Perforce Puppet vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Perforce and Broadcom are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Perforce is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. Perforce holds a 2.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Perforce users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

Perforce Puppet and VMware Aria Automation are products in IT automation and management. VMware Aria Automation is notably superior due to its advanced features.

Features: Perforce Puppet is valued for its reliable configuration management, seamless cross-platform integration, and strong automation capabilities with an agent-based feature that aids in system management. VMware Aria Automation is praised for its self-service IT delivery and robust automation features that support complex multi-cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Perforce Puppet could benefit from enhanced user interface design, more comprehensive cloud service integrations, and improvements in real-time reporting capabilities. VMware Aria Automation could improve its API functionalities, simplify the complexity of its configuration processes, and enhance its documentation for better user understandability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation provides sophisticated deployment catering to large enterprises, supported by extensive customer service. Perforce Puppet offers quick and flexible deployment suitable for diverse IT structures, backed by strong technical assistance focused on user-specific needs.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet is known for cost-effectiveness, providing significant ROI through efficient infrastructure management at a lower cost. VMware Aria Automation, despite its higher initial investment, offers ROI through its advanced features which reduce long-term operational expenses. It suits enterprises focusing on strategic long-term investments while Puppet is ideal for budget-conscious projects seeking swift ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

December 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 January 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 8.2%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 2.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Intune	8.2%
VMware Aria Automation	5.5%
Perforce Puppet	2.9%
Other	83.4%

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.

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reviewer2284542

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

Automated configuration management ensures consistent server setups

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.

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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 overall user experience is quite nice. I have no complaints from end users regarding their devices enrolled in Intune."

"The most valuable feature of Intune is the user-friendly portal for end users."

"Among the most valuable features are the Company Portal that is built into Intune, and the update rings so that we can manage what types of future updates the devices get."

"Overall, the stability is good."

"The solution appears to be stable and scalable."

"I like Intune's ability to manage roles, maintenance tasks, compliance settings, and patch development for all endpoints."

"I have seen a return on investment right from the start of the tool's usage."

"Microsoft Intune is very stable due to its cloud-based infrastructure and its reliability in performance."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

"The versatility is great."

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

"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."

"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."

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

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

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

More Perforce Puppet pros

"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."

"It benefits the speed of our development, and the speed of anything we test and send through to production."

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

"The product is very user-friendly."

"The automation part is valuable, especially where vRA integrates with vRO, because it reduces the amount of effort we have to make."

"It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method."

"It is also intuitive and user-friendly... With vRealize, we can have a Help Desk individual, who might not be that techy, provision the different elements quite easily, with no almost training at all."

"The initial setup is straightforward. It's not that difficult."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"Historically, Group Policy has simplified the management of various items, such as printer and drive mappings and while Intune offers workarounds, it lacks native support for these functionalities."

"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."

"Integration with Mac devices requires some improvement."

"At the moment, we need more flexibility. We have some offices migrating to Windows 11 remotely. Sometimes, it is difficult to manage image installation because we have to collect some information before starting image deployment. Currently, Intune cannot collect the information needed for deploying new images."

"Intune's server management could be better. If it could incorporate more features from System Center into Intune's Configuration Manager, it would be beneficial."

"There are a few security features that are not available in Microsoft Intune, when compared to other products."

"Microsoft Intune could enhance its patch management for various devices, ensuring regular updates and tracking of device privileges."

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

More Microsoft Intune cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"VMware should go the way of vROps, with everything in one machine, the ability to scale out, and a more distributed environment instead of having the usual centralized SQL database."

"When you start to do a deployment where you need higher availability and more resiliency, then the complexity goes up drastically."

"vCenter and vRA, I believe they share two different databases so sometimes you have to somehow sync them up. I wish there was only one database between the two or, somehow, one database would rule over the other one, so if you have both products, the vCenter might use the vRA database. Otherwise, when you do stuff in vCenter, you have to write a command on vRA to update the databases."

"There is certainly room for improvement with some of the little things I was talking about, like either better managing of the upgrade process, or just making the infrastructure deployment a little bit easier. It feels like all of the pieces have been automated on one level or another, like with the PowerShell scripts, doing all the IS, Windows boxes preparation. They just need to get it to be more end-to-end."

"Something as simple as formatting the catalog in a different way would be helpful because there is no option for doing so. A lot of the contents for the virtual machine, blueprints that you can request, are hidden from view and there's no way to change the view."

"I'm not wanting any particular feature; but there should be cost reductions. VMware comes at a high cost, and that's why we are in the process of transitioning to a more affordable alternative."

"The solution could include more integrations and supportability around the container space."

"Most of the time the upgrade experience has been good but sometimes things break after upgrading. For example, some API codes stopped working."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The product is expensive."

"Microsoft's licensing is more flexible and adaptive than its competitors."

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

"Microsoft Intune is a cost effective choice. It is less expensive than other products on the market."

"Intune is available as an individual product, but it also comes with Office 365 Premium or an Enterprise license, and the price varies for each version."

"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."

"It is not a cheap solution. The price for a device when you start using it at a large scale can be improved. It is covered under our enterprise agreement. We pay once a year. I am not aware of any additional costs."

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 can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."

"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."

"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."

"It is an open-source product."

"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."

"It is pricey for what you get."

"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."

"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

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

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	120
Midsize Enterprise	47
Large Enterprise	153

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	130

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 ...

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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 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...

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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...

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What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?

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

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% 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

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 9% of the time

Chef vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 7% of the time

More Perforce Puppet Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

December 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Puppet

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

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

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.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

December 2025

Free Report: Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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