AWS Systems Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Red Hat are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.1, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.9. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 10.7% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 17.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and AWS Systems Manager are two popular automation tools competing in managing IT environments. AWS Systems Manager has the upper hand due to its seamless integration with other AWS services, despite the comprehensive features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

Features: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers a powerful automation language, extensive modules, and an agentless architecture, making it highly valued for flexibility and ease of use. AWS Systems Manager is appreciated for directly integrating with numerous AWS services, allowing for efficient cloud resource management and comprehensive monitoring tools. AWS Systems Manager excels in cloud service integration.

Room for