Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure vs. Omnissa Horizon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Nutanix in San Jose, California offers their software-defined Enterprise Cloud as a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. The Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure solution combines the Nutanix Acropolis virtualization solution, Nutanix AHV hypervisor (though Acropolis works with other hypervisors), Prism cluster manager, Nutanix Calm and Nutanix Flow server management, and is available on the Nutanix NX series of server hardware appliances, as well as third-party OEM appliances.N/A
Omnissa Horizon
Score 5.5 out of 10
N/A
A VDI solution used for the secure delivery of virtual desktops and apps from on-premises to the cloud. It is used to deploy, manage, monitor and scale desktops and apps across private, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure using a cloud-based console and SaaS management services.
$4.67
per month per user
Pricing
Nutanix Cloud InfrastructureOmnissa Horizon
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Horizon Apps Standard
$4.67
per month per user
Horizon Standard Plus
$5.79
per month per user
Horizon Apps Universal
$6.00
per month per user
Horizon Enterprise Plus
$10.71
per month per user
Horizon Universal
$12.50
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Nutanix Cloud InfrastructureOmnissa Horizon
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Nutanix Cloud InfrastructureOmnissa Horizon
Considered Both Products
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Dell PowerEdge
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Storage - I no need to worry about buying separate products like in VMware LCM - Separate appliance in VMware GPU - Nightmare in updating these software's Planning - Need to have a separate license in ESXI vROPS; I can use cost analysis and capacity runaway in Nutanix 3-Tier - …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
The HPe solution we looked at was not as good, this was only introduced as one of the aquired companies used it and we. after we took over and looked under the hood, we felt that it was not a very ideal solution for use and that is what prompted use to abandon that infra and …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
vSAN on VXrail and a Cisco Flashstack was our two existing systems before bringing in a Nutanix cluster. The performance of Nutanix HCI was far better than vSAN's performance (hybrid vs. hybrid and AF vs. AF.) However, Pure does deliver on its claim of being the fastest storage …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
We've decided to go for both VxRail and Nutanix AOS to make sure we can get the best deals from both sides. I appreciate this may not be a path most companies can go down, but always good to have a bit of healthy competition between vendors to ensure you're getting the best …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Hyperconverged infrastructure
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Enterprise Cloud (EC) is made of three core components: Prism, Acropolis, and Calm. Prism is the management plane that provides a unified management interface that generates actionable insights for optimizing virtualization, infrastructure management, and everyday operations. …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
The only other hyper-converged I have used is Rubrik so my comparison here won't be very good I am afraid.

The two products seem comparable in terms of them just being a service in a box but of course one of them is a very good backup solution and the other is a very good …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Simply put Nutanix AOS is in another class. It is so much better, faster, easier to use, train, etc. I would recommend Nutanix every time.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
I've been a big Nimble fan and would consider it if I was deploying in a green field site (it always comes down to price of course).
Nutanix are an existing supplier so for now it makes the choice easier.
We did look at VxRail but again for the VDI solution Nutanix won out.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Unlimited VM without extra licensing. The AOS is based on KVM.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
We used UCS before, which is a little complicated to setup. There are multiple devices need to connect together (for example two FIs and main process chassis needs to cross-connected first), and there is no storage built-in. But once all setup and configured, it is good. The …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
VxRail would have incurred extra costs that were not apparent in the original presentations from suppliers.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
We really haven't done much with the other modules. Our organization is small enough that implementing most of them would have been overkill and rarely utilized. It doesn't mean we never will, but it wasn't a need as we stand today. With our next refresh, I would like to look …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
We made benchmarks and evaluated other storage solutions. But the HCI component and the integration from storage, computer, virtualization are what mostly made the choice clear for us.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix is not as a mature product but the ability to automate through using their API is one of the strongest reasons for choosing this platform. Automation helps remove human error and this leads to more time for deployment teams to spend on other activities. Their feature …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix is the most user-friendly with rich web UI and features. Nutanix is the easiest to do upgrades and updates with.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix AOS provides simplified, stable, fast deployment, security, and easy operations.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix AOS is a hands-down much better thought-out and more robust solution than vSAN.
