Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs Red Hat CloudForms comparison

Nutanix and Red Hat are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Nutanix is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8, while Red Hat is ranked #29. Nutanix holds a 5.2% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Nutanix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Read 109 Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) reviews

6,086 Views
3,895 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Red Hat CloudForms

Read 10 Red Hat CloudForms reviews

658 Views
645 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Red Hat CloudForms

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Red Hat CloudForms and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are direct competitors in cloud management. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) holds an edge due to its comprehensive feature set, offering superior value for the cost. Red Hat CloudForms is, however, more attractive in terms of pricing and support options.

Features: Red Hat CloudForms is commended for its capability in automation and governance, providing a wide array of cloud management features. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) stands out with its ease of use, scalability, and deep integration with the Nutanix ecosystem, offering advanced analytics and user-friendly interface.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat CloudForms could enhance its integration capabilities and streamline its deployment process. Improving its user interface is also necessary. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) might benefit from more comprehensive training resources and could improve initial setup complexity and better documentation for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is praised for its seamless deployment and integration, supported robustly by customer service. Red Hat CloudForms requires more pre-configuration, which may slow down deployment efforts but provides solid support post-deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat CloudForms offers competitively lower initial costs, making it appealing to price-sensitive customers. In contrast, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) delivers substantial ROI over time, thanks to its extensive feature set, which often justifies its higher initial expenditures.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. Red Hat CloudForms Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. Red Hat CloudForms

September 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

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Ranking in Cloud Management

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

109

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)

Red Hat CloudForms

Ranking in Cloud Management

29th

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)	5.2%
Red Hat CloudForms	1.5%
Other	93.3%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Kumargaurav Kadam

Senior Information Technology Advisor at Dell Technologies

Offers centralized management, cost-effectiveness, and scalability

The licensing is much cheaper than other competitors such as VMware, Cisco UCS, or Microsoft Hyper-V for on-premises data centers. It is very user-friendly and can be managed through Prism Central, a centralized console that allows management of multiple clusters. Due to the recent conversion from VMware to Broadcom, Broadcom has increased their prices five times the existing rates. Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused. The main differentiator from competitors is its cost-effectiveness, and customers have been running and upgrading their technologies for 10 to 15 years. In terms of client satisfaction, performance, upgrades, or protection against ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities, they are regularly releasing patches and upgrading the system. These activities contribute to customer satisfaction and differentiate them from competitors.

Read full review

Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

A stable solution that helps to provision servers

We use the solution to provision servers. I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs. The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved. I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution."

"I recommend my teammates and others to choose Nutanix because it is very user-friendly, and we have multiple ways to enhance our knowledge related to infrastructure."

"The file server feature in Nutanix is very good, offering a solution-worthy feature that can host files, blocks, and object storage in the same cluster."

"The design is very intuitive; it's easy to find information in the different menus and things like that. The user experience is much better compared to other products."

"utanix Prism Pro provides robust upgrading Nutanix clusters mechanism that has long been a delightful experience delivered via one-click upgrades. The one-click process hides a lot of complexity by using advanced automation and consumer-grade design experience."

"Compared to other cloud management solutions such as VMware, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) offers a single pane of glass where a single service can manage everything, thanks to Prism Central and Prism Element metrics."

"Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused."

"The most valuable feature is definitely the disaster recovery portion, which they call Xi Leap. It's included in the licensing. Before, we were on a solution that charged extra for DR software. And with Prism Pro, not only can we manage all of our other infrastructure in addition to our DR, in the same console, but we can set up recovery points. We can also set up scripts to run, so it gives us everything we need to have a solid DR plan in place."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

"They are a very mature product."

"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."

"The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't had any issues with it."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."

"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."

"I am impressed with the product's reports."

"The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."

"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in making the solution easier still. If you don't know Calm, it's not so easy to use... It is a really good solution for doing simple tasks, but it's not a good solution for complex tasks."

"I still remember it was a struggle when we configured the initial network setup, that part was a little bit confusing about how exactly it works, we have two different Nutanix technicians who were on-site to help on the configuration. But both of them could not get right the first time, and we had to reset and start over again on both systems."

"We use Nutanix only for our dev and test environments. Our production environment is VMware, and that is totally separate. But we do transfer data between them. That's a challenge because we need to frequently bring the production data into our test environment and that's a big transfer. If we could do a cross-storage transfer, like a transfer from NetApp or Nimble Storage into Nutanix with automation, that would greatly help us."

"If you're still running tiered architecture for the storage, it would be good to give stats on the amount of data that is warehoused in the cold tier versus the hot tier."

"There could be slight improvements in support because sometimes they are not able to understand the issue."

"While using Nutanix, we need to switch off the VM in case we are doing an update. We have to turn off the VM if we are updating the memory or hard disk space. In a normal scenario, we switch off the VM, update it and then update the RAM. Once updated, we need to switch on the machine and wait for the RAM to initialize. The same goes for hard drives as well."

