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AWS Systems Manager vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
247
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (2nd), Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
AWS Systems Manager
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (5th)
Quest KACE Systems Manageme...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (6th), Endpoint Compliance (7th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (15th), Patch Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Configuration Management
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
Ambe Frankline - PeerSpot reviewer
Tracks every action on AWS accounts in a centralized way
Setting up AWS Systems Manager to monitor and control other services is easy. You need to link the services you want to observe and track. The time it takes to deploy depends on factors like connectivity, latency, and the complexity of the services. For example, setting up a simple application is faster than setting up a more complicated three-tier or multi-tier system. Using the solution for batch updates varies depending on the number of servers involved and the commands needed. Personally, when I do small projects at home, deploying a few servers doesn't take long. But at work, where we handle larger deployments with hundreds of servers, it's faster due to better connectivity and resources.
Scott Tweed - PeerSpot reviewer
Low maintenance, reliable, and easy to create packages
I like how when you click on the device, it shows you everything that has changed as well as the software versioning. I am really enjoying the inventory aspect of it. The deployment process for both deploying and creating a package is straightforward. I believe the inventory in KACE is superior to SCCM's. I know with SCCM I could do things like remote console into machines via the agent's remote console, but that is not a feature that is provided in KACE. I know that at least in the Systems Management Appliance, I can't get to it. I'm not sure how distribution works, with distribution points. I'm not sure if KACE has that feature. You could use an SCCM to set up distribution points at remote sites so that they don't have to download patches or software from across the country. If you have a DP or something similar, they could pull it down.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Stable solution at a good price."
"One of the most valuable aspects of Microsoft Intune is its seamless integration with Azure Active Directory, offering capabilities akin to Group Policy Objects."
"It has helped with compliance. It has helped to ensure that devices comply with the organization's policy. If they are not compliant and secure, they cannot access the resources."
"The key benefit of Intune is its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem."
"Conditional access has helped us tailor and enforce our security policies in the mobile space."
"The most valuable feature of Intune is the central dashboard for compliance and policy management."
"Based on my experience, I find Intune very flexible for managing Windows devices. We can use scripting, and we can make use of the self-service portal or the company portal to publish some of the applications for Windows."
"As the solution is a software as a service, the scalability is unlimited."
"The solution is user-friendly"
"AWS provides Auto Scaling groups."
"Has a variety of automation options."
"It is beginner-friendly with extensive features that can be learned gradually based on the user's needs and tasks."
"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts."
"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts"
"Systems Manager has a feature where it analyzes the logs and gives us a performance overview in the form of a graph. We know when it's taking up more resources and when there are spikes, so we can predict the usability."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the change management option. It tracks every action on my AWS accounts in a centralized way, acting like a control tool for me. This is especially useful when working with Kubernetes and AWS ECS services. Additionally, my colleagues and clients often use the application management tools for configuration, parameters, and installations."
"Patching is definitely the most valuable feature. It gives us good, centralized software, which comes in very handy since we are doing 400 servers at a time. It enables us to manage all the servers, and to deal with the application team regarding reboots and scheduling."
"The information available via KACE is up to date, critical to our normal operations, and has become the go-to tool of our IT teams for extended support."
"The single pane of glass for managing devices is helpful because it allows me to perform updates and control things without having to disturb the doctors or nurses."
"The solution provides us a single pane of glass with everything that we need for endpoint management of all devices. It definitely has made our endpoint management process much easier."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to monitor updates—the software versions—on machines so that we can keep everything compliant."
"The software asset management has been a big help, even when it comes to license true-ups. I can use it to find out how many Tivoli we have, and boom, there's the number... And you can actually click on the information about the software and it shows, for example, that these five servers are where it's being reported. If you really want, you can log in to them and validate."
"The service desk can be configured and customized to better serve our environment."
"There is ease of use, and its pricing was a driving factor."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Intune lags market leaders, such as Apperian, in its MAM capabilities."
"I know that their AI pieces are at the infancy stage, but allowing users to do more tagging for information would be an interesting thing because Intune also directly integrates with Azure. Because a lot of the devices are hosted with that, you also get a lot of tagging of user data and other things like that."
"When somebody has a customized application or their own company's application, we cannot deploy that application."
"The difficulty of the the roll out is surprisingly difficult considering this product is supposed to be an integrated part of the 365 suite."
"We need the capabilities of the Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) to be enhanced through Intune instead of Azure."
"The Mac integration has room for improvement."
"The reporting part needs improvement, and it would be beneficial if it could integrate with third-party tools instead of just Power BI."
"Microsoft Intune lacks the ability to provide seamless remote assistance or remote control."
