AWS Config vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.1% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation

July 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 August 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Config is 2.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.2%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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

"Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow."

"The best part of Intune is device control. If we need to block a user from opening something in their organization's system, we can do it from Intune. If we want to restrict the movement of an organization's data to prevent users from copying the data into Outlook, WhatsApp, or their personal Gmail, we can limit that via Intune. It secures all corporate data."

"Microsoft Intune is a cost-saving solution, reducing IT department workload and allowing for faster device provisioning compared to traditional methods."

"The interface is user-friendly, and the reporting tool works in real-time."

"Microsoft Intune's autopilot has been nice to have."

"Conditional access helps me control uncontrolled access."

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

"Maturity makes it a stable product."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"The scalability is a ten out of ten."

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

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

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

"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 most valuable feature is vRA’s ability to integrate whether with additional VMware vRealize suites or other vendors' cloud products."

"value; It does a lot of things automatically that would take our group, when we're already strapped for time, a lot of time to go through and clean stuff out of databases and the like."

"I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products."

"Scalability is probably the best part about it. You can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort."

"The initial setup was straightforward. It's easy to deploy."

"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."

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

"The customer can set up multiple machine blueprints. Therefore, we are able to customize the template of three machines, then the customer can deploy without knowing anything about the IT business."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"It would be interesting to integrate the server side of Intune. Some group policy updates we have on the Windows Server side and possibly some on the client side could also be included."

"I would like to see easier pushdowns. Currently, we have to package our own software and then push it. Intune can make that way easier and integrate applications, such as Zoom and Adobe Acrobat, that are used by a lot of enterprise or corporate organizations."

"When somebody has a customized application or their own company's application, we cannot deploy that application."

"The worst aspect is the reporting."

"Reporting could be improved. It needs to be more expensive and robust."

"I would like to see the ability to deploy custom packages as a Windows 64-bit package, as opposed to the Windows 32-bit, which is the only one available now."

"There is still a gap between SCCM and Intune, especially in the reporting, inventory, and software deployment areas."

"In the next release, I would like a feature to be able to properly lock down the device. For example, if an attacker or somebody steals the phone, you can be sure that the pin cannot be broken."

More Microsoft Intune cons

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

"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."

"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."

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

"The most important thing that we missed in vRanger was the possibility to mount several images instantaneously and present it so we can run it immediately."

"I would like to see a simpler way of provisioning it. As is, we can automate the provisioning of a VM, however, when it comes to the external IPs, that is outside of VMware. But that has to be automated as well. If there was a way for us to have the virtual machines connect to switches that are external to VMware, that would be great. That way, it would handle the entire workflow from creation and provisioning of a VM to the connectivity to the external IP addresses which allow our customers to have access to the VM. Currently, that IP configuration has to be done manually."

"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."

"SaltStack's features are minimal."

"It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it. I had no problem, but I had spent a lot of time already learning this product ahead of moving it to an operational status. But as we did so, we had a hard time bringing some people from other groups into the fold, to script and work against this environment. So, the ability to build workflows within that automation needs to be streamlined."

"Automation or scripting should be simplified so that administrators who are not experts can have a better grasp of automation."

"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."

"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."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Intune is more expensive than other solutions, but it offers a wider range of features and control."

"The pricing is not cheap, especially with inflation. They've had to increase their prices. It's not excessive, but alright."

"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."

"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."

"The price is reasonable, but they should lower it a bit to make it more competitive. It's cheaper than AirWatch and other products, but I still feel like Microsoft can make a base version or with Exchange online or a la carte only Intune version which will be useful. A customer who doesn't want to go full-fledged E3 or E5 can take out or consume an Intune solution only for their purpose, and we want to target that customer."

"Its licensing model is not complex, but it is very expensive compared to other solutions. They can bring more models and reduce the pricing. They should allow customers to select the features they want and price it accordingly."

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

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

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."

"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."

"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."

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

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

"It is pricey for what you get."

"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."

"It is an open-source product."

"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

23%

Photography Company

Comms Service Provider

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 7% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Samsung Knox vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs AWS Config

Compared 73% of the time

Spring Cloud vs AWS Config

Compared 18% of the time

More AWS Config Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% 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

August 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

July 2025

Download AWS Config product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

July 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.

VMware

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

July 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: July 2025.

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