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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs Nutanix Prism comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

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
7.5
Nutanix Cloud Manager users experience cost savings, quick ROI, streamlined operations, and enhanced efficiency and management capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.5
Nutanix Prism reduces manpower and maintenance expenses, enhancing profitability and efficiency with improved management and streamlined processes.
Anything that reduces bandwidth and reduces the brain work that our teams have to do to maintain systems across all environments is time-saving and cost-saving.
The biggest return on investment for me when using this product is the fast deployment and the rapid integration and migration without impacting our operations during the migration.
Playbooks and automation definitely freed up engineer time. This allows us to focus on other projects and not have to get hands-on, reducing operational costs.
Initially, the CapEx was higher than VMware's, but considering the operational cost over time, it has been beneficial.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
Nutanix support is praised for its responsiveness, technical expertise, proactive communication, and customer-focused, efficient problem-solving.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Prism support is praised for quick, knowledgeable service, often resolving issues same-day, despite minor improvement suggestions.
There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call.
The handoff with support and the knowledge of the support engineer is significantly better than experience with other vendors.
We have easier access to high-level engineers compared to VMware, where you have to navigate multiple channels for support.
They respond within five minutes and provide excellent assistance.
Nutanix support is excellent, and their response time is extremely fast.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Manager offers versatile scalability and seamless integration, effectively managing resources and minimizing downtime across diverse environments.
Sentiment score
8.0
Nutanix Prism offers scalable, flexible expansion for organizations, though some face limitations requiring added nodes for resource capacity.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) scales well.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company.
Scaling with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is not as straightforward as they claim, largely due to the assumption that you have IPv6 enabled on your switches.
I rate the scalability as ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Nutanix Cloud Manager offers stable, reliable performance with minimal downtime, swift support, and is preferred for IT environment management.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Prism is reliable and user-friendly, offering strong performance with minimal issues and quick resolutions to minor bugs.
We've never had any downtime related to the Nutanix product itself.
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent.
Even after applying the upgrade, we had to patch again as there was a problem with Prism.
The entire Nutanix solution is stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix Cloud Manager users face challenges with organization, integration, pricing, user interface, multi-cloud compatibility, and automation features.
Nutanix Prism needs a more intuitive interface, better pricing, integration, documentation, and improved lifecycle and license management.
Our primary reason for choosing Nutanix was for mission-critical applications and Kubernetes.
Quick resolution of disconnection issues and errors in plugins is crucial.
If there are licensing errors, for example, being told I have 96 cores licensed but Nutanix Flow not licensed despite having assigned units, it complicates things unnecessarily.
The presales and marketing team should inform clients about resource requirements, such as RAM used by CVM, to help manage expectations.
Currently, if I want to use NKP Ultimate or Pro features, I must pay separately, and the process is not easy, especially in Africa.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix Cloud Manager is cost-effective long-term, with initial costs offset by bundled features, tiered pricing, and global support.
Nutanix Prism is considered pricey but justified by features, ease of use, and potential discounts on larger purchases.
It's not cheap, but there are savings and return on investment when coming from a non-Nutanix shop.
In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups.
It is not cheap or expensive.
The cost is high, and the license payment is not easy in Africa due to numerous intermediaries between users and solution providers.
At first, the cost seemed heavy, but over time, its cost-effectiveness became evident.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager enhances management with one-click upgrades, centralized control, automation, seamless integration, and self-service for efficient operations.
Nutanix Prism offers centralized management, seamless integration, intuitive interfaces, with scalable performance and easy upgrades for virtual environments.
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.
I would approximate the cost savings to be in the 20% to 25% range since we can optimize our resources and avoid the need to purchase more hardware or reuse resources in the infrastructure from one implementation.
The importance of faster outcomes for their environment is significant; for example, when I delivered the Disaster Recovery solution, we included automation for auto-configuration of VMs and resizing of VMs, which replaced many tasks that were previously done manually.
It simplifies firmware and software updates, making it hassle-free for IT engineers.
One of the most useful features is the disaster recovery setup, which includes two clusters, one for our production server and another for our recovery site.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Cloud Management (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
Nutanix Prism
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Data Center Infrastructure Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 9.4%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Prism is 14.0%, up from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtualization Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Khurram Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently manage virtual machines with robust disaster recovery
Nutanix Prism is mainly used for our daily operations, similar to VMware. Despite the lack of extraordinary features, it efficiently manages our daily operations now that we are managing our VMs. One of the most useful features is the disaster recovery setup, which includes two clusters, one for our production server and another for our recovery site.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
34%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
27%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Nutanix Prism?
Nutanix Prism offers web scaling, which facilitates easy scaling.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Prism?
At first, the cost seemed heavy, but over time, its cost-effectiveness became evident.
What needs improvement with Nutanix Prism?
The lifecycle management and upgrade procedure should be automated. With a single click, all critical upgrades should be completed. Additionally, the presales and marketing team should inform clien...
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. Nutanix Prism and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.