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 #8 with an average rating of 7.9. Perforce holds a 3.8% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 4.8% 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: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

March 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 March 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 3.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 4.8%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	6.9%
VMware Aria Automation	4.8%
Perforce Puppet	3.8%
Other	84.5%

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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reviewer2597814

IT Infrastructure Manager at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Compliance is maintained effectively and automation boosts productivity but further improvements in full-time reduction are desired

I am still using VMware tools. In fact, I have to migrate to a new alternative. I do not deal with vCenter or vSphere as or other VMware products yet. I do not deal with vSphere either. I do not use the Horizon Cloud yet or Horizon Desktop. We use VMware Workstation and vRealize. I use vRealize. VMware Aria Automation is compliant. It is not difficult for them. The regulations request us to perform or to have some security managed ways, and the regulations are clear about that, including authentication and everything related to security. Based on my experience, I rate VMware Aria Automation an eight out of ten.

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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 feature is probably mobile device management. Small businesses are coming under greater scrutiny and requirements for compliance as time goes on. We don't have to worry about a VPN because we can manage these devices, control company data, and lock users out. If needed, we can remotely wipe devices and deadman-switch them."

"Intune is flexible. If you want to move a device that was previously on-prem, we can bring it to the cloud and apply all the policies. This is helpful for even those organizations that were on-prem and not on the cloud. They can also come and use these features, which are pretty cool and would be handy to protect the data and manage the devices as well."

"The aspects I find most valuable are the managing the data and applications. I can also restrict the users to install any applications. I can also wipe the data if the phone was missplaced or stolen. These are the basics for me."

"Our main use is Intune's management of mobile devices, like Android or iPhone devices. The application performs quite well for both types. We successfully managed almost 3,000 endpoints."

"The feature of remotely wiping devices in Microsoft Intune is what I prefer the most."

"Intune provides full visibility into all active mobile device users. If their devices are noncompliant with our security policies, I have the flexibility to update them remotely."

"It's easy to deploy a configuration or policy to a system, especially when you don't have Azure AD. Now we are talking to all these small and medium-sized customers who don't necessarily have an on-premise Windows Active Directory. If they have invested in Office 365 Premium, this functionality becomes available to them."

"One valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is the enrollment process, which is user-based, making it easier to manage compared to AirWatch."

More Microsoft Intune pros

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

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

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

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

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

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

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

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

More Perforce Puppet pros

"VMware Aria Automation supports integration with ServiceNow, Kubernetes, and other tools. It is cloud-agnostic, making it a stronger platform than Ansible."

"Being able to give provisioning of environments over to our developers and the different teams has enabled them to put up environments faster and also freed up time for the IT team. This is really one of our bread and butter solutions for our developers."

"Our time to deliver a fully unified three-tier app, at the right version, is one-twentieth what it was before. There is no manual intervention. No IP management. It just dramatically simplifies all of our processes."

"It's quite user friendly. Everyone can use it, even non-technical people. This is good, since we use it to build a self-service portal which even users with not a lot of technical background can use."

"vRA provides that single pane of glass for our cloud tenants to deploy, monitor, access, and manage their VMs/guest operating systems."

"usability; Ease of use, the GUI, is probably the best feature, so that really anybody can use it. You don't have to be technical to be able to deploy a VM. I find it to be intuitive and user-friendly. Regarding some of the files that you feed it, you don't have to do a ton of development. You can feed it pretty standard configuration files. You don't have to be a developer, you don't have to know C# or Java or the like to get it going."

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

"It has saved us a lot of time and work. It helped us to reorganize some of our service lines, so we could be more efficient. For example, on our open system server team, we had 15 people building servers, now we have two."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"I would like to see better integration with Microsoft. There are a few things I can still do with Jamf that I am unable to do with Intune yet."

"There can be some added features, such as an improved dashboard. Any new feature that could be a benefit to our customers would be good."

