in efficiently managing virtual machines. The solution also offers easy access to VMware KB articles for problem resolution, ensuring quick access to troubleshooting information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature through Insights, which is connected to the cloud."
"The comparison was challenging, but the IBM Spectrum Scale offered a balanced solution. Our engineers rated itsanalytics capabilities equally high as Pure Storage. For workload management, Spectrum Computing provided effective solutions that met our needs. Workload management is part of a complete solution that uses different tools. There were the cloud and HPC parts; within HPC, there were parts like liquid cooling, simple computing, storage, and orchestration. The orchestration team handled the workload management."
"The best features of IBM Spectrum Computing are common across many of their storage products."
"Easy to operate and use."
"Spectrum Computing's best features are its speed, robustness, and data processing and analysis."
"IBM's ability to cluster compute resources is impressive, with built-in support for scenarios like VR and active-active configurations,"
"This solution is working for both VTL and tape."
"We are satisfied with the technical support, we have no issues."
"For scalability, vROps has functionality where you can add remote collectors and remote data collectors, databases."
"It gives us deep insight into the entire VDI environment, where we have of over 18,000 VDIs. It helps us keep up on uptime, gives us real-time monitoring, tracking, and troubleshooting."
"The most valuable feature is the single pane of glass so we can see all our vCenters, all our machines, all our storage arrays. We can see if there are alerts in any of these systems, and follow up on that alert and see if it's impacting just that area or if there is a bigger problem behind it."
"They keep improving and updating their apps over time."
"When we have problems with applications, we are fast with troubleshooting because we use vROps."
"The most valuable feature is determining if more resources are needed, at the hypervisor level, based on the workload of the virtual machines that we have in our environment."
"One of the best features is the monitoring. It gives you proactive recommendations, based on the information that you have. It recommends changes. For example, if an ESX service is heavily loaded, it will tell you to make some changes, such as storage optimizations. Every tool does monitoring, but this one gives you more proactive monitoring, with the recommendations and actions that are needed."
"The most valuable features are the Heat Maps, and the various graphs and reporting features it has."
 

Cons

"IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging."
"SMB storage and HPC is not compatible and it should be supported by IBM Spectrum Computing."
"Lack of sufficient documentation, particularly in Spanish."
"In Pakistan, IBM's disadvantage is the lack of OEM support and presence."
"We'd like to see some AI model training for machine learning."
"The deduplication software isn't quite up to speed with the market."
"This solution is no longer managing tapes correctly."
"The deduplication software isn't quite up to speed with the market. While IBM has excellent compression technology, specifically on their FlashCore modules, they lag behind competitors such as NetApp in deduplication capabilities."
"There are some distribution issues, and there is not enough information on the portal."
"I'd like to see the streamlining of more wizards, more tasks that are canned. And it would also be good to see some more features around building the Blueprints, just to make it a little easier."
"Account management strategy is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"I would like to see more features, especially in the way of Flash to HTML5."
"The room for improvement is in the definition of the metrics. There are millions of metrics inside the solution, but there is no documentation from VMware for what those exact metrics are. That is a trouble point at times."
"I get in to code whatever I need and then get out. So perhaps they could support different coding languages. I know that JavaScript is their primary "cash cow" but I'd like to see c#, personally. I'd like to see different capabilities for adding code."
"If it could help with calculating on-prem costs, based on their experience, it would help customers determine whether to remain on-prem or move to the cloud."
"vROps is, by its nature, a very complex product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive."
"Spectrum Computing is one of the most expensive products on the market."
"Our manpower costs have been reduced due to the automation in conjunction with the usage of the dashboard."
"The product is too expensive to implement."
"Most small users don't adopt VMware Aria Operations until it's necessary. Small businesses are looking for it, too. We need more monitoring and insights, so we're analyzing solutions to help us out here. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price an eight out of ten."
"If one is low price and ten is high price, I rate the product price a ten."
"VMware support is very costly compared to other organizations' support. When you purchase a VMware product, such as vSphere or vROps, the license is perpetual, but you also have to purchase the support service for a number of years. The support service pricing is very high compared to the license, and compared to competitive vendors."
"We have seen good ROI results. It has made our lives easier."
"It was cost effective, because it fixed our problems."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

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?
IBM Spectrum Computing consistently offers competitive pricing. When solutioning new implementations, IBM always presents the best solution and price. In a recent comparison with Pure Storage and N...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Computing?
IBM Spectrum Computing had limitations with remote copy services between head office and disaster recovery sites. In the last year, IBM has improved the code by re-engineering it to policy-based re...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Computing?
The typical use case for IBM Spectrum Computing is that it's an all-rounder. It can be used in various scenarios, such as the retailer I work for that has batch processing. It's on-demand when perf...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?
In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?
For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

IBM Platform Computing
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

London South Bank University, Transvalor, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Genomic
Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.