AWS Systems Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Red Hat are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.1, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 10.7% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 17.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and AWS Systems Manager are two popular automation tools competing in managing IT environments. AWS Systems Manager has the upper hand due to its seamless integration with other AWS services, despite the comprehensive features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

Features: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers a powerful automation language, extensive modules, and an agentless architecture, making it highly valued for flexibility and ease of use. AWS Systems Manager is appreciated for directly integrating with numerous AWS services, allowing for efficient cloud resource management and comprehensive monitoring tools. AWS Systems Manager excels in cloud service integration.

Room for Improvement: Users indicate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform could improve by enhancing its documentation, reducing its complexity for new users, and streamlining its overall architecture. AWS Systems Manager users suggest better support for non-AWS resources, a more intuitive setup process, and improved user interface design. The complexity of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform poses a significant challenge for new users, while AWS Systems Manager’s limitation with non-AWS resources is its primary drawback.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is recognized for its flexibility in deployment across various environments but can be time-consuming to configure. Users commend its responsive customer support. AWS Systems Manager is noted for its straightforward deployment in AWS ecosystems but requires additional effort for hybrid environments. AWS’s support is well-regarded but can be inconsistent. AWS Systems Manager offers quicker deployment within AWS, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides versatile deployment options.

Pricing and ROI: Users find Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's pricing justified by its extensive capabilities and report favorable ROI when thoroughly utilized. AWS Systems Manager is generally seen as cost-effective, particularly for AWS-centric organizations, with users perceiving good value for the integration benefits it offers. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform may have higher upfront costs but delivers substantial ROI, whereas AWS Systems Manager is praised for its cost-effectiveness, especially within AWS environments.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

April 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Systems Manager is 10.7%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 17.8%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi

Collaborations engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

Read full review

Ambe Frankline

Cloud/DevOps Engineer at Innovative Technology Systems

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.

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Surya Chapagain

Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Easy to manage and simple to learn

We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its protection policies are most valuable. It protects mobile devices as well as individual apps. It is pretty scalable, and its documentation is also pretty good. It is also pretty straightforward to deploy."

"By using Microsoft Intune we can control which websites the users can go to and it provides a secure environment for our employees using their laptops that are having access from home. We have installed Intune to control the user's environment minimizing the chances of any hacking."

"Previously, SCCM was used as an on-premise solution for clients, but now they are moving to Microsoft Intune as a cloud solution with better security and functions."

"The most valuable feature is Intune's ability to push out updates for the security and antivirus. I also like Intune's copilot and the ability to automate processes. For example, if you have 5,000 employees who are issued new PCs and you need to set them up with everything they need."

"I find Microsoft Intune valuable primarily for its Windows management capabilities, along with its Android Enterprise and Apple device management for mobile devices."

"EAM is a godsend."

"The security-related tools are excellent; these features allow us to secure devices, lock them down, and ensure compliance."

"The solution is easy to use, simple to understand for those new to using it, and combined with the other Microsoft products it makes for an overall good package."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts"

"I use AWS Systems Manager primarily for infrastructure management and automation. One of its key benefits is managing patches and updates for our EC2 instances, including both Windows and Linux workloads. It can perform compliance checks on all managed workloads, identifying which systems aren't compliant or haven't been patched."

"It is beginner-friendly with extensive features that can be learned gradually based on the user's needs and tasks."

"The store organizes parameters hierarchically, making it easier to configure and control versions. It also ensures scalability and high availability, automatically scaling to handle increasing workloads and providing reliable access to configuration data across multiple AWS availability zones."

"When we do the automation in the cloud, we use the SSM agent. This helps us to test our automation and documents, and monitor the cloud."

"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts."

"With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems manually."

"The solution's ability to scale is good."

More AWS Systems Manager pros

"The capacity to install products on the operating system is very valuable."

"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening. When we do get a new VM, we have been able to bring on a provisioned machine in less than a day. This morning alone, I provisioned two machines within an hour. I am talking about hardening, installing antivirus software on it, and creating user accounts because the Playbooks were predesigned. From the time we got the servers to the actual hand-off, it takes less than an hour. We are talking about having the servers actually authenticate Red Hat Satellites and run the yum updates. All of that can be done within an hour."

