

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) compete in cloud security visibility and management. Defender for Cloud stands out with cloud-native benefits and expansive integration with Azure, whereas NCM offers broader infrastructure support and flexibility in multi-cloud environments.
Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers seamless Azure integration, valuable security recommendations, and a user-friendly dashboard suited for operations and security teams. Nutanix Cloud Manager provides user-friendly automation, centralized management, and robust features like auto-scaling and single-pane management for multi-cloud environments.
Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender for Cloud requires enhanced alert management, reduction in false positives, and better transparency on security scoring. Nutanix Cloud Manager could improve its migration tool to support more setups and enhance cluster management and export capabilities for VM reports.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers varying support quality based on the service level purchased, with mixed user feedback on support efficiency. Nutanix Cloud Manager is praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, making it advantageous for multi-cloud operations.
Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's competitive Azure-bundled pricing offers significant ROI through integration and security posture improvement, though it can be costly for extended coverage. Nutanix Cloud Manager justifies its potentially higher cost with efficient management, scalability, and flexible pricing models that suit various business needs.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
Compared to not having Microsoft Defender for Cloud in place, we definitely saw an advantage by not having downtime due to a security threat.
Anything that reduces bandwidth and reduces the brain work that our teams have to do to maintain systems across all environments is time-saving and cost-saving.
The biggest return on investment for me when using this product is the fast deployment and the rapid integration and migration without impacting our operations during the migration.
Playbooks and automation definitely freed up engineer time. This allows us to focus on other projects and not have to get hands-on, reducing operational costs.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call.
The handoff with support and the knowledge of the support engineer is significantly better than experience with other vendors.
Even when a node goes down, it doesn't impact our infrastructure because it gets load-balanced between the available nodes.
As we have reduced our on-premises infrastructure, it is about how we can migrate workloads to the cloud to make it easier, and then having everything fully encompassed and secured within that area makes it much easier for us to scale as needed and grow.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
It has multiple licenses and features, covering infrastructures from a hundred to five hundred virtual machines, without any issues.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) scales well.
The key aspects include mix-match hardware and hyper-converged infrastructure, combining compute, storage, and network in a single platform.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
We've never had any downtime related to the Nutanix product itself.
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
It supports different hardware types without vendor lock-in, which is an advantage over Azure Stack HCI, which may only work with specific vendors such as HP or Dell.
Our primary reason for choosing Nutanix was for mission-critical applications and Kubernetes.
Quick resolution of disconnection issues and errors in plugins is crucial.
Security has essentially no cost when compared to the cost of a breach.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
It's not cheap, but there are savings and return on investment when coming from a non-Nutanix shop.
In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups.
While VMware costs depend on ESXi hypervisor pricing, the AHV hypervisor for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is free.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
It's easy to control resources and govern the resources, and it frees up support to focus on other things without having to help developers.
I would approximate the cost savings to be in the 20% to 25% range since we can optimize our resources and avoid the need to purchase more hardware or reuse resources in the infrastructure from one implementation.
The importance of faster outcomes for their environment is significant; for example, when I delivered the Disaster Recovery solution, we included automation for auto-configuration of VMs and resizing of VMs, which replaced many tasks that were previously done manually.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Defender for Cloud | 8.7% |
| Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) | 0.8% |
| Other | 90.5% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 27 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 10 |
| Large Enterprise | 49 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 25 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 23 |
| Large Enterprise | 65 |
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.
The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.
Nutanix Cloud Manager streamlines hybrid cloud management by offering centralized control, automation, and workload optimization across platforms. It improves operational efficiency while reducing IT management complexity.
Nutanix Cloud Manager is designed for comprehensive hybrid cloud governance, providing tools for virtualization, resource allocation, and compliance. Its features include one-click upgrades, dynamic dashboards, and the seamless automation of tasks through X-Play. Users can efficiently manage virtual machines, ensure secure storage, and enhance productivity with predictive monitoring. Self-service capabilities allow users to reserve resources easily, while central management via Prism Pro and automated reports enhance oversight and decision-making. Challenges include UI simplicity, pricing transparency, and licensing efficiency, with users seeking improvements in VM organization, blueprint customization, and collaborative support for hybrid environments.
What important features define Nutanix Cloud Manager?Nutanix Cloud Manager finds utility in industries requiring robust hybrid cloud strategies like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. It excels in centralizing management for secure and compliant operations, optimizing workloads, and providing scalable solutions for resource allocation and compliance monitoring, thus enhancing cloud operations in diverse markets.
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