Better priced than SimpliVity.
Simpler HCI solution than Pure.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Other HCI products used or evaluated have been Acuity, HC3, Hyperflex, Maxta, Overt, Proxmox, Simplivity, Symphony, VXRack. Nutanix was really first to market and has had many first features available in their product, familiarity with the product, and our organization's track …
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
They're on par with each other but it seems like management prefers Nutanix.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
We were looking at Simplivity before they were bought out by HP. We liked Nutanix because of the included hypervisor and file services - we were paying way too much for VMware licensing to continue using it.
Chose Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Other vendors were proposing big solutions involving switches/SAN/servers. We want to reduce our hardware footprint.
Omnissa Horizon
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix DaaS and Azure Virtual Desktop
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Omnissa Horizon was more cost effective and a better overall solution.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
We used XenServer initially for a few years, but (at the time) licensing for Omnissa Horizon was easier and the product was more reliable.
We only used Hyper-V in a very limited test environment, so it's difficult to compare w/ Omnissa Horizon.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
VMWare Horizon has several advanced features vs other competitors, choosing one option or another depends on the scope of the company's need and the cost of investment. In general, all the solutions of VDI are good and offer a good experience.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Far more cost effective.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
At least in our company, Citrix only worked allied with a physical authentication token, which was a Smart Card written and provided by the company. The software randomly froze and came back as nothing ever happened and the Citrix support couldn't care less about this. We grew …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
We evaluated various other products, but as we are already on a VMWare based infrastructure, View just made the most sense for us. It's also feature-rich, and some other alternatives that we considered couldn't deliver certain critical features (such as managing access to …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix vid setup was very difficult and initially hard to set up. I believe this has changed somewhat now, but there are still multiple servers that need to be set up before it can be used. Vmware VDI was fairly easy to set up and was immediately working and up and running, …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Some of the platforms are designed for smaller or standalone environments and do not allow for large-scale centrally controlled deployments. in the case of Citrix, there was better Chrome OS support but the lack of PCoIP UDP optimizations made is slower and less desirable by …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
I have not used any other products similar to View but I have used Citrix for RDS so that users could have a remote profile. This was clunky and became fairly troublesome as the users shared the same server and when one had issues sometimes the whole server had to be rebooted. …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
I suppose I'm prejudiced but I don't think either of those products is in the same league. I know XenDesktop has made some strides I just think VMware has the superior product.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
VMware Horizon seems to be more powerful and adaptable to multiple operating systems than the Citrix products I have used. VMware has been simpler to use and has a lot more customization than other of the other similar products I have used. It has solved a lot of the issues I …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
When we were considering a VDI solution, I reviewed Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop as alternative solutions to Horizon View. It seemed like Horizon View was a more mature solution and had the best integration to our existing Vmware vSphere environment. The systems …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
There are few competitors, main are:

Citrix Xen Apps and Dekstops
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Although I really prefer Microsoft Remote Desktop for accessing Windows servers (from Windows machines especially), and this can be done from off-site with a VPN, this entails much more effort, namely getting everyone's Active Directory in the correct group to have access. …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix did not have the level of Instaclone type feature that VMWare had in its offering. The application layering also was better in our opinion as well as overall support from our vendor. Security was a close call but we found VMWare to be a better fit for our company and its …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Horizon View is probably my favorite to use. It isn't saying much as all of them have their ups and downs. VMware has fewer downs out of the bunch.