"The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching."

"Ansible Tower provides a GUI, which is an enhancement, and a well-liked feature by operation teams."

"It enabled me to take the old build manifest and automated everything. So when it came time to spin everything up, it was quick and simple. I could spin it up and test it out. And then, when it came time to roll production, it was a done deal. When we expanded to multiple data centers, it was same thing: Change a few IP addresses, change some names, and off we went."

"The initial setup is easy and takes a few hours to complete."

"The development tools are decent and being able to consistently manage those servers is really the key, which is why we went with Ansible in the first place."

"It has made our infrastructure more testable. We are able to build our infrastructure in CI, then are more confident in what we are deploying will work, not breaking everything."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

Cons

"I rate Microsoft support between six to eight. The support often involves third parties hired by Microsoft who are knowledgeable, but sometimes the help I receive is not adequate."

"The tool's tunnel gateway is not very good, making it an area where improvements are required."

"They could also make it easier to use because there are some other products that may be easier to use in terms of the look and feel of the dashboard."

"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."

"There is no catalog for mobile access management (MAM) security."

"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."

"There's quite a lot of development that they can do within their Intune dashboard. I think there are too many lines hyperlinked to move you around. Others, in contrast, give you a simple dashboard and an intuitive administrative walkthrough."

"I, as such, do not have any specific inputs or needs. However, there is always room for improvement when it comes to scalability."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"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."

"One area that could be enhanced is dynamic configuration management. Additionally, improving integration with other AWS services like Lambda and CloudFormation would be beneficial."

"The AWS UIs are not the most intuitive. Also, the usability needs room for improvement."

"Additional features can be added as per customer requirements."

"Ensuring broader OS coverage in patch management could be beneficial for the product."

"AWS does not have EKS cluster backup."

"The current challenge is that we can't pull any incidents from other accounts."

"Lacks sufficient integrations."

More AWS Systems Manager cons

"Additional features could be added."

"The solution requires some Linux knowledge."

"The solution must be made easier to configure."

"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."

"Documentation could be improved. Many times, if I'm looking for something, I have to Google it in a lot of places, then figure out what the best approach will be. There are some best practices documents, but they don't give you the information."

"The SSM connection access needs improvement"

"The user interface on the Ansible Tower product could be better, but it is functional."

"What we need is model-driven, declarative software infrastructure management. However, things tend to break with new versions, requiring a lot of work to fix…The focus should be on improving the support for Ansible in the area of AI coding."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."

"It is reasonable. When you have Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license, it is already licensed in that license. So, you could say it is free."

"The pricing is not cheap, especially with inflation. They've had to increase their prices. It's not excessive, but alright."

"There is a cost benefit of using Microsoft Intune because of the packaging with other Microsoft products."

"There are licenses required for this solution. We enable licenses on the devices we need to manage."

"Even if they charge a premium, they aim to provide equal value."

"I recently got to know that the AD P1 license is compulsory to use Intune Autopilot, which was surprising for me. Earlier, this was not the case. It is the wrong thing to do. We now need to purchase AD P1 licenses for us and for our customers. I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing."

"Intune is included in the Microsoft 365 licensing package that we have."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"The platform provides excellent value for the capabilities it offers when compared to third-party tools for similar tasks."

"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."

"As we were doing a government project so the government got the project at a very nominal cost."

"An AWS cloud engineer can bring down the costs."

"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."

"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."

"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."

"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."

"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."

"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."

"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."

"It is a little pricey but it is affordable. It is not that bad."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

31%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

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 ...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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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...

See all answers

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...

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What needs improvement with AWS Systems Manager?

There isn't anything specific I remember at the moment.

See all answers

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?

Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...

See all answers

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.

See all answers

Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 14% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Meraki Systems Manager (MDM+EMM) vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 16% of the time

AWS Config vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 9% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 5% of the time

BigFix vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 5% of the time

More AWS Systems Manager Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 9% of the time

BigFix vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco DNA Center vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

March 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

April 2025

Download AWS Systems Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

March 2025

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Amazon Elastic Container Registry

Ansible

Overview

Microsoft Intune provides centralized management of mobile devices and applications, ensuring security, compliance, and productivity through integration with Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory.