"Setting up Intune Autopilot can be a little complicated."

"An issue we have run into with Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that we cannot patch third-party products like Adobe and Chrome with it."

"Once it's configured it is unobtrusive, but it does take some hands-on to configure and deploy it properly."

"In the future, I would like to see improvements in Microsoft Intune, especially related to policies and GPU."

"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."

"Reporting needs improvement."

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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"The stability is okay, but could be improved. We sometimes receive strange errors, which can only be solved with specialists."

"They should concentrate on navigation and service improvements."

"I don't find it to be entirely user-friendly. There are a lot of complicated menus within menus within menus. Things move around from version to version."

"The upgrade process 6.x to 7.3 was a significant effort. I'm hoping that 7.3 to the next version is much smoother."

"I would like to see more integration to do things like DR, from a court perspective. Today, for us, SRM doesn't scale because each of our customers has a local vCenter environment as well as the vCenter in our environment. So we can't get SRM to scale to the point to which we need. From an integration perspective, DR inside of that would be good."

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

"The integration is a bit tight. I need the right package to use it properly. The new automation processes for VMware are messy, and support could be better."

"The stability needs a lot of work. The troubleshooting component of vRealize is a pain. The administration and the upgrades are not up to the mark. If they were able to improve on that, that would be the best thing and would make it much easier to run it in the enterprise."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Intune's pricing is reasonable."

"Pricing can be improved."

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

"Licensing depends on how you are providing support to your enterprise, whether it's device-based or user-based."

"The pricing is inherently reasonable, as Microsoft leverages market insights to maintain the total cost of ownership at around ninety to ninety-five percent of what would be incurred in an on-premise scenario."

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

"All security solutions worldwide are expensive. Microsoft has allowed a small scale of features within Microsoft Intune for cost-efficient solutions. If you want the full suite, you need to invest more to gain better security features."

"We work with the subscription rather than a server license. I think it's economical this way because we don't have to have a server license for that, and I think that works in our favor."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."

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

"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."

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

"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."

"It is pricey for what you get."

"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."

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

"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."

"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."

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

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Outsourcing Company

University

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	124
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	162

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

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 11% of the time

BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 7% 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 12% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

February 2026

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 is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

Perforce Puppet offers automated configuration management and diverse platform support through agent-based functionality, enhancing systems with real-time reporting and efficient process automation.

Perforce Puppet provides comprehensive management for both infrastructure and applications, primarily on-prem servers, enabling automation of server updates, security compliance, and IT operations. It supports Linux and is expanding to Windows, facilitating continuous checks and compliance monitoring. With robust Internet-based features, scalability, role-based access control, and exemplary community support, it streamlines processes like remote package installation, file distribution, and user creation. Using Puppet Forge modules enhances its capabilities despite its steep learning curve and reliance on Ruby and DSL. While GUI limitations necessitate command line proficiency, its integration features and high cost can be a deterrent, prompting some to consider alternatives or the community version.

What are the key features of Perforce Puppet?

Agent-Based Functionality: Provides real-time system management and reporting.
Automated Configuration Management: Streamlines server and network processes with a declarative approach.
Scalability: Adapts to changing infrastructure needs efficiently.
Puppet Forge Modules: Extends capabilities for enhanced performance.
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure and organized access control.

What benefits do users gain from Perforce Puppet?

Versatility in Platform Management: Supports diverse environments for seamless integration.
Efficiency in Automation: Reduces manual server configuration tasks.
Community Support: Access to a strong network of developers and users.
Enhanced Security Compliance: Facilitates continuous monitoring and compliance checks.

Perforce Puppet is widely adopted in industries requiring rigorous configuration management and provisioning for on-prem servers. Enterprises automate IT operations and security compliance, applying it initially to Linux servers and progressing to Windows. It aids in public configurations for nodes, enabling efficient network, package, and software integrations while automating configuration and patch management processes.

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

March 2026

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: March 2026.

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