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BMC Helix Continuous Optimization vs IBM Turbonomic comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 8, 2026

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 Helix Continuous Optimi...
Ranking in IT Operations Analytics
29th
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
34th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure Capacity Planning (2nd)
IBM Turbonomic
Ranking in IT Operations Analytics
11th
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Cloud Management (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (5th), IT Financial Management (1st), Cloud Analytics (1st), AIOps (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the IT Operations Analytics category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization is 1.2%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 1.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Operations Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Turbonomic1.9%
BMC Helix Continuous Optimization1.2%
Other96.9%
IT Operations Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Appperf677 - PeerSpot reviewer
Application Performance Mnagement Specialist at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Enables us to right-size systems to free up resources, and identify performance problems down to the process level
Since I already have a sneak peek into the next releases, I'm very happy about what's going to be included. I would like to see continued support for the legacy parts of the tool, the old, seasoned parts that are very valuable to me. That is a message I continue to give to BMC: All the new stuff's great, but don't take away this really important stuff. That's my biggest fear, that I might lose some of my old functionality that is still extremely valuable. I want to make sure we don't lose any functionality, and that they just still keep delivering on what they're doing. I don't have anything more to ask than what they're offering.
reviewer1446966 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution reduced our operational expenditures and is able to identify points before we even noticed them
The management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens. When I change the resolution to 1080, I only see half of what I would on my big 4K monitor. It would be annoying to have to scroll to see the flow chart. They have a flow chart that goes top to bottom like a tree. On a lower resolution, it might be nice if that scrolls horizontally because it's long, narrow, and tall. It's only three icons wide, but it's 15 icons tall. I think it would be helpful to have the ability to change that for a smaller screen and customize the widget.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Workload characterization is super important because it lets us figure things out. Many people know, for example, that with Microsoft Word, Word.exe is the executable. Everybody knows their executable, but they don't always know what it does. It also launches other things. This tool has the ability and insight to track those things, and to know: "Oh, you wanted this executable, but this one started this, so you must want this, too." And it tells you what it had to add, what it was using or was spawning."
"We ingest a ton of business data. We are an insurance company and we have business data, like how many quotes are done an hour, and how many policies are sold per hour. The correlation engine in the new TrueSight Capacity Optimization components are wonderful. We can do correlation analysis over months of data, and then we run models to tell our business: 'If you do 1,000 more quotes an hour, we're going to have to upgrade, and we're going to need this much more hardware.'"
"The most interesting feature is certainly the simulation of the load using different servers or different KPI parameters of the business."
"Turbonomic's ability to automatically load balance my storage and hosts has saved a lot of time."
"Turbonomic can show us if we're not using some of our storage volumes efficiently in AWS. For example, if we've over-provisioned one of our virtual machines to have dedicated IOPs that it doesn't need, Turbonomic will detect that and tell us."
"Turbonomic has, to an extent, helped us grow our VM environment without us having to buy new hardware."
"I like the analytics that help us optimize compatibility. Whereas Azure Advisor tells us what we have to do, Turbonomic has automation which actually does those things. That means we don't have to be present to get them done and simplifies our IT engineers' jobs."
"Auto load balance recommendations always keep our VMware cluster optimized."
"With Operations Manager, I can see my entire infrastructure in one view, in real time."
"Today we have found the forecasting of the environment and optimization the most beneficial."
"Automation, policies, and reports have made a lot of previously manual work now either more efficient or completely automated."
 

Cons

"Some of the data management is painful. Some of the new features haven't been implemented in quite the way I would like to get to levels of detail. For example, Visualizer parser doesn't take everything it should out of the Visualizer files. We've had to put in a work-around, but the work-around is not as accurate as what's in the file."
"The memory management of Java application servers should be implemented to be able to size GC and footprint."
"Alert emails could be more comprehensive."
"There are a lot of preconfigured reports that can be ran within Turbonomics for some of the more common information needed. To do a custom report you have to create a SQL query string and add it as a report to gather custom information."
"Turbonomic is not easy to use out of the box."
"Turbonomic's current UI is coded in Flash though they have stated an HTML5 version is coming soon."
"Reports could be more versatile."
"The GUI and policy creation have room for improvement. There should be a better view of some of the numbers that are provided and easier to access. And policy creation should have it easier to identify groups."
"I would like it to auto-update itself rather than me having to check upgrade then apply on a monthly basis."
"I like the detail I get in the old user interface and will miss some of that in the new interface when we perform our planned upgrade soon."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Right now, the licensing structure is by server. Everybody is licensed somewhat differently, depending on how big they are, how many licenses they have."
"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."
"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."
"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."
"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."
"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."
"We see ROI in extended support agreements (ESA) for old software. Migration activities seem to be where Turbonomic has really benefited us the most. It's one click and done. We have new machines ready to go with Turbonomic, which are properly sized instead of somebody sitting there with a spreadsheet and guessing. So, my return on investment would certainly be on currency, from a software and hardware perspective."
"When we have expanded our licensing, it has always been easy to make an ROI-based decision. So, it's reasonably priced. We would like to have it cheaper, but we get more benefit from it than we pay for it. At the end of the day, that's all you can hope for."
"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Healthcare Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise147
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?
It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is set as a percentage of the consumption of some of our customers' services. The ...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting. This helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single d...
 

Also Known As

BMC Capacity Optimization, TrueSight Capacity Optimization, BMC Helix Optimize, BMC Helix Continuous Optimization
Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dilliard's
IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Continuous Optimization vs. IBM Turbonomic and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.