AWS Systems Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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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 March 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.1%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Systems Manager is 10.5%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 18.3%, up from 18.4% 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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Microsoft Windows Autopilot and Defender policies are the most valuable features of this solution."

"The most valuable feature is the UEM capabilities."

"The ability to push applications on devices is valuable. You do not have to manually install applications one by one. If you like to use ten different applications, you do not have to manually go and download them one by one. Intune can compile a package for you, and then you can just push them from the admin center."

"We have not experienced any bugs or glitches with this solution."

"The best part of Intune is device control. If we need to block a user from opening something in their organization's system, we can do it from Intune. If we want to restrict the movement of an organization's data to prevent users from copying the data into Outlook, WhatsApp, or their personal Gmail, we can limit that via Intune. It secures all corporate data."

"If I assess Intune's user experience, I would say it is perfect and simple."

"Stable solution at a good price."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is having all our devices compliant with our policies."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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"

"Has a variety of automation options."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More AWS Systems Manager pros

"I like the inventory management. It's a very nice, simple, concise way to keep all that data together. And the API allows us to use it even for things that are not Ansible."

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

"Role-based access control and agentless architecture are the main features which may attract users."

"It has an easy-to-use interface. It is REST API driven, and it integrates with Active Directory. It provides the ability to grant permissions to other users who would not necessarily have those permissions via the GUI so that they could run other people's jobs. For example, you could have the Oracle team grant permissions to the Linux team so that they can use each of those playbooks or each other's code. It is called shift-left."

"The automation manager is very good."

"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."

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

"Feature-wise, the solution is a good open-source software offering broad support. Also, it's reliable."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

Cons

"The installation could be improved to be simplified."

"Intune could be improved by expanding its third-party patching capabilities for a more comprehensive solution."

"The backend of Microsoft Intune needs to be improved. We have seen a little bit of delay as compared to other MDM solutions. That needs to be improved. A little bit more granularity should also be added"

"I would like to see the ability to deploy custom packages as a Windows 64-bit package, as opposed to the Windows 32-bit, which is the only one available now."

"Intune's third-party patch management could be better. It should be easier for the average system admin to keep non-Microsoft applications updated."

"While Intune works perfectly well, the only potential downside is that the deployment could be a bit complex for some users."

"I want more secure, reliable, and efficient security policies."

"Once it's configured it is unobtrusive, but it does take some hands-on to configure and deploy it properly."

More Microsoft Intune cons

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

"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."

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

"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."

"We formerly used third-party products to analyze the log, give us information, and find bottlenecks. Systems Manager could provide more tools that conduct this analysis, so we don't have to do it ourselves."

"AWS does not have EKS cluster backup."

"The fact that AWS Systems Manager takes time to complete the patching process, makes it an area where improvements are required."

"Lacks sufficient integrations."

More AWS Systems Manager cons

"At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue."

"The product could do a better job at building infrastructure."

"There have been some differences between the operating systems that we have noticed. It could be down to cryptographic policies, but we have noticed some speed issues. They should work on the speed of deployment on different operating systems."

"Networking needs to be improved."

"There is always room for improvement in features or customer support."

"It could be easier to integrate Ansible with other solutions. No single tool can do everything. For example, we use Terraform for infrastructure and other solutions for configuration management and VMs."

"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."

"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's monthly for us, but it's built into the license cost that we pay our IT each month. It's maybe 129 Kroner per head, which translates to £10. There are some additional costs. Our IT had to set up and configure their own server, so there is an extra cost for that, but I'm not sure what that costs."

"I am satisfied with the pricing."

"Its licensing model is not complex, but it is very expensive compared to other solutions. They can bring more models and reduce the pricing. They should allow customers to select the features they want and price it accordingly."

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."

"I rate Intune five out of 10 for pricing. It's expensive."

"In terms of the product price and licensing costs, my company finds the product to be reasonably priced."

"The E5 license is expensive."

"There is a license needed for this solution and it is either included in one of the enterprise license agreements. Microsoft licensing is a mathematical institute, it could be quite complex. We tend to ask specialized organizations to research what the most profitable way it would be for us to use licenses in the organizations."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

"It’s an open-source tool."

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

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."

"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."

"The pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."

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

"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

32%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

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 ...

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 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...

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 ...

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

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

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Comparisons

Compared 15% 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

Faronics Deep Freeze vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 17% of the time

AWS Config vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 11% 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 2% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Configuration Management

Download AWS Systems Manager product report

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 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

AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform