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 7.7, while Broadcom is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.1. Perforce holds a 2.2% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 5.6% 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 Sep 14, 2025

Perforce Puppet and VMware Aria Automation compete in the automation space. Perforce Puppet has an edge in pricing and support, while VMware Aria Automation excels in feature capabilities, making it a worthy investment despite higher costs.

Features: Perforce Puppet offers robust infrastructure management and configuration automation, with strong scripting capabilities, cross-platform support, and agent-based functionality for stability. It excels in managing Linux, Windows, and UNIX servers with a comprehensive module library. VMware Aria Automation provides superior integration with hybrid cloud infrastructure and offers advanced orchestration capabilities, multi-vendor cloud IT infrastructure personalization, and a self-service portal that streamlines VM deployment.

Room for Improvement: Perforce Puppet could enhance scalability and integration capabilities with third-party tools, improve user interface design for better usability, and expand its cloud automation options. VMware Aria Automation might simplify its deployment process, increase support for newer third-party applications, and enhance its pricing model to make it more competitive in smaller-scale scenarios.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Perforce Puppet is recognized for its straightforward deployment and responsive support, tailored for enterprise needs, making it highly user-friendly. VMware Aria Automation, while offering comprehensive support services, involves a complex deployment model suitable for large-scale environments, often requiring more navigation to resolve issues.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet presents a competitive setup cost, appealing to organizations with budget constraints, and reliably manages ROI through efficient resource management. VMware Aria Automation demands a higher initial investment yet delivers substantial ROI through its extensive features, optimizing complex operations and long-term value realization.

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

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

September 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 November 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.2%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 2.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.6%, 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	9.2%
VMware Aria Automation	5.6%
Perforce Puppet	2.2%
Other	83.0%

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.

Read full review

Erik Ableson

Owner at Infrageeks

A stable solution that is more suited for larger companies with mature CI/CD structures and image management processes

Puppet Enterprise is more suitable for clients working up much more structured deployment images they manage internally. Before choosing Puppet Enterprise, users should think seriously about what they're trying to accomplish and ensure they put the right pieces in place. Overall, I rate Puppet Enterprise an eight 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

"When a user receives the machine, sets it up, and turns it on, it connects to the domain and begins installing software, becoming ready within approximately half an hour, which represents a significant time savings for IT departments."

"The Autopilot feature is fantastic. It is a Microsoft product, so it deals best with Microsoft operating systems, but it can integrate with iOS, Mac OS, Linux, and Android."

"If any user tries to access company data, it directly interacts with the conditional access policy. This helps us protect our data and set the criteria for how data can be accessed and shared."

"Intune's security features for Apple iOS and Mac OS are helpful. We can check enrollment, manage public and private settings, and manage the organization's data using security key features."

"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."

"Comparing this to having an endpoint management solution, the efficiency gain may be up to 80%."

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

"Without Microsoft Intune, it would be extremely challenging, if not impossible, for a large company to send out computers to users and have them set up and ready to use right out of the box in a remote location."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

More Perforce Puppet pros

"If you do a deployment for a proof of concept, it is simple."

"Among the valuable features are the ease and speed of creating the VMs. Originally, we provisioned them manually and it would take us two days to do the provisioning... but with the automation, we are able to provision a VM with the click of a button, within seconds. It cut down on the time as well as cut down on the expense and employee cost in provisioning."

"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."

"We needed vRA to easily integrate with our hypervisor, orchestration, security (tenant segmentation, PCI), workflows, custom code, and internal monitoring/management tools. Since we didn’t have time to develop our own web front-end during the development sprints, vRA saved considerable time and resource cycles. Its ability to easily integrate with all of the VMware cloud products as well as public cloud providers, like AWS and Azure, out-of-the-box, makes it an even more powerful tool."

"VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines."

"It provides velocity both from management and customer perspectives, from ingesting new catalog items, developing new workflows for additional features, and/or allowing customer access to multiple guest OS instances at scale in a shorter time frame."

"The setup was straightforward. We upgraded to a newer version seamlessly. It worked really well."

"We have integrated our CICD pipeline into an automatic catalog request through some API calls. It can request and provision new virtual machines behind the NSX load balancer, straight out of the CIDC pipeline and add those nodes to the load balancer, request SSL certs, do SSL termination at the load balancer so that it's not encrypted behind the scenes, all of which has really been helpful."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"Intune should improve its software inventory to provide better metering of which software is used throughout the company. This is especially needed for reporting third-party software solutions."

"The interface is not as modern as some competitors in terms of single pane of glass visibility across the entire landscape. It has a very Azure vibe and may not be as graphically appealing as other products."

"It would be awesome if Microsoft opened their API so we could filter more properties. If we have to do anything outside of Intune that requires a third-party solution to talk back to it, we're very limited in what we can do. Trust your people. We promise not to break your stuff. Open it up just a tiny bit wider."

"It would be good if, in addition to the minimal patching and compliance, we could also use Intune for application deployment. For instance, if a device is not patched, Intune should have the ability to push not only a Microsoft patch but also other patches, such as a browser patch."

"I rate Microsoft support four out of 10. Support is one area where Microsoft needs to improve a lot. I recently raised a ticket for a Microsoft Azure issue, and it took two and a half weeks for support to reply. They need to improve support across their entire catalog of products."

"The configuration could be better by consolidating options and making it simpler."

"Intune should improve the management of non-Microsoft devices. It would be better to manage Mac, Android, and other non-Microsoft operating system devices within the same Intune interface."

"It would be helpful if there was proactive remediation."

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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"VMware Aria Automation could improve reporting of the policies. They are difficult to customize. We have many policies but they are not able to be modified to what we want."

"As a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products."

"We do not utilize the orchestration capabilities."

"It is too broad scale and complicated. It takes too many clicks to do things."

"It needs to be more dynamic with variable customization to make new workloads more reliable. It also needs to be faster. We are exploring vRA version 8 right now and maybe what I'm requesting is available in the new version, but we haven't yet explored it fully."

"I want to see HTML5. I want to get rid of JavaScript... we have a lot of issues with Java crashing when we're using vCenter. I obviously don't want that to happen with the vRealize Automation and Orchestrator side."

"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."

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

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't get Intune as a separate module. Most of the time, we use it within an enterprise agreement like E3 or E5. Those licenses are at a good price, but what is annoying is that every single year they go higher."

"Microsoft Intune's pricing is reasonable."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"It is average. Some of the costs are quite high depending on what the customer currently uses, but overall, it is not bad. I would not say that I would not recommend Intune based on the cost. I definitely would, but they can definitely improve on the cost. So overall, its cost is not bad."

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

"It is not expensive."

"I have no comment on pricing of the solution."

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."

"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’s pricing is competitive."

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

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

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

"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."

"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."

"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."

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

"SaltStack is an open-source product."

"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

13%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	116
Midsize Enterprise	46
Large Enterprise	152

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 do you like most about Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution.

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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'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

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

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AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 22% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 16% 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

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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 12% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

October 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

October 2025

Download Perforce Puppet product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

October 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

September 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: September 2025.

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