Microsoft Configuration Manager vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

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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 Microsoft Configuration Manager is 12.8%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.6%, up from 5.3% 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.

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MikeNelson2

IT Infrastructure Coordinator at NSW Government

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.

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Le Quang Long

Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam

Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows

It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

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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 most valuable features in Microsoft Intune for me are application deployment, Defender deployment, and asset management."

"The mobile device management is very useful."

"The solution’s most valuable feature is its ease of use."

"The one feature we find most useful is the Mobile Application Manager. There are two types, we have the complete MDM and the Mobile Application Manager(MAM). We don't give our users phones, it is their own personal phone, and we need to allow them to have access to the company detail on their phone. We need to create a balance between their own personal data and the company data. We deploy the Mobile Application Manager for them so that we won't be able to interfere with their own personal data."

"The biggest asset is the range of device management options available with Intune, whether it is a Windows device, a Linux device, a Mac device, or mobile devices."

"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."

"Overall, I like Intune as a solution and would rate it nine out of ten."

"The stability is good."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"SCCM does everything from A to Z for a Windows operating system."

"Patching is very effective and reporting is very good."

"The cloud account management is a valuable feature."

"It is a very good solution. It has a good interface and is easy to use. On top of that, it is very reliable in terms of distribution as well as getting the report."

"The product is suitable for our size, handling 800 devices."

"Microsoft Configuration Manager gives different tools in one solution."

"I like a lot of the reporting capabilities and baseline configurations."

"The most valuable features are Remote Connect, SUP, Cloud functionality, Report, Query, and third-party patching."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pros

"Instead of deploying a VM from a template and going through the process of configuring that VM, with vRA we're able to click once and it does everything: grabs an IP, joins it to the domain, loads whatever configuration agents are needed. It does all of that without manual intervention."

"vRealize automation stability is pretty good. They are always fixing bugs. The product team is doing a great job of addressing any issues that we might have."

"In terms of scalability, vRA has connections to a lot of different systems. It's very flexible and an impressive product."

"I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products."

"It is possible to completely automatize the creation and removal of a virtual machine."

"The most valuable feature is the consistency it delivers, at the end of the day. We know that we have consistent images based off consistent Blueprints, check-pointed or QA'ed in a consistent manner."

"It provides visibility into the VM space."

"One of the most valuable features is lifecycle management. It allows my teams to create, manage, and retire all of our infrastructure objects in the data center."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"Intune does not provide real-time visibility."

"Enhancements for managing MacOS more comprehensively would be beneficial."

"The reports that are generated aren't so great. They don't give a lot of meaning so far, but that could be down to user knowledge than the actual reporting side of things. I'm not a big user of it, but I was a bigger user of MaaS360, and we used to be able to run weekly and monthly reports. In the case of any deviations. we'd get a warning immediately. That's not so easy to do or to get in place for Intune. This could be just a user issue, but when I compare both, that's the only thing that's lacking for me."

"Intune's areas for improvement revolve around security and certificate management."

"We are facing issues with Apple products. With macOS and iOS, there are some difficulties with the updates because we cannot get full control of Apple products. In the case of Windows, it is fine, but in the case of Apple, we have some difficulties. We cannot control everything through Intune."

"The most significant challenge is reporting and monitoring. The reporting accuracy for deploying applications and all aspects of Intune needs to be improved."

"China blocks Google and Google Play Store, which makes installation challenging. Microsoft Intune is a company software, which has to be installed to the app portal or Microsoft Software Center."

"The pricing could be improved."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager could improve the integration."

"Based on my experience with SCCM 2016, the main, big issue is not having a good user-friendly environment. It needs much better GUI."

"Their compliance reporting is not accurate, and they admitted it on the phone when we had a call with them. We were trying to understand why their numbers didn't match on our compliance reports. It is not accurate and you cannot depend on the compliance reports. The numbers just don't match, and we can't figure out why. We called Microsoft and they said, "Yeah, that's a known issue." But there is no word that they're working on it."

"The main room for improvement is the on-screen display. I think it would be good if some improvements were made."

"The database should be made to be more stable and robust, but not so much the configuration."

"The solution is crowded with information."

"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."

"It would be of benefit if Configuration Manager could be connected/integrated with multiple Microsoft Intune subscriptions rather than just one (the current limit)."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager cons

"I would like to see more out-of-the-box blueprints and workflows for the rest of VMware's products and its portfolio."

"It would be nice in the next release if they added in tool tips. Whether you're putting it together, adding a blueprint, or you're making a change in the system, highlighting or selecting something and having it tell you what it does or what it will do would be nice. Because it's such a complex system, it's hard to work with unless you've been using it for years to know what everything is doing."

"Automation or scripting should be simplified so that administrators who are not experts can have a better grasp of automation."

"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."

"I have not found this solution to be user-friendly. It's really complicated. The demo shows that you can automate anything but they only show basic scenarios. If you want to do anything more complicated than that, it becomes very complicated to set up."

"I think they could probably do more if they created more actions and more use cases to automate things."

"Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time."

"It is difficult to set up."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our enterprise agreement includes Microsoft Intune at no additional cost."

"The pricing for Microsoft Intune is reasonable. Our clients are satisfied."

"Its price is fair. It's a normal price. It isn't too expensive or too cheap."

"There is a license needed to use the solution and we are on an annual license."

"The cost is somewhat on the higher side, particularly when considering certain price points, especially in markets like India."

"We use Defender ATP and E5 licenses."

"The purchase of the product was handled by someone else."

"The cost of the license and the features are justified for myself as a technical person."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for."

"For enterprises, there is an annual license required to use this solution. The price of the solution could be cheaper. However, this is mostly because of the exchange rate from the dollar to the Nigerian currency."

"Pricing is negotiable with Microsoft, depending upon which of their packages you choose."

"I would rate the cost as eight out of ten."

"We have a support license from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager and the overall price of the solution is reasonable."

"When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."

"Its price is okay because it is part of our licensing."

"The price of SCCM depends on the size of the organization. The price is competitive."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pricing and cost advice

"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."

"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."

"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."

"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."

"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."

"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."

"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."

"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.

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842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

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's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?

vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything y...

Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?

When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A fre...

Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?

I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of compa...

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Comparisons

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

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 14% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 13% of the time

Tanium vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 8% of the time

BigFix vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 6% of the time

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Configuration Manager Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 17% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 11% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Microsoft Configuration Manager

Download Microsoft Configuration Manager product report

VMware Aria Automation

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

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

Microsoft Configuration Manager helps IT manage PCs and servers, keeping software up-to-date, setting configuration and security policies, and monitoring system status while giving employees access to corporate applications on the devices that they choose. When Configuration Manager is integrated with Microsoft Intune, you can manage corporate-connected PCs and Macs along with cloud-based mobile devices running Windows, iOS, and Android, all from a single management console.

New features of Configuration Manager, such as the support of Windows 10 in-place upgrade, co-management with Microsoft Intune, Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Servicing Dashboard, integration with Windows Update for Business, and more make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before.

Microsoft

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

VMware

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

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation