AWS Config vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Broadcom are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.4% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) 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 16, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and AWS Config compete in the cloud automation and configuration space. AWS Config seems to have the upper hand due to its robust compliance features and significant perceived value.

Features:VMware Aria Automation offers strong automation capabilities, seamless operations across various environments, and comprehensive integrations. AWS Config provides detailed compliance monitoring, resource tracking, and robust reporting functionalities.

Room for Improvement:VMware Aria Automation could enhance scalability, improve resource handling efficiency, and upgrade performance. AWS Config could simplify configuration processes, make rule-setting more intuitive, and enhance integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:VMware Aria Automation provides a straightforward deployment process with reliable customer support but some find initial configuration complex. AWS Config offers ease of deployment and prompt customer service but has occasional integration difficulties.

Pricing and ROI:VMware Aria Automation has favorable setup costs and positive ROI with cost-effective automation features. AWS Config has higher setup costs but justifies the expense through extensive compliance and resource management benefits, providing valuable long-term ROI.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Config 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 AWS Config is 2.4%, up from 1.1% 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%
AWS Config	2.4%
Other	83.9%

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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Dineshkumar Thulasiraman

Cloud Engineer at cloudifyops

Useful for vulnerability scanning and data encryption

AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources. AWS Config integrates with the existing security infrastructure of our company, and it is an easy process that is not at all complicated. AWS Config is a security product. The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats. The product helps with data encryption. You can have your data on AWS KMS, which helps with data encryption. For areas like SSL/TLS encryption, the tool offers data protection between AWS services and endpoints. As I need to learn the components of the product, I rate the overall tool a seven 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

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

"I can see that the patch management process is much improved with the bundled patch management option available in Microsoft Intune compared to the KPI deployment required by the other deployment solutions."

"There has been a noticeable increase in productivity for both my organization and clients."

"Autopilot is the most valuable feature."

"Previously, SCCM was used as an on-premise solution for clients, but now they are moving to Microsoft Intune as a cloud solution with better security and functions."

"Stable solution at a good price."

"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."

"With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources."

"The solution is scalable and provides over 100 rules."

"The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats."

"The scalability is a ten out of ten."

"The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment."

"Installing the instances and performing upgrades is smooth and clean."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Aria Automation is the versatile automation and deployments."

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

"To manage when VM's aren't being used, we have it set up so that it will auto-destroy them after a certain amount of time, obviously with permission from the user who owns it."

"The product is very user-friendly."

"Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers. Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities."

"vRA helps automate deployment for developers. We do a lot of orchestration or customization within our environment so it will suit each of our customers. So, we have different business units who have their own templates."

"The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."

"Our speed of provisioning has improved. We used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day. Nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template... and it takes about 20 minutes."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"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."

"The initial setup is a little bit complex."

"In Microsoft Intune, there is significant slowness, and there needs to be more logs when we deploy software, parameters, or scripts to troubleshoot problems and errors in the interface, workstations, and Android devices."

"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."

"The policies we had in SCCM and AD offered features that are missing from Microsoft Intune."

"For additional functionality, I suggest that Microsoft could expand on asset management. Since the platform is there, they could develop it into a full-fledged asset management system."

"Microsoft Intune lacks the ability to provide seamless remote assistance or remote control."

"Some customers have reported experiencing slowness when using lower versions of the Android system."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"There is room for improvement in built-in tools, they are not up to the mark."

"The solution is missing a configuration that can assist us when writing our programming languages."

"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."

"The reboot process for AWS instances could be improved. Microsoft Azure does not have this problem, so AWS could consider making their instances more robust. You would not need to reboot your instances frequently to replace the hardware and stuff. They can look for a better approach or mechanism to improve in the future. The concern is that you need to plan for the outage when you reboot an instance. You need to have a maintenance window where you can properly reboot the instance without affecting your application. When Amazon announces that you need to reboot an instance and are not ready, this becomes a problem."

"They could extend the ability to use vRealize Orchestrator Automation for organizations with multiple tenants. It should be easier to operate and extend different capabilities from vRealize Orchestrator. Currently, it's difficult to build advanced services in Aria Automation because you need to use the vRealize Orchestrator."

"Technical support could be improved. I definitely feel that the product is accelerating faster than the support engineers are able to keep up with the knowledge needed to know what's going on. The developers maintaining vRealize Automation are doing a great job improving it, but VMware is not doing a great job of training the people who we call to get support for it."

"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."

"We would like them to improve the automation part. This is an upcoming area that we would like to focus on."

"It has a learning curve."

"There is an area of improvement. For example, you are migrating from a customer's existing data center to a new target data center. To facilitate this transition, you'll initially need to evaluate the customer's aging hardware hosting VMware, which is nearing the end of its operational life. The customer expresses the intention to upgrade to a newer version, necessitating an overhaul of everything in the new data center. As a Systems Integrator (SI), consultant, or architect, your recommendation would be to acquire the latest hardware with a specified configuration and then install VMware on top of it. However, there's a crucial aspect related to the infrastructure requirements for VMware to run seamlessly on that hardware. If there's an opportunity to potentially reduce these infrastructure prerequisites, it would be highly beneficial."

"I would like to see support for Google Cloud and Azure. Because they don't support Google and Azure today, we need something that's cohesive with our entire landscape. There is a gap right now with VMware. If you want support for these environments, you have to go elsewhere right now."

"I would like them to improve the product training."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Microsoft Intune has been incorporated into our Microsoft E5 licenses."

"Intune is inexpensive. It also comes bundled in some Office 365 licenses, so you can choose to purchase it separately or as a package."

"It's a bit expensive from a licensing perspective, especially as we look to have organizations with tenants across the globe."

"It's bundled with Business Premium and an E3 license, which is beneficial. If you have to pay extra, it's pricey, but with the bundled package, it's acceptable. They recently increased the Business Premium pricing, which we don't appreciate. The price increase and yearly commitment are causing some problems for us."

"We don't pay for Intune because it is bundled with the premium subscription to Office 365. It includes Intune and Defender. I don't have to buy two extra products to manage my enterprise."

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

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

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"It is a very expensive tool. AWS pricing for Config is not fixed and depends on your organization's size and complexity."

"The solution charges us per hour. There's no license."

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

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

"SaltStack is an open-source product."

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

"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."

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

"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 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

Financial Services Firm

22%

Comms Service Provider

Photography Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	119
Midsize Enterprise	47
Large Enterprise	153

No data available

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 AWS Config?

The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment.

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What needs improvement with AWS Config?

Improvements are needed as per customer requirements.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for AWS Config?

I use the solution in my company to check the vulnerabilities for all the resources, including tools like S3, EC2 Ins...

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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 6% of the time

IBM MaaS360 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 AWS Config

Compared 55% of the time

Spring Cloud vs AWS Config

Compared 18% of the time

BigFix vs AWS Config

Compared 10% of the time

More AWS Config 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

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

December 2025

Download AWS Config product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

December 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

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

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between AWS resources, dive into detailed resource configuration histories, and determine your overall compliance against the configurations specified in your internal guidelines. This enables you to simplify compliance auditing, security analysis, change management, and operational troubleshooting.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Flatiron, Prezi, iZettle, British Gas, Burt, Autodesk, FanDuel

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation

December 2025

Free Report: AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation

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

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