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Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

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
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Microsoft Configuration Man...
Ranking in Configuration Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (3rd), Patch Management (1st)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 11.9%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 14.6%, down from 15.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 16.0%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

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.
MikeNelson2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements
While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.
Surya Chapagain - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Autopilot feature is the most valuable because it saves significant time on managing devices. We can ship devices globally, and users can set them up on their own. It's convenient."
"Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow."
"Intune makes our organization more secure and flexible. We can onboard new employees faster and more securely. We are a governmental organization with strict regulations, and Intune helps us comply with those requirements."
"I like the group policy management feature, which performs application monitoring and device enrollment."
"Implementing Microsoft Intune has provided a more streamlined and consistent method for device management across our multiple domains, effectively consolidating our administrative efforts."
"Conditional access has helped us tailor and enforce our security policies in the mobile space."
"I find Microsoft Intune valuable primarily for its Windows management capabilities, along with its Android Enterprise and Apple device management for mobile devices."
"Microsoft's cloud comes with a lot of extra features that are free of charge."
"The tool's most valuable features include security updates and patch management, which are critical functions for maintaining security. The automated software distribution and the ability to manage deployments are also highly useful. Enforcing compliance with set policies on systems is another key functionality we leverage."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ability to deploy patches to nearly all applications."
"Technical support is very helpful and very responsive."
"With the right administrator, application deployment can do wonders."
"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 most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is it's incredibly simple to configure and execute changes in bulk, allowing for seamless deployment. With this solution, you can easily track the status of all modifications and send them with ease, making it a comprehensive and efficient solution for any necessary adjustments."
"Microsoft has done a good job with authentication solutions, such as single sign-on, or open authentication."
"It has the ability to perform mass distribution."
"Having the Dashboard from an admin point of view, and seeing how all the projects and all the jobs lay out, is helpful."
"The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching."
"It allows control over thousands of servers, whether virtual or physical."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to build playbooks. The learning curve is not that steep."
"The initial setup is easy and takes a few hours to complete."
"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation."
"Automation tracking is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have a location tracker for the mobile device management tool. I'm not sure if it exists but hasn't been configured or if it's missing, but we've been unable to utilize the location features."
"There is room for improvement in integration and security as well."
"The difficulty of the the roll out is surprisingly difficult considering this product is supposed to be an integrated part of the 365 suite."
"Reporting could be improved. It needs to be more expensive and robust."
"One drawback of Intune is that we cannot find devices based on a user's region or location."
"Integration with Mac devices requires some improvement."
"Microsoft Intune's support for Mac devices is lacking and could be improved."
"The scalability could be improved, and like most other MDM products, Intune is good but not 100% there yet."
"Management of Linux devices could be improved."
"It should provide the ability to remotely connect to mobile devices. There are some solutions that are doing that, but with Microsoft Intune, the only way to remotely connect to devices outside the organization and mobile devices is by using TeamViewer. It is pretty strange for a big company like Microsoft to not have something for that."
"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."
"SCCM can improve on third-party application support."
"Its client interface should be more accessible, and the notifications should be more customizable from the console. It should be more user friendly and have some kind of customized notifications so that we can use it on the client side. These are the reasons why we restricted its use only for the server environment and didn't use it on the client side."
"The operations could be faster and you need some patience with this tool."
"SCCM does not scale well, which is one of the reasons we are not going to continue to use it."
"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager could improve the integration."
"Ansible has just been upgraded, and the only issue that we are seeing at the moment is that the user interface can be slow. We're currently investigating the refresh period with Red Hat when you click a job and run a job. It seems that the buffer no longer runs in real-time. We haven't discovered whether that's partially an issue with our environment, but Red Hat has come back and said that they're working on a couple of bugs in the background. We've upgraded to that version in the last six months, and that's the only issue that we've seen."
"It can use some more credential types. I've found that when I go looking for a certain credential type, such as private keys, they're not really there."
"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."
"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."
"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."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is not the best at server provisioning. Terraform is better."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"The web GUI can be a little bit better. There should be a couple of more features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft offers some licensing where it's included at no extra cost when customers are already using the licenses. In such a case, it's a really good value. If you have to buy the licensing for it, it's probably on par with other solutions. It isn't substantially more or less expensive. The great thing is that it is included in some of Microsoft's licensed packages. So, some customers don't have to spend additional money for it. Typically, most providers that support Intune do charge a management fee of some sort or some fee. Certainly, we're no exception."
"There is a license needed to use the solution and we are on an annual license."
"The pricing is inherently reasonable, as Microsoft leverages market insights to maintain the total cost of ownership at around ninety to ninety-five percent of what would be incurred in an on-premise scenario."
"We have a limited budget for security investments, so Microsoft should consider reducing pricing in our region. This would make investment more viable, especially since larger businesses in other countries can afford it easily."
"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."
"Its price is quite okay. I wish they provide certain additional features with the same license."
"The price is very reasonable."
"The pricing is not cheap, especially with inflation. They've had to increase their prices. It's not excessive, but alright."
"The price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is expensive."
"Its licensing is quite complicated because we are getting the license not only for SCCM but for the full Microsoft package. We don't need to pay for a separate license. We need to have one license that includes everything we need, such as Windows, Microsoft 365, SCCM, encryption, and so on. So, we don't have a specific price for it. Perhaps, it is good that it includes the full suite of licensing of Microsoft. It is expensive, but we are getting a lot of features."
"The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for."
"There is an annual license needed to use the solution."
"We have a support license from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager and the overall price of the solution is reasonable."
"Presently, I am using a free trial version."
"I would rate the cost as eight out of ten."
"SCCM comes with its own version of SQL Server. If you use that SQL Server with SCCM and don't use it for another applications than you get an SQL Server for free."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"The pricing is okay."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
32%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 ...
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 ...
How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. Wh...
What do you like most about SCCM?
One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages effi...
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...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
There is a pricing associated with Ansible, however, I find it reasonable.
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.