VMware Aria Automation vs XM Cyber comparison

VMware and XM Cyber are both solutions in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category. VMware is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.8, while XM Cyber is ranked #26 with an average rating of 8.0. VMware holds a 0.3% mindshare in CSPM, compared to XM Cyber’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of VMware users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of XM Cyber users who would recommend it.

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

8,330 Views
250 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

XM Cyber

Read 2 XM Cyber reviews

2,925 Views
790 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

XM Cyber

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between VMware Aria Automation and XM Cyber based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed VMware Aria Automation vs. XM Cyber Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation vs. XM Cyber

July 2025

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Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

XM Cyber

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

26th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Continuous Controls Monitoring (7th), Vulnerability Management (34th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XM Cyber is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Featured Reviews

Le Quang Long

Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam

Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows

It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

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Chee Young Tan

Director at ST Electronics

Has a valuable feature for attack simulation; it highlights the vulnerability and offers recommendations for improvement

XM Cyber helps identify risk by creating a shadow environment mirroring the production system. While it doesn't directly mitigate risks, it simulates attacks across this replica, uncovering vulnerabilities and weak points within the system. Once a WISC is established, it highlights the vulnerability and offers recommendations for improvement. It provides reporting templates, making the process faster. I rate it an eight out of ten.

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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

"The self service portal: People don't have to come to us to request something. They can just go fill out a form. Within 30 minutes, they have what they requested."

"Among the valuable features are the ease and speed of creating the VMs. Originally, we provisioned them manually and it would take us two days to do the provisioning... but with the automation, we are able to provision a VM with the click of a button, within seconds. It cut down on the time as well as cut down on the expense and employee cost in provisioning."

"Scalability is perfect. We haven't had any issues."

"Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers. Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities."

"The automation part is valuable, especially where vRA integrates with vRO, because it reduces the amount of effort we have to make."

"The most valuable feature is the way that it plugs into our monitoring systems, and Infoblox and Puppet."

"vRA helps automate deployment for developers. We do a lot of orchestration or customization within our environment so it will suit each of our customers. So, we have different business units who have their own templates."

"We also use it to pre-install the applications that the people selected when they ordered the machine, so they get a fully functional machine."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

"The platform's most valuable feature is attack simulation."

"What I personally like very much, from my experience, is that it is very reliable."

Cons

"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."

"The initial setup was complex because we have a high availability cluster. Especially when it comes to upgrades, we have a lot of downtimes and problems. The upgrade experience has been painful."

"The deployment mechanisms for the initial deployment of the product line lacks the appropriate documentation to give someone who's never used it before... There might be cases where someone wants to go to the website, go to the doc section, and do a step-by-step on how to deploy it. That's really not as brushed-up as other documents I've seen that they have. That would definitely be an improvement on their end."

"I would also like to see them streamline the install. It's split between Windows and Linux appliances, and it would be easier if it was all appliances. I think they're going that way."

"The solution could include more integrations and supportability around the container space."

"For the administrator, it can be a little challenging. For the administrator, there are a lot of moving parts. It is fine once you figure out where the knobs are you need to twiddle, but it can be a challenge to get it up and running."

"Its configuration process could be better."

"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

"We'd like to see a cheaper price."

"XM Cyber could identify all areas of vulnerability. They could expand the identification span for different areas."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very high."

"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."

"It is an open-source product."

"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."

"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."

"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."

"The solution is free of cost."

"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

"We have to pay standard licensing fees."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?

When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...

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Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?

I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...

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What do you like most about XM Cyber?

The platform's most valuable feature is attack simulation.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for XM Cyber?

We have to pay standard licensing fees. There are no additional costs. It is an expensive product. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with XM Cyber?

XM Cyber could identify all areas of vulnerability. They could expand the identification span for different areas.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Pentera vs XM Cyber

Compared 20% of the time

Cymulate vs XM Cyber

Compared 17% of the time

Wiz vs XM Cyber

Compared 14% of the time

SafeBreach vs XM Cyber

Compared 7% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs XM Cyber

Compared 5% of the time

More XM Cyber Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

August 2025

Download XM Cyber product report

Also Known As

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

No data available

Overview

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

VMware

XM Cyber is a leading hybrid cloud security company that’s changing the way innovative organizations approach cyber risk. Our attack path management platform continuously uncovers hidden attack paths to your critical assets across cloud and on-prem environments, so you can cut them off at key junctures and eradicate risk with a fraction of the effort. This overcomes the big disconnect that security teams experience when they’re presented with endless alerts, yet can’t see which exposures impact risk the most, how they come together to be exploited by an attacker, or how to efficiently eliminate them. This approach is a complete game-changer, which is why some of the world’s largest, most complex organizations choose XM Cyber to help eradicate risk. Founded by top executives from the Israeli cyber intelligence community, XM Cyber has offices in North America, Europe, and Israel.

XM Cyber

Sample Customers

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Hamburg Port Authority, Plymouth Rock Corporation

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation vs. XM Cyber

July 2025

Free Report: VMware Aria Automation vs. XM Cyber

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