"In Brazil, Nutanix Cloud Manager is not cheap."

"It is important to mention that while Nutanix claims improvements in licensing over the past couple of years, I find it a bit annoying, as it still does not work as intended."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."

"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."

"The solution is still quite immature."

"The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved."

"The problem is that the platform requires it to be maintained and updated. Also, a few cases are still pending with the Red Hat support team since they are not closed yet."

"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."

"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."

"Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very cheap."

"The five-year term for NCM's license cost and support was around five million."

"It is a nightmare to keep up with all the licensing. I would prefer everything to be in one price."

"It's always difficult to discuss Nutanix pricing because the cost varies wildly depending on the customer and the region. Desktop virtualization is simpler because there is a defined scope. You can tell the Nutanix salesperson how many users you have. In a more traditional environment, it's always best to have NCM for monitoring because you'd be crazy not to."

"The product is expensive...When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless."

"The pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market."

"On a scale from one to ten, if one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the solution's pricing a six."

"Its cost is reasonable. The features are very good."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."

"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."

"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."

"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

31%

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Government

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	64

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Large Enterprise	7

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

VMware Cloud Director vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 17% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

Morpheus vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 9% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Competitors

Morpheus vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 25% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 24% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 23% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 15% of the time

OpenNebula vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 13% of the time

More Red Hat CloudForms Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

September 2025

Download Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

September 2025

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

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

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a cloud management tool that drives consistent governance across private and public clouds for its users. The solution brings simplicity and ease of use to managing and building cloud deployments by providing a unified multicloud management that addresses common cloud adoption challenges.

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers four key value drivers:

Intelligent operations: They include monitoring, insights, and automated remediation.
Self-service and orchestration: This capacity category of the product includes tools for managing application and infrastructure workloads across multicloud environments.
Cost governance: NCM offers cost governance through accurate visibility into public and private cloud metering, cost optimization, and chargeback.
Security central: The solution facilitates users' security operations through alert automations with intelligent analysis and compliance controls.

Nutanix Cloud Manager provides coverage for Nutanix private clouds as well as for VMware's. The solution also supports several popular public cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). NCM provides additional flexibility for users, as it is also available as a fully managed Software as a Service (SaaS). This product allows companies to benefit from all of Nutanix multicloud self-services, application automation, security compliance, and governance, without depending on Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has features in the four key categories already mentioned. Some of the main capacities of the solution include:

Codeless task automation: This Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) feature allows IT teams to build automation and improve productivity with zero coding required.
Automated optimization: This feature detects the performance of VM deviates and raises an anomaly alert automatically without the need for configuration.
Capacity usage and scenario analysis: This feature’s runways enable pay-as-you-grow scaling and improves capacity usage with optimizations.
Self-service provisioning: This feature allows users to publish blueprints directly to end users through Nutanix Marketplace.
Application lifecycle management: Through this NCM feature, users can provision, configure, scale, upgrade, and delete applications across cloud environments as well as provide access to multiple teams at a time.
Hybrid multicloud orchestration: This Nutanix Cloud Manager feature allows users to automate the provisioning of hybrid cloud architectures from a single control plane.
Showback, chargeback, and budgeting: Nutanix Cloud Manager uses this feature to allow users to automatically create cloud consumption reports, define chargeback policies, and set up budget alerts.
Automated right-sizing and intelligent purchases: Through leveraging machine learning (ML) algorithms, users can benefit from the automatic detection of anomalous spending patterns.
Security monitoring and remediation: This feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager allows users to utilize over 250 audits for public clouds and over 500 for Nutanix on-premises.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Benefits

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides its users with several benefits. These include:

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers intelligent operations through the automation of operational tasks.
NCM gives users self-service opportunities and centralized role-based IT governance, which allows them the freedom to control their processes better.
Companies can benefit from cost and security governance with intelligent analysis and regulatory compliance.
The product has been made available across all regions in 2022, allowing worldwide access to its services without limitations.
NCM is suitable for beginners, as it offers low to no code actions.
Nutanix Cloud Manager provides real-time security, ensuring the cloud data of companies is protected at all times.

Reviews from Real Users

An IT Operations at an energy/utilities company likes Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) because the product provides visibility, simplifies operations, and saves time and cost.

Drew P., a network systems administrator at Moda Health, rates NCM highly because the product saves man-hours with excellent speed on outcomes and provides a continuous validation process.

Nutanix

Manage container, virtual, private, and public cloud infrastructures

Managing a complex, hybrid IT environment can require multiple management tools, redundant policy implementations, and extra staff to handle the operations. Red Hat® CloudForms simplifies IT, providing unified management and operations in a hybrid environment.

As your IT infrastructure progresses from traditional virtualization toward an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, CloudForms evolves, protecting your investments and providing consistent user experience and functionality.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. Red Hat CloudForms

September 2025

Free Report: Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. Red Hat CloudForms

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