"It could be agentless if there's room for improvement in the AWS Systems Manager. Currently, you have to install agents, although, for most of the latest EC2 images, the agents come preinstalled. If it could be at the level of Ansible, which is agentless, that would be fantastic. When you compare the solution to Ansible, one of the most widely accepted tools, the agentless feature stands out. So, if the AWS Systems Manager could become agentless, that would be a significant improvement."
"Every AWS service comes with some associated costs."
"I'd like to see more automation for monitoring and managing things like AWS CloudWatch and AWS Config. It would be a significant improvement if it could automatically handle these tasks and address issues as they arise."
"The current challenge is that we can't pull any incidents from other accounts."
"One area that could be enhanced is dynamic configuration management. Additionally, improving integration with other AWS services like Lambda and CloudFormation would be beneficial."
"Ensuring broader OS coverage in patch management could be beneficial for the product."
"The fact that AWS Systems Manager takes time to complete the patching process, makes it an area where improvements are required."
"Additional features can be added as per customer requirements."
"The user interface needs improvement as customers have mentioned they do not like the interface since it is not an SMA-based interface and lacks a manual configuration option."
"Imaging becomes a problem when you start to try to go beyond doing more than thirty or forty machines at a time. We initially tried to do that virtually and it just, it wouldn't work."
"The problem is that it's harder to directly emulate a lot of the stuff that the group policies do, using the KACE solution. With regular group policies, you just specify the various settings you want to change on the workstations, and then you specify the workstations and—while it's kind of an ugly mess—it does it. Whereas on KACE, you really have to know what you're doing with scripting to effectively script those exact same changes."
"I would sure like them to be able to copy and paste out of OneNote. That drives me nuts. You can't copy from OneNote into KACE."
"The KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has. I would love to see that get fixed because it's very convenient when it does work properly, but most of the time it does not."
"The customization of the interface needs improvement for things like end user tickets. While the functionality is good, some of that UI stuff does need improvement."
"The only hiccups we had were some power issues, where the box was a little under-powered early on."
"There isn't a lot they need to improve with the solution itself at this point. It is pretty close to providing a single pane of glass for everything that we need for endpoint management specifically on all devices. There is very little that it doesn't provide for us, and for those, we have to go to other methods. There are some of the patching solutions that it doesn't take care of for us. So, we have to do those manually on the devices, and that's really the biggest thing. It doesn't do patching really well for non-Microsoft applications. The major application updates, particularly Windows updates, don't function nearly as well, but, for the vast majority of things, it does just fine. If they could improve in this aspect, that'd be great, but I don't know if they're going to be able to do that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cost-efficient."
"Our enterprise agreement includes Microsoft Intune at no additional cost."
"Microsoft Intune is a cost effective choice. It is less expensive than other products on the market."
"Intune is moderately expensive. You can get the license bundled with Office 365 E3 or E5 licenses. The E5s are a bit expensive, but you get some cheaper solutions with Intune."
"Cost is not my department, but the product is included in the E5 license that we already pay for every user, so no additional cost is incurred."
"The tool is cheaper than our company's other MDM tools."
"The product is expensive."
"Its price is quite okay. I wish they provide certain additional features with the same license."
"An AWS cloud engineer can bring down the costs."
"Most of the features are free. I'm not entirely certain, but I believe the pricing is generally very low. Some services that are part of Ops Manager might have associated costs."
"The platform provides excellent value for the capabilities it offers when compared to third-party tools for similar tasks."
"As we were doing a government project so the government got the project at a very nominal cost."
"It may be more expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"We are also saving on the licensing fee, compared to other endpoint management solutions."
"It was a very attractive price. This is a huge feature of this product. If you would "credit score" this product versus others out there on the market, this one has a very attractive price."
"We are a university. So, we have a very good price for the system. I think the price for the system is worth it because of the security patch management. The security patch management is very important for us. The price is very good for KACE SMA, the functionality you get, and the patch management."
"Their pricing is per end-point device. There is an initial cost for the license for the server, which is pretty low, and then there is a per end-point device license, which is also fairly low. So, the pricing is still reasonable."
"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."
"Licensing is done on a per device basis, so it's dependent on how many agents you've got installed."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about AWS Systems Manager?
With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems m...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Systems Manager?
Every AWS service comes with some associated costs. While using AWS Systems Manager, we continually monitor to optimi...
What needs improvement with AWS Systems Manager?
There isn't anything specific I remember at the moment.
What do you like most about Quest KACE Systems Management?
My company had bought some new machines. We used the tool to do some basic settings to ship every machine the same wa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
The pricing is in the middle range of the market, not too expensive but not the cheapest either.
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
The user interface needs improvement as customers have mentioned they do not like the interface since it is not an SM...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Amazon Elastic Container Registry
Dell KACE Systems Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Systems Manager vs. Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.