We performed a comparison between Chef and Microsoft Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The solution is easy to use and it has good performance."
"The key benefit of Intune is its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem."
"I can see that the patch management process is much improved with the bundled patch management option available in Microsoft Intune compared to the KPI deployment required by the other deployment solutions."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune."
"Compliance and the policies that can be set are the most valuable features."
"The ability to (somewhat) manage full Windows 10 computers including EXE-based or MSI-based application deployments using Azure Active Directory as Identity."
"We already use a lot of Microsoft products in our company, and therefore, it made sense to also use this product."
"With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"If you're handy enough with DSL and you can present your own front-facing interface to your developers, then you can actually have a lot more granular control with Chef in operations over what developers can perform and what they can't."
"One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over."
"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is the availability of being able to manage the Microsoft estate. It handles many areas, such as asset management and tracking."
"The main, clear valuable feature is updating the latest, patches and updates from Windows. This is the main feature we really utilize a lot."
"Microsoft has done a good job with authentication solutions, such as single sign-on, or open authentication."
"Valuable features include configurations enforcement, compliance data gathering, and deployment of a standardized OS."
"The ability to make collections and deploy to them has been great."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to learn."
"The product is very stable compared to older versions."
"It lets you know what your infrastructure is like and what state you are in."
"The closest Microsoft Intune can be to GPOs, the better. There needs to be more granularity on application deployments. However, they have done better recently with the application deployments."
"Microsoft Intune fails a lot when it comes to device compliance."
"The reporting could be improved, as it's pretty poor compared to other products of this type."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in terms of compatibility, extending beyond the well-known major brands."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"They can improve their MAM policies a little bit more and make them more granular. They should include more granular group policies. They are there, but they need to be more granular. Its stability should also be improved. It is not very stable. Sometimes, it shows some inconsistencies across tenants."
"The documentation about the custom image setup could be better. Although Microsoft provides the steps to configure Intune or set up or deploy Intune, it doesn't have much information related to custom images. If you ask, "how can we deploy the custom image?" There is no information. The steps they mention ask you to connect to your on-premises environment or create your own image on the cloud itself once there is connectivity. But I needed to go to multiple websites to get all this information. I had to figure out how to upload the custom image if you want to use the on-premise custom image for Cloud PC. If you have the proper subscription, you must have the right access, like global admin or owner. Then you can add your custom image to that. There are no steps mentioned over there. Microsoft Intune doesn't have Chrome browser support. I would like to have that support because they will want it if we pitch the product to clients."
"I would like to see micro VPN. I like the way that some of the other providers have done something similar where, as you open that app on an end-point device, it creates a micro VPN straight into your device, which is quite a nice little feature. Also, Microsoft Intune relies heavily on its fellow products in the suite. It would be nice if Microsoft Intune could stand on its own two feet."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."
"In terms of the monitoring, the timeframe it takes to actually report back on the compliance of a device after it has been patched is a bit too long."
"Based on my experience with SCCM 2016, the main, big issue is not having a good user-friendly environment. It needs much better GUI."
"A lot of experience is needed in terms of troubleshooting, as this is one of the most difficult tasks in MECM. We were seven people in a group and I was the only one that had the patience to do the troubleshooting at times."
"The solution is on-premises. The cloud version of the product, if a person needs to be on the cloud, would be InTune, which already exists as an option. SCCM doesn't need to offer cloud features for this reason."
"In terms of scalability, I believe there's room for improvement. While SCCM is capable of handling our current needs effectively, scalability could be enhanced to accommodate future growth and larger deployments."
"The cost of the product can be improved."
"This solution needs to be supported on all Operating systems."
"The solution should be more compatible with different versions of Linux."
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 78 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, SaltStack and BigFix, whereas Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium and AWS Systems Manager. See our Chef vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager report.
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