Chose Omnissa Horizon
VMware View provides a full suite of products which provide the functionality that many of the competing vendors have gaps in the you have to then use another third party application to get a working solution. With VMware View you have all the tools at your fingertips to be …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Citrix XenDesktop is another big player in the VDI market, but the product simply isn't as mature or powerful as Horizon. Xen still struggles with Windows 10, whereas Horizon has accomodated every OS we throw at it with ease. XenDesktop is a great product overall, performance …
Chose Omnissa Horizon

Did not do a full evaluation on Citrix XenDesktop as VMware Horizon View integrates nicely with the VMware vSphere environment that we had currently set up.

We were using PanoLogic for about 6 months before we scrapped it and moved onto VMware Horizon View. Horizon View gave us …

Chose Omnissa Horizon
I think the reason VMware Horizon View has done so well is the lack of competition in this area. We have considered the Microsoft equivalent, but are concerned that their support will be worse than VMware (which can be pretty frustrating, to be honest).
Chose Omnissa Horizon
Each has its pros and cons however when properly configured and with a server infustructer to support it correctly vmware horizon view can be a highly scalable , powerful tool in your IT bag of tricks that can offer massive ROI and user satisfaction being able to deploy it …
Chose Omnissa Horizon
We did not deploy in-house testing, though we did review another company's deployment. At the time we liked what we saw in Horizon, though I have no doubts that XenDesktop could deliver just as well and still does for the other company that presented it to us. What tipped the …
Best Alternatives
Nutanix Cloud InfrastructureOmnissa Horizon
Small Businesses
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.0 out of 10
VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.0 out of 10
VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vSAN
VMware vSAN
Score 9.1 out of 10
VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion
Score 7.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Nutanix Cloud InfrastructureOmnissa Horizon
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
4.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(0 ratings)
5.1
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.5
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.2
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
5.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Nutanix Cloud InfrastructureOmnissa Horizon
Likelihood to Recommend
For an organization that requires top-notch performance HCI, Nutanix is the best. You may start with 3 nodes and expand the cluster as required. The management through Nutanix Prism Central and Element was so easy that even a Junior Engineer was able to handle it. The Nutanix platform is not suitable for organizations with a small budget and fewer requirements for high-performance infrastructure, as the Nutanix solution itself is suited for enterprises.
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Horizon View is well suited in larger organizations where there are needs to securely access applications and data from outside the internal network. It allows users a complete desktop experience remotely with access to all resources that are available on the local internal private network. It is fast and robust as data does not need to traverse the connection like a VPN connection and stays within the local internal network increasing data security. Cost for hardware and software is a high initial investment so smaller organizations will find it hard to justify the financial costs. In a diverse user environment, there are many uses for Horizon View. When faced with a need for a solution for users to access information or applications outside the internal network, having Horizon View is one of the best go to's to have available. Use your imagination and creativity to solve many business needs
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Pros
  • "Nutanix is an operating system playing inside an existing, rich IT ecosystem." Listen to Wendy M. Pfeiffer, CIO of Nutanix, as she shares game-changing results with the implementation of infrastructure-as-code.
  • With one-click simplicity, Nutanix AOS streamlines IT operations and relieves budget pressures by integrating storage, networking, and compute services into a single solution managed by IT generalists. Start small and scale without limit to meet business demands.
  • Deliver applications with the highest possible performance throughout the full lifecycle, not just day one. Provide reliable performance SLAs without worrying about workload changes or growth in application demands.
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  • Ability to set up new desktops quickly.
  • Faster boot times for PCs.
  • Virtual machines can grow in space and other resources as long as the ESXi Hosts have the resources.
  • Ability to create different types of desktop groups called pools and organize the different departments.
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Cons
  • Can be priced high at times.
  • The one downside I have working with Nutanix is the sales team. They seem to try to add in extra goodies to sales quotes or push for extras that you don't really need and you have to tell them to take them out. Don't be afraid to push back on them.
  • Need to analyze sizing with sales team to ensure right sizing.
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  • VSAN -- This experience is from a pre-Horizon 7 deployment. While we have had redundancy issues in our deployment, the concerns we experience are said to be resolved in the latest VSAN release.
