Cloud Management

A PEEK INTO WHAT REAL USERS THINK

2015

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This report is comprised of a comprehensive list of enterprise level server virtualization software vendors. We have also included several real user reviews posted on ITCentralStation.com. The reviewers of these products have been validated as real users based on their LinkedIn profiles to ensure that they provide reliable opinions and not those of product vendors.

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Rating: 8.4 VMware vCloud Director (21 reviews) Rating: 10.0 VMware vRealize suite (2 reviews) Rating: 10.0 Apache CloudStack (8 reviews) Rating: 6.0 HP Eucalyptus (1 reviews)

Oracle Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (2 reviews)

VMware vCenter Orchestrator (1 reviews)

CA Technologies 3Tera

Abiquo Abiquo

NetIQ Aegis

BlueBox BlueBox

ASG Cloud Factory

Citrix Cloud Portal (1 reviews)

CloudEndure CloudEndure

CloudPhysics CloudPhysics

VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite

Enomaly Elastic Computing Platform

Ensim Ensim Unify

Dell Enstratius

Flexiant Extility

Dell GaleForce

Piston Cloud Piston Enterprise OS

IBM Platform Computing (4 reviews)

RightScale RightScale MultiCloud Platform

SaltStack SaltStack (1 reviews)

ScaleXtreme ScaleXtreme (1 reviews)

Hexagrid vxDatacenter

Over 73,639 professionals have used IT Central Station research on enterprise tech solutions. Here are the top Cloud Management vendors based on product reviews, ratings, and comparisons. All reviews and ratings are from real users, validated by our triple authentication process.

4011 Views3157 Comparisons6 Reviews 154 FollowersAverage Rating: 8.4 1. vCloud Director

Chart Key Views: Number of total page views

Comparisons: Number of times compared to another product

Reviews: Total number of reviews on IT Central Station

Followers: Number of followers on IT Central Station

Average Rating: Average rating based on reviews

The total ranking of a product (i.e. bar length) is based on a weighted aggregate ranking of that product's Views (weighting factor = 17.5%), Comparisons (17.5%), Reviews (17.5%), Followers (17.5%), and Average Rating (30%).

4011 vCloud Director 3157 vCloud Director

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud 1149 1392 CloudStack Control

1079 CloudStack 1148 vRealize suite

921 vRealize suite 877 Eucalyptus

770 vCenter Orchestrator 805 vCenter Orchestrator

TOP 5 TOP 4 Based on Followers Based on Rating

577 Extility 10.0 CloudStack

289 Platform Computing 10.0 vRealize suite

154 vCloud Director 8.4 vCloud Director

116 Elastic Computing Platform 6.0 Eucalyptus

67 Nimbula

Overview: VMware vCloud Director provides software-defined services for data centers in the form of virtual data centers. Computing, networking, security, and storage are all virtualized when you deploy this solution. The result is that users will get to enjoy infrastructure that is operationally ready in a matter of minutes without needing to install and configure any physical infrastructure.

Sample MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext. Customers: Top vRealize suite vs. vCloud Director Compared 9% of the time. Comparisons:* HP Operations Orchestration vs. vCloud Director Compared 8% of the time. vCenter Orchestrator vs. vCloud Director Compared 8% of the time.

Company Size:* 1-500 Employees 13% 500-5000 Employees 9% 5000+ Employees 78%

* Data is based on the aggregate profiles of IT Central Station Users researching this solution.

© 2015 IT Central Station Reproduction Prohibited To read more reviews about Cloud Management, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/cloud-management VCLOUD DIRECTOR REVIEW BY A REAL USER Eduardo Aguilar Alonso Verified by IT Central Station WHAT REAL USERS Consultor TI at a tech services company with 1-500 ARE SAYING... employees "It has easy to deploy machines but is now Valuable Features: difficult to implement because VMware no It has easy to deploy machines. longer offers the product."

Improvements to My Organization: "Although deployment is simple, I suggest taking A department can deploy a machine easily without using the IT department. security and licensing compliance into Use of Solution: consideration when doing so." I only used it for four months. "VMware vSphere, vCloud Deployment Issues: Director, vCOPs and vCAC." None in this version. "Great product, if you are already heavily invested Stability Issues: with VMware"

No issues encountered. "Great product with scalability as the central Scalability Issues: notion"

Yes, a lot including, for example, with Chargeback Manager integration.

