IBM Spectrum Computing vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Aria Automation

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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

IBM Spectrum Computing

Ranking in Cloud Management

26th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (6th)

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Management

2nd

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) (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Computing is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 11.1%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

OmarIsmail1

Infrastructure Technical Specialist II at Clicks Group

Senior Technical Specialist appreciates intelligent workload management, strong support, and scalability

The best features of IBM Spectrum Computing are common across many of their storage products. The software is solid, meaning that the code is stable. They take business seriously, which is what IBM stands for - International Business Machines. They always maintain a business-oriented approach in their software development. It's not simply clicking through interfaces; in IBM software, they consider their actions, process flows, and workflows around business processes. It requires understanding IBM and their methodology, as the software operates accordingly. I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature. We use Insights, which is connected to the cloud. This provides AI capabilities for analyzing the configuration, offering smart recommendations on new code, warning about bugs in current code, and suggesting configuration improvements through its advisor tool. The predictive analytics feature in IBM Spectrum Computing enables optimal software performance through Insights. However, being a storage administrator requires foundational knowledge and understanding beyond these tools. For troubleshooting, it's efficient in spotting bottlenecks, but understanding the terms and metrics is essential as it provides answers that need interpretation.

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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

"The most valuable feature is the backup capability."

"We are satisfied with the technical support, we have no issues."

"Easy to operate and use."

"The most valuable aspect of the product is the policy driving resource management, to optimize the computing across data centers."

"This solution is working for both VTL and tape."

"IBM's ability to cluster compute resources is impressive, with built-in support for scenarios like VR and active-active configurations,"

"I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature through Insights, which is connected to the cloud."

"The comparison was challenging, but the IBM Spectrum Scale offered a balanced solution. Our engineers rated itsanalytics capabilities equally high as Pure Storage. For workload management, Spectrum Computing provided effective solutions that met our needs. Workload management is part of a complete solution that uses different tools. There were the cloud and HPC parts; within HPC, there were parts like liquid cooling, simple computing, storage, and orchestration. The orchestration team handled the workload management."

More IBM Spectrum Computing pros

"We've seen that typically, the people who are provisioning VDIs and server VMs can now utilize most of their time towards other projects and moving the environment forward, instead of just hammering out virtual machines all day."

"It has definitely increased speed of VM deployment. When a normal server-request would come in, it might take anywhere from three to four days to deploy. Now, within 15 minutes, they can click and have something up and running."

"vRealize Automation has improved the speed of provisioning just by automating things, making people think about whether a human really needs to do something or can we make the machines do it for us. It is a lot faster to deploy things now."

"Now the customer can manage their own server requirements directly. This is very important because, before that, the process included signing off on forms and sending them to the IT Director. It took at least 10 days to create a VM and send it to the person who needed it. Now, it's no more than a half hour to activate a new VM at the customer's site."

"The big benefit is it will spin up VMs quickly so it would take about 13 to 15 minutes to deploy a virtual machine. Whereas, if I were doing it based on an email from users who are requesting VMs, it might take time for me to hear back from them. This could be anywhere from an hour to a day."

"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."

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

"It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"This solution is no longer managing tapes correctly."

"IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging."

"In Pakistan, IBM's disadvantage is the lack of OEM support and presence."

"The deduplication software isn't quite up to speed with the market. While IBM has excellent compression technology, specifically on their FlashCore modules, they lag behind competitors such as NetApp in deduplication capabilities."

"The deduplication software isn't quite up to speed with the market."

"Lack of sufficient documentation, particularly in Spanish."

"Spectrum Computing is lagging behind other products, most likely because it hasn't been shifted to the cloud."

"We have not been able to use deduplication."

More IBM Spectrum Computing cons

"The connectivity between VMs is easy, but they can be made more effective if we have a single proof point where we can configure all the biggest data at a single point."

"VMware Aria Automation could improve reporting of the policies. They are difficult to customize. We have many policies but they are not able to be modified to what we want."

"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."

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

"The stability is why I rated it a seven and not higher. There were several cases where we had to restart some services because it wasn't working correctly anymore. People cannot extend their machine or replay their machine. There is no alert to say that there is a problem and that we should stop the service. The monitoring system is not very good."

"I don't find it to be user-friendly or intuitive because, in my case, when I have to deploy SAP systems, I need to jump between the vRA, the vRO, and the actual vCenter itself. I need to go back and forth to do different things... I wish they could make it just one application, just vRA, that does all that. There might be a way to do it but I haven't figured out how to do it yet."

"vRealize Automation on the back-end is still a little complicated. It has a lot of moving pieces, simplifying that from a pure infrastructure point of view would be a good thing. I would then like to have more out-of-the-box functionality and integrations with VMware components."

"As a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive."

"Spectrum Computing is one of the most expensive products on the market."

"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."

"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."

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

"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."

"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

"The pricing is very high."

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

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

35%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Transportation Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Computing?

It is expensive.

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Computing?

IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging. To work on an IBM deal, you often need to involve multiple specialists, each knowledgeable about only part of the product, rather than having a...

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Computing?

It is big on resilience and security. Their focus is on providing robust and secure solutions. Due to their high-end server models, IBM products are often more expensive than competitors. While IBM...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs IBM Spectrum Computing

Comparisons

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Cloudera Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Computing

Compared 27% of the time

Morpheus vs IBM Spectrum Computing

Compared 26% of the time

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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 11% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Hadoop

Download IBM Spectrum Computing product report

VMware Aria Automation

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

IBM Platform Computing

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

Overview

IBM Spectrum Computing uses intelligent workload and policy-driven resource management to optimize resources across the data center, on premises and in the cloud. Now up to 150X faster and scalable to over 160,000 cores, IBM provides you with the latest advances in software-defined infrastructure to help you unleash the power of your distributed mission-critical high performance computing (HPC), analytics and big data applications as well as a new generation open source frameworks such as Hadoop and Spark.

IBM

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

London South Bank University, Transvalor, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Genomic

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

IBM Spectrum Computing vs. VMware Aria Automation