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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 10, 2025

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
6.8
Nutanix Cloud Manager boosts productivity, reduces costs, and enhances resource allocation through efficient management, scalability, and seamless integration.
Sentiment score
7.0
Prisma Cloud enhances security, saves time, improves compliance, and reduces costs, although exact financial benefits are hard to quantify.
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.
Vice President at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
IT INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGER
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.
Citrix & IT Operations Manager, Cloud at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
It eliminates the need for additional hardware, making it a financially and technically sound investment.
Partner at Quasys
Reputation and data security are the two most important things to a financial institution.
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
We may have prevented a security breach with remediation of the findings.
Security Solutions Architect - Cloud Security Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Manager's support is praised for responsiveness, expertise, and reliability, despite occasional regional delays, earning high ratings.
Sentiment score
7.0
Prisma Cloud's customer service is praised for expertise but criticized for inconsistent response times and regional support variations.
There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call.
Team Lead, IT Infrastructure at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
The handoff with support and the knowledge of the support engineer is significantly better than experience with other vendors.
Citrix & IT Operations Manager, Cloud at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Even when a node goes down, it doesn't impact our infrastructure because it gets load-balanced between the available nodes.
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
They can respond with technical documentation or pass on the case to the next level because it requires the development of a new feature or changing a feature due to a bug.
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Anywhere we raise a tech case, they revert back within an hour.
Cloud Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
I would rate them a nine out of ten because whenever there are issues, they are able to resolve them within the timelines and SLAs.
Senior IT infrastructure consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Nutanix Cloud Manager enables scalable cluster management, seamless integration, and predictive planning across diverse environments with strong performance support.
Sentiment score
7.6
Prisma Cloud offers scalable solutions, efficiently managing deployments, despite occasional operational complexities and licensing influences on scalability perception.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) scales well.
Citrix & IT Operations Manager, Cloud at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
The key aspects include mix-match hardware and hyper-converged infrastructure, combining compute, storage, and network in a single platform.
Senior Information Technology Advisor at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company.
Director, Information Technology at a government with 201-500 employees
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Technology Specialist - Cloud Security at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
We haven't had any issues scaling the solution.
Senior Cloud Security Engineer at impelsys
There aren't any limits to Prisma Cloud's scalability.
Senior Security Consultant at helpag
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Nutanix Cloud Manager is praised for reliability, minimal downtime, effective support, and strong disaster recovery, ensuring high performance.
Sentiment score
8.0
Prisma Cloud is praised for high stability, though minor disruptions and data retrieval challenges occur in complex environments.
We've never had any downtime related to the Nutanix product itself.
Sr. Network Systems Administrator at Moda Health
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
Sr System Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent.
Director, Information Technology at a government with 201-500 employees
I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.
Cloud Security Engineer (Team lead) at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Most of the time, when the client requires data, it is not available.
Technology Specialist - Cloud Security at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The cloud environment is dynamic, so the tool must be dynamic.
Cloud Security Delivery Associate Manager at Accenture
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix Cloud Manager struggles with organization, complex integration, language support, licensing, performance, automation, and partner knowledge-sharing.
Prisma Cloud requires enhanced documentation, user interface, automation, integration features, pricing, support, updates, and improved access and monitoring.
It supports different hardware types without vendor lock-in, which is an advantage over Azure Stack HCI, which may only work with specific vendors such as HP or Dell.
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
Our primary reason for choosing Nutanix was for mission-critical applications and Kubernetes.
Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Quick resolution of disconnection issues and errors in plugins is crucial.
Sr System Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Prisma Cloud is an excellent tool.
Technical Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts.
Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Even though documentation was available, it took a while for a new person to understand what integration meant, what will be achieved after the integration, or how the integration needed to be done on the Azure or AWS side.
Technical Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers cost-effective, flexible pricing, praised for competitive value, scalability, and quick ROI despite occasional high-tier costs.
Prisma Cloud offers comprehensive features and robust security but presents challenges with its complex and potentially expensive licensing model.
It's not cheap, but there are savings and return on investment when coming from a non-Nutanix shop.
Citrix & IT Operations Manager, Cloud at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups.
Cloud Engineer at CtrlS Datacenters Ltd
While VMware costs depend on ESXi hypervisor pricing, the AHV hypervisor for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is free.
Senior Information Technology Advisor at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The cost was not on the higher side.
Technical Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
If you are using a single tool like Prisma Cloud, with a single license, you can monitor all environments, such as Google Cloud, Azure, AWS, and Oracle Cloud.
Cloud Security Delivery Associate Manager at Accenture
It is not a cheap product.
Technical Director at Cascade Solutions
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager provides easy VM management, automation, and multi-cloud flexibility with features like cost governance and predictive analytics.
Prisma Cloud enhances multi-cloud security with automated forensics, compliance monitoring, and integration in CI/CD pipelines for threat prevention.
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.
Citrix & IT Operations Manager, Cloud at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Sr. Network Systems Administrator at Moda Health
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.
Spécialiste VMware at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
There is a wide range of integrations, and the compatibility with various cloud providers is very useful.
Technical Director at Cascade Solutions
It provides a single pane of glass.
enterprise architect at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
If I want to check how many of my S3s have encryption, I can write a Lambda function in Prisma Cloud and get that report.
Senior IT infrastructure consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Cloud Management (1st), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Container Security (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is 11.7%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks11.7%
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)0.8%
Other87.5%
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Phani Venkata Sai BKD - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
Manages hybrid infrastructure seamlessly with flexible cluster scaling and comprehensive oversight
The most important aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it helps us manage the infrastructure as a hyperconverged infrastructure in HCI mode. If I have different physical servers, I can map them into a cluster and manage the storage together. It provides flexibility to make use of storage in a clustered format instead of using it in an individual storage endpoint. We have the flexibility to have Nutanix-based licensing based on the core model, instead of having a specific cost on the cluster. The costing on a core model gives customers flexibility to add multiple cores to a single physical host and adjust the infrastructure accordingly, and we can scale up the cluster as needed. While other cloud providers, AWS or Azure, are mostly into cloud-based solutions, and Azure has introduced Azure Stack HCI for managing on-premises infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides flexibility from day one. We can manage both on-premises and Azure solutions using a single pane of glass, eliminating the need to navigate different windows or screens. It provides a comprehensive view of the infrastructure and highlights specific areas through alerts, giving us good visibility of infrastructure conditions.
reviewer2776578 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment
On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise65
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise56
 

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 is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central, Nutanix Software Subscription
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.