  • Persona Management can be troublesome, leading to mismatches in user data against the server. This requires manual interaction to resolve if a network or user error led to the two falling out of sync. The risk in this is user data loss. Again, new developments in user management is said to resolve these concerns in Horizon 7.
  • Security Servers and off-site access to VMware Horizon View has been difficult due to the problematic deployment scenario (a server inside the network with several external hooks). This is said to be resolved with the advent of EUC in Horizon 7. I'm excited to begin testing on this solution as feedback elsewhere has been positive.
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Likelihood to Renew
AOS definitely make our dev/test virtual environment management much easier than before. And the consolidation the test/dev environment from Azure and Cisco UCS, we have less need to transfer large amount of data between different hardware platforms which was very big challenge. To expand the capacity is very easy to archive as well.
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We are committed to VMware Horizon and we plan to stick with it for the future unless something drastically changes.
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Usability
It's not out of the box easy, but once you get the fundamentals the steep learning curve flattens out and the processes to get things done and how it works becomes very apparent. It's wrapping the slight change in workflow from prior VM management methods took time to unbox and apply the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure way
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Because it delivers what it promises, I am giving this rating. While there is scope for improvement, it does the job and meets our requirements reasonab;y well. It helps our remote resources connect to our environment securely and improves their productivity. We also get to access our client environment from remote locations and complete the tasks assigned to us.
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Reliability and Availability
We have not had any Nutanix availability issues over the years.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Nutanix AOS performance is light years ahead of HPE. We were nervous about using Nutanix AHV but it has been a vast improvement and saves on cost. Applications has been much improved and end users have commented. It has also freed up time for our Network Administrators and made their lives easier.
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There are a lot of things that went into my rating from the ease of use compared to other systems to the limited amount of issues I have had with this one. Any issue with this system has been identified and resolved in a much quicker manner than I have seen with like systems.
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Support Rating
Nutanix provide top tier support - their only rival in this field in my experience is Rubrik. Their sales and the aftersales team really put the effort in to make the initial install an easy process to complete and support we've required post that has been expertly handled. Their support's first point of contact is the equivalent of 3rd line at other vendors and they're always more than willing to explain concepts to help us better understand the issue/solution provided.
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It is surely way better than Citrix, but it could improve a bit. Usually, they send us the solution without saying what was the root cause so we can avoid breaking something in the future. Besides that, VMWare support answers in an OK time-frame and even speaks our language (Portuguese).
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In-Person Training
We requested more training than typical which was very in depth
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No answers on this topic
Online Training
A lot of online training courses, most of them are free.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IPv6 is needed for link local discovery. We do not have IPv6 configured on our network so the easiest way to get our nodes configured and discovered by foundation was to configure the IPv4 addressing within the node prior to trying to discover with foundation.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
vSAN on VXrail and a Cisco Flashstack was our two existing systems before bringing in a Nutanix cluster. The performance of Nutanix HCI was far better than vSAN's performance (hybrid vs. hybrid and AF vs. AF.) However, Pure does deliver on its claim of being the fastest storage possible, which is true. However, the flashstacks management and complex setup do not compare to the ease of using Nutanix HCI.
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VMware Horizon seems to be more powerful and adaptable to multiple operating systems than the Citrix products I have used. VMware has been simpler to use and has a lot more customization than other of the other similar products I have used. It has solved a lot of the issues I have encountered with the systems put out by Citrix.
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Scalability
Can add on new cluster and join it to existing cluster
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Found an immediate reclamation of time. SAN's are a pain to manage and update - Nutanix made turned a couple hours of work into one click.
  • They are a software company. Every Time they come out with an update I find my performance improving, or a new feature added. Soon I'll be able to give my developers controlled self-service capabilities. I originally bought hardware and it's evolving on me into a private cloud in a box.
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  • ROI is good, but from calculations it takes time, you won't see benefits in a first year or two
  • It will allow us to provide access to software on personal machines where it was not possible before
  • It is hard hunting applications that are allowed to be virtualized
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