Organizations use Intune for managing mobile devices and applications, enhancing security and compliance across platforms. With features like single sign-on, conditional access, and zero-touch deployment via Autopilot, it facilitates efficient operations. Intune's scalability, easy enrollment, and capabilities such as remote wipe support diverse device management, offering robust data protection and efficient operation. Despite its features, improvement areas include reporting, compatibility with non-Microsoft devices, and better support for macOS and Linux devices.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Seamless Integration: Works with Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and System Center for streamlined management.
Conditional Access: Enhances security with policies that restrict access based on conditions.
Autopilot: Provides zero-touch deployment for setting up new devices efficiently.
Mobile Device Management: Enables control over both personal and corporate devices.
Application Deployment: Facilitates app delivery across a range of devices.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Centralized Management: Reduces complexity by managing devices and applications in one place.
Security Enhancement: Protects data with features like remote wipe and compliance monitoring.
Improved Productivity: Enhances efficiency with seamless integration and automation features.
Device Scalability: Supports diverse device management for growing business needs.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure secure and compliant device management. Companies leverage its capabilities to deploy security policies and manage both corporate-owned and BYOD environments, facilitating a unified approach to data protection and compliance.

Microsoft

AWS Systems Manager is a management service that helps you automatically collect software inventory, apply OS patches, create system images, and configure Windows and Linux operating systems. These capabilities help you define and track system configurations, prevent drift, and maintain software compliance of your EC2 and on-premises configurations. By providing a management approach that is designed for the scale and agility of the cloud but extends into your on-premises data center, Systems Manager makes it easier for you to seamlessly bridge your existing infrastructure with AWS.

Systems Manager is easy to use. Simply access Systems Manager from the EC2 Management Console, select the instances you want to manage, and define the management tasks you want to perform. Systems Manager is available now at no cost to manage both your EC2 and on-premises resources.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful network automation solution that allows organizations to handle every aspect of their application launch process within a single product. It enables users to share their automations so that teams within an organization can collaborate on various projects with ease. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be used by all employees involved in the network automation process.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform include:

Maximum benefit for reduced overhead. Ansible Automation Platform is an all-in-one solution that can enable users to do the jobs of multiple products with one. Users do not need to purchase multiple products to handle their network automation and application development needs. It is equipped with prefabricated content from more than one hundred companies that are partnered with it.

Scalable. Ansible Automation Platform is a highly scalable solution. It can easily be scaled up so that automations can be extended across the various devices that make up an organization’s network.

Flexibility. Ansible Automation Platform is highly flexible. It enables users to tackle any and all automation-related tasks.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Features

Automation analytics. Ansible Automation Platform comes equipped with an automation analytics feature. This feature enables organizations to measure the effects of their automations and plan how they are going to implement automations moving forward. It makes it easy for administrators to spot anomalies in their automations and resolve them before they can escalate and become major issues.

Integration suite. Ansible Automation Platform gives organizations access to a wide variety of integrations that enable them to connect to Ansible’s partners. Now users can augment their capabilities without needing to purchase additional solutions that will enable them to run features that are not normally a part of Ansible’s array of tools. The Ansible environment is built to handle the wide variety of integrations that their partners offer. In order to accomplish this it includes the APIs that users need in order to fully benefit from the integrations.

Centralized interface. Ansible Automation Platform comes with a centralized GUI interface that enables users to manage all of their network automation and application creation activities from a single location. Businesses can guarantee that their operations are going to be handled efficiently and according to a single standard. The management process is greatly simplified. All of the tools that users need are located in one place.

Reviews from Real Users

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its automation manager and its comprehensive centralized GUI-based management interface.

MD J., a solution architect at STBL, says, “The automation manager is very good and makes things easier for customers with multi-cloud platforms.”

Aankit G., a Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS, writes, “We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.”

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank

Buyer's Guide

AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

April 2025

Free Report: AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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