Perforce Puppet vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

Perforce Puppet vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

February 2026

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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 February 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 7.4%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 3.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 12.2%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform	12.2%
Microsoft Intune	7.4%
Perforce Puppet	3.7%
Other	76.7%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

Automated configuration management ensures consistent server setups

reviewer2284542

Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The strength of Puppet is in automated configuration management. We can configure a server once and set rules with Puppet so that future server configurations are automatic and consistent with company requests. Puppet is declarative, meaning it finds the best state for itself and corrects any deviations in the configuration.

Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes

Manas Kashyap

DevOps Engineer at Elevenxcapital

The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

More Microsoft Intune pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Microsoft Intune saves eight hours per day, and during my work hours, I use my time to study and run tests on configurations I'm curious about and try them out in my environment."

"It works pretty well for us."

"I can reach devices or computers over the internet. I don't need to worry about the network connectivity between the offices. I can manage any device. That is the most important part."

"Microsoft Intune is a must and should be needed for this time, for this hybrid model period, and I highly recommend this product for employees, education institutions, or device management."

"Fortunately, now everything is streamlined into a single, unified platform."

"Internet-based access with security is what I have found to be most valuable. It is also a stable and scalable solution."

"The biggest benefit for me in Microsoft Intune is control; I can control my users and what they can do and enforce the policies that I want to enforce, and it is a great tool to control and put structure to take the organization to the place I want to take it."

"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

"The versatility is great."

"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."

"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."

"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."

More Perforce Puppet pros

"One of the most valuable features is automation. We are doing automation infrastructure, which allows us to automate regular tasks. This solution provides us with a service catalog, like building new services and automating daily tasks."

"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."

"The most valuable feature is that Ansible is agentless."

"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very helpful due to passwordless integration and the ability to interact with multiple servers at once, which is especially advantageous when dealing with thousands of servers."

"It is quick to production. It has an API in the back which allows for integrations."

"RBAC is great around Organizations and I can use that backend as our lab. Ingesting stuff into the JSON logs, into any sort of logging collector; it works with Splunk and there are other collectors as well. It supports Sumo and that helps, I can go create reports in Sumo Logic. Workflows are an interesting feature. I can collect a lot of templates and create a workflow out of them."

"The solution can scale."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

Cons

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

"The way the apps are getting deployed, the checkboxes for deleting previous versions are actually creating more conflicts than fixing problems."

"For an existing customer who has an SCCM, it would need to be upgraded to an MECM first before I can introduce Microsoft Intune."

"It could offer more attributes for authentication."

"The synchronization could be improved."

"Intune lags all of its competitors in terms of report generation."

"The reporting needs to be a bit more interactive."

"My whole team is saying that they would rate technical support a three or four out of ten."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"The solution has really complex code, you have to understand the Ruby language. However, once you know the code then you can move ahead without any problems."

"It's a bit of a pain point to make sure that everything works once we've upgraded it because Puppet has been evolving pretty fast."

"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."

"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."

"Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team members leave the organization, leaving others uncertain about using the tool."

"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."

"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."

"There's a lot of scope for enhancement on the DevSecOps side. They should definitely include features for compliance, for both the Linux and Windows side of the devices, as well as for network devices. Compliance is something they need to work on."

"The support could be better."

"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."

"The SSM connection access needs improvement"

"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""

"There should be consistency. I know that it is always changing, but when we are trying to get some users to do something in basic Ansible that they are not really interested in doing but their job requires them to do it, they start finding inconsistencies."

"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."

"The solution must be made easier to configure."

"Some of the modules in Ansible could be a bit more mature. There is still a little room for further development. Some performance aspects could be improved, perhaps in the form of parallelism within Ansible."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While I can't provide insights from a business perspective, it's worth noting that the pricing may differ significantly, and the discount we received might not be reflective of standard business rates."

"The price could be better."

"If you're subscribing to Premium or E3, there are no additional costs for Intune, it's included."

"While Microsoft charges for actual usage, it lacks discount options."

"It's affordable for the protection it gives. There are no additional costs."

"Pricing depends on the features. Microsoft offers special packages if there are more than 10,000 users, and you may be able to get a reduced rate."

"It is expensive. The cost depends on the license that we choose."

