BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

BMC and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. BMC is ranked #38, while VMware is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.8. BMC holds a 0.9% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 10.6% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management

Read 5 BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management reviews

476 Views
267 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

8,330 Views
4,498 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management and VMware Aria Automation are competing in the cloud automation and management space. VMware Aria Automation has an upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set, although BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management may offer advantages in pricing and support satisfaction.

Features: BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is noted for its robust integration capabilities, effective resource management, and strong multi-cloud portal, which makes it suitable for resource optimization. VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, provides advanced orchestration, integration with several platforms, and a versatile automation framework, focusing on extensibility and detailed automation.

Room for Improvement: BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management could enhance its automation capabilities and integration with newer third-party applications. It may also benefit from an intuitive user interface and expanded reporting features. VMware Aria Automation could improve by simplifying its deployment processes, enhancing its UI for administrators, and expanding support for more hybrid cloud solutions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is appreciated for its straightforward deployment process and reliable customer service, making it ideal for organizations seeking a quick setup. VMware Aria Automation provides extensive customization support, though its deployment can be more complex, appealing to those needing detailed setup options.

Pricing and ROI: BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is considered cost-effective due to lower initial setup costs and favorable ROI outcomes. VMware Aria Automation, despite higher upfront costs, offers substantial long-term returns owing to its advanced automation capabilities and feature-rich offerings.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. VMware Aria Automation

July 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

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management

Ranking in Cloud Management

38th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 10.6%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Entprssol67

Enterprise Solution Architect at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SPA

Helps design blueprints in a cloud environment but the support is a major problem

One of the major problems is that support is not so good. I used to have a support expert in Spain but they left two years ago. BMC doesn't invest a lot in network automation but network automation is a major point in CLM. There aren't any experts here in Europe, maybe they have in America, I don't know. The main problem is the support in Europe. We had a lot of problems with the people who got put on our cases. The agents that we were assigned to were not so capable. They wanted to replicate the problem. If you have an incident, it takes a lot of time to troubleshoot the problem. The incident support is not so good. The technicians don't know the platform well. BMC doesn't want to invest in CLM. Two years ago we had a lot of problems. Maybe BMC realized that CLM is an end of life product.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can tie together your public and private cloud infrastructure into a "single pane of glass"."

"By allowing end users to request their own services, the request process for systems is much quicker and more accurate."

"Automates Java EE Application Deployment from an SCM system."

"Integrates role-based access control with pre-configured policies for CIS, DISA, HIPAA, PCI, SOX, NIST, and SCAP documentation and remediation."

"Supports unattended installs and image-based, script-based, or template-based provisioning."

"Assesses change impact or completes an audit using multiple dashboard views."

"CLM has a multi-cloud portal because they have the resources to implement in various environments in various ports."

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

"The infrastructure has helped us to greatly increase our agility."

"VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines."

"VMware Aria Automation is a very scalable solution because it integrates well with a couple of leading products in the industry. For products that are not already integrated, there are plugins or adapters that can be used with customization."

"The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook."

"It's also absolutely easy and intuitive. It uses the same basic layout as the rest of the product suite so it's really easy to navigate, find your way around between the tabs and the areas."

"The automation part is most valuable. Because it is a VMware product, the automation capabilities that come with vRA are pretty extensive. We can integrate and build a lot of features on top of it, which makes it extremely useful for us."

"The solution has helped us to increase infrastructure agility, mostly because, in addition to it being able to do its thing on its own, it has tie-ins to other parts of our CICD pipeline. We use Jenkins for our build process which, of course, vRA has plugins for, to be able to integrate with it. We use Chef and there is the Chef build as part of our image that we standardized to deploy, and that can tie in with our section of the pipeline that it does for applications."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"Needs integrations with other providers to provide a custom public cloud environment."

"The installation and configuration can be tricky due to it being built on Remedy."

"One of the major problems is that support is not so good."

"I would like to see support for Google Cloud and Azure. Because they don't support Google and Azure today, we need something that's cohesive with our entire landscape. There is a gap right now with VMware. If you want support for these environments, you have to go elsewhere right now."

"It does go down from time to time. We have some issues with the appliances sometimes and we have to do reboots in the middle of the day. That affects the ability for them to deploy."

"The setup is difficult. You need a technical person to help you set it up."

"I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration."

"We would like them to improve the automation part. This is an upcoming area that we would like to focus on."

"The stability is okay, but could be improved. We sometimes receive strange errors, which can only be solved with specialists."

"Its configuration process could be better."

"It has a learning curve."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."

"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."

"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."

"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."

"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."

"SaltStack is an open-source product."

"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."

"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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

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Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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Questions from the Community

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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...

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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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Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

July 2025

Download BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

BMC CLM

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

Overview

BMC's cloud management platform drives digital innovation with agile, full-stack service provisioning across cloud and traditional platforms. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management scales easily while integrating with essential compliance and governance policies to reduce risk.

BMC

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

Sample Customers

JDA Software, Morningstar, Orange Business Services, Wipro

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

Buyer's Guide

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

Free Report: BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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