Customer Service:

8/10.

Technical Support:

5/10 as the VMware support seem very ignorant.

Previous Solutions:

No, but in the future, we are planning to install Open Stack as it's simpler.

It has an easy setup by following the documentation.

Implementation Team:

We used a vendor team who I would rate as 7/10.

ROI:

We couldn't calculate it.

Alternate Solutions:

Yes, with other colleagues. No implementations being done by us at the moment.

Other Advice:

I think VMware has abandoned the product a with vSphere 5.5, vCloud Director is an obsolete solution. As VMware no longer offers the product, it is now difficult to implement.

© 2015 IT Central Station Reproduction Prohibited To read more reviews about Cloud Management, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/cloud-management VCLOUD DIRECTOR REVIEW BY A REAL USER Lino Telera Verified by IT Central Station System Administrator at a cloud provider with 1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

The real multi tenancy and distributed administration for vDCs is the goal of this product, which combines consuming resources as a service with a great governance model for different customers.

Suppose you need to build one or more virtual datacenter, and meet the demands of customers, supplier and departments. In a traditional architecture (vCenter and esxi hosts) you need hard integration work to answer this problem. vCloud director solves this problem weaving computational resources, storage and networking with consumption requests from companies, departments and individual operators in a dynamic and safe way.

Improvements to My Organization:

We combine this architecture with existing vDCs with limited business impact (because vMotion could aid to limit or eliminate downtime). Now selling VM, request demo or trying an environment is very simple: just a few clicks to go!

Improvement in IT departments regarding the delivery of virtual datacenters for Business, Government and Captive area (holding headquarters and associated companies). Hospitals and Governments could use this because data is under their control, with very low risks for stability and security: governance still remains with the cloud consumer.

In my scenario I'm using 2 vDCs (marked as gold and platinum) in 2 different places and allow an organization (our customer) to use parts of these vDCs to stretch VM distribution across a datacenter, make DR on-demand (and without up- front costs) and respond quickly to business demands.

Use of Solution:

I've been using this solution for 3 years.

Deployment Issues:

Deployment is very simple, but I suggest a little design and hardening phase to meet security and licensing compliance.

Stability Issues:

Product is mature enough to support huge loads: the underlining technology is the best in class to meet many customer needs. The product is very stable.

Product is born to be scalable, because it should be used in different modes (cloud provider and private cloud environment).

Customer Service:

People say that VMware customer service is very helpful and quick to solve issues. In my life I've use this service only for administrative issues (contracts, portals, licensing); this is because documentation, their knowledge base and community always are enough for problem solving.

Technical Support:

Official documentation is very good, and could give you skill to deploy, run and improve your vCD system (VMware always work hard for this phase).

Initial Setup:

Setup was quite straightforward, because VMware always provides great documentation for deployment, configuration and troubleshooting.

Implementation Team:

I deployed and set up this system in-house (my team staff: virtualization area), because this is a company core-business, and it is the minimum to do to learn and solve problems quickly.

ROI:

Our ROI was reached considering 2 factors:

- A service provider model built on VMWare contracts and many resource delivery models, cost are as-a-service and bound to the VM vRAM: licensing cost is 1:1 to the assigned resource. Considering 50% of infrastructure cost per VM in 3 years, 10% of VMware cost and 10% of infrastructure cost, break even could be in 1.5 years.

- In both private and public scenarios many administrative tasks are solved by on- demand models that could be elastic and efficient. Considered a manpower reduction of about 40% and a potential reduction of 99% for provisioning tasks. IT Virtual administrator staff finally do the real job: troubleshoot, provision and do only heavy activities with less effort.

One more important thing: vCloud works with his chargeback product to show and take many costs under control.

As mentioned above, the service provider model costs are calculated considering:

- physical environment cost (up front cost or by loan)

- licensing cost 1:1 to vRAM

- setup requires no more than 1 week.

Other Advice:

Before installing vCloud director, I suggest:

1. Check HCL and compatibility matrix between vCloud director, vSphere and vCloud network and security (ex: vShield manager)

2. Use vDC resources only for vCloud director purpose, don't mix traditional vSphere and vCloud director usage.

Top vCloud Director vs. vRealize suite Compared 24% of the time. Comparisons:* CloudStack vs. vRealize suite Compared 9% of the time. vCenter Orchestrator vs. vRealize suite Compared 8% of the time.

* Data is based on the aggregate profiles of IT Central Station Users researching this solution.

© 2015 IT Central Station Reproduction Prohibited To read more reviews about Cloud Management, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/cloud-management VREALIZE SUITE REVIEW BY A REAL USER Richard Choi Verified by IT Central Station WHAT REAL USERS Senior Technical Consultant at a tech services company ARE SAYING... with 1-500 employees "Cloud Management tools for on heterogeneous Valuable Features: private, public and Hybrid Cloud" I found the ease of use with Operations Manager Dashboard and providing complete visibility of your infrastructure most valuable.

Improvements to My Organization:

The monitoring dashboard from Operations Manager has helped my company and my customers troubleshoot issue by providing tools that make it easy to correlate specific performance metrics

Room for Improvement:

I would like to see the vrealize Suite support the Mcrosoft Azure

Use of Solution:

I have been using these tools for 2 years

Deployment Issues:

There are no general issues per say however I would comment that the vRealize suite is a collection of products that must be designed together as they integrate together to provide complete management for your infrastructure.

Initial Setup:

The initial configuration is easy starting with Operations Manager, which is deployed as a OVF and other components such as Hyperic, Automation and Business is deployed using the OVF. However there are some components which require a Windows OS for you to installt he software such as Configuration Manager and Iaas Component for Automation. So careful consideration is needed for implementing these tools.

Implementation Team:

I would for UK based consultancy firm called "Ultima Business Solutions" we implement a lot of the Operations Manager to our customers as we believe the tool delivers great value. We also use this in-house for out internal and demonstration infrastructure.

Yes, we reviewed Veeam One which is another great tool for a virtualised based infrastructure however we found the tool limited to virtual machines only and some of our requirements needed to extended to Physical Servers.

Other Advice:

Again I can't stress enough the importance is in the planning & design, technically the product suite is easy to deploy however enough thought has to be given to how you plan to use the "Automation" piece and how you may want to create a Showback dashboard and manage your IT financial costs in the "Business" component.

Top vCenter Orchestrator vs. Eucalyptus Compared 7% of the time. Comparisons:* CloudStack vs. Eucalyptus Compared 7% of the time. RightScale MultiCloud Platform vs. Eucalyptus Compared 6% of the time.

* Data is based on the aggregate profiles of IT Central Station Users researching this solution.

© 2015 IT Central Station Reproduction Prohibited To read more reviews about Cloud Management, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/cloud-management EUCALYPTUS REVIEW BY A REAL USER Abhijit Chakraborty Verified by IT Central Station WHAT REAL USERS Senior Architect at a tech vendor with 5000+ employees ARE SAYING... "Useful private cloud Valuable Features: option for AWS users; lost it's sheen though because AWS API of the rise of Openstack" Customer Service:

Requires improvement

Technical Support:

Good but could have been beeter

Other Advice:

Eucalyptus should see good momentum if AWS propagates the theory of Hybrid cloud as the APIs in Eucalyptus are greatly compatible with AWS and serves as great private cloud option for enterprises.

This report features just a few of the Cloud Management reviews on IT Central Station. If you would like to read more about what real users are saying about the many Cloud Management solutions on the market, visit the Cloud Management page at IT Central Station: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/cloud-management

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Did you find this whitepaper helpful? At IT Central Station, our philosophy is “Give to Get”. Our active community and unbiased reviews are made possible by your participation and as such, we ask that you share your expertise with us as well. Please expect to be contacted shortly by an IT Central Station Community Manager. We will ask you for 10 minutes of your time to review a product that you use either via a 10 minute phone interview or questionnaire. You can choose to review anonymously or not and your company name will not be included in the review.

If you found this report and/or the reviews on IT Central Station useful, we would greatly appreciate your participation in giving back to our community.