"There is a license required to use the solution. If you're core users in Office 365, for example, you have Outlook email and E3 license, this is only email. You have to buy an EMS license to have Microsoft Intune. It is expensive."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"The main thing that we noticed when we switched from the enterprise version to the community version was the difference in cost — the infrastructure is pretty expensive."

"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."

"Depending on the size of the organization there is a point when the price of Puppet Enterprise should be lower. However, they provide really good functionality, features, and capabilities."

"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."

"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."

"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."

"The pricing is pretty standard."

"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."

"The cost is high, but it still works well."

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."

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

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user185772

Senior Software Architect with 5,001-10,000 employees

Oct 27, 2015

Docker v. CFEngine v. Puppet Data Center Automation v. Chef v. Ansible

Originally posted at http://technologyconversations.com/2015/08/26/configuration-management-in-the-docker-world/ Anyone managing more than a few servers can confirm that doing such a task manually is a waste of time and risky. Configuration management (CM) exists for a long time and there is no…

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

13%

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	122
Midsize Enterprise	48
Large Enterprise	160

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	48

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Puppet Enterprise?

Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always. I don't know how much the license would cost per year or per user ap...

What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?

I don't know what could be improved in Perforce Puppet to make this tool better for the next release. I can't think o...

What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?

My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.

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 10% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

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AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 7% of the time

Chef vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 7% of the time

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VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 6% of the time

BigFix vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Microsoft Intune

January 2026

Download Perforce Puppet product report

Perforce Puppet

January 2026

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

January 2026

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Puppet

Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS

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

Perforce Puppet provides robust features for configuration management, compatible with Linux, Windows, and UNIX. It simplifies infrastructure management with automation and role-based access control, though it requires mastering command-line operations due to limited GUI.

Perforce Puppet utilizes a hub-spoke architecture to enhance automation across production environments, excelling in provisioning and configuration management for on-prem servers. Its infrastructure as code approach eases deployment and maintenance, supported by community resources for stabilization. Support for diverse devices makes it adaptable for complex configurations, but pricing and integration gaps, especially with Infosec tools, pose challenges for some.

What are the key features of Perforce Puppet?

Remote Package Installation: Centralized server management for remote installations
File Management: Streamlined file operations from a single point
Infrastructure as Code: Simplifies infrastructure maintenance
Scalability: Grows with organizational demands
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure user management
Device State Control: Efficient device integration and configuration

What benefits should users expect?

Automation Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks with hub-spoke architecture
Versatility: Supports multiple operating systems
Community Support: Backed by a stable and organized community
Configuration Simplicity: Simplifies and streamlines setup processes

Puppet is implemented across industries for managing production servers, especially in regulated environments. Its security compliance checks ensure adherence to required standards, while public configurations assist in device network integration. Industries benefit from its ability to streamline Linux server automation and explore expansion into Windows systems to meet cross-platform requirements.

Perforce

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform streamlines IT operations with features like a simplified GUI and extensive module support. Its agentless architecture and YAML ease make it an adaptable choice for managing diverse infrastructures efficiently.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers a robust automation framework that supports multiple environments and integrates well with various applications. Its agentless Python-based architecture facilitates efficient server management and rapid update deployment. Users benefit from centralized management through Ansible Tower, role-based access control, and dynamic inventory. However, improvement areas include documentation, API integration, network support, and UI scaling. Enhanced community contributions could address module availability and compatibility gaps.

What are the most important features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

Agentless Architecture: Leverages Python for seamless management without needing local agents.
Extensive Module Support: Provides modules for managing multiple environments effectively.
Ansible Tower GUI: Offers a centralized interface for easy automation management.
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures user-specific permissions for improved security.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with a variety of applications to enhance functionality.
Dynamic Inventory: Automatically updates inventory, simplifying large infrastructure management.

What benefits and ROI should one consider?

Automation Efficiency: Significantly reduces manual intervention, saving time and resources.
Adaptability: Easily integrates with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, and Azure.
Security Compliance: Automates compliance checks, ensuring up-to-date security protocols.
Cost Management: Lower operational costs through streamlined processes.
Scalability: Supports infrastructure growth without requiring major adjustments.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and technology, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is used for network management, security compliance, and configuration tasks. Organizations utilize its capabilities for cloud and on-premises deployment, infrastructure provisioning, and workflow orchestration. Many integrate it with tools such as Puppet or Terraform to enhance CI/CD processes, benefiting from its agentless design in adapting to cloud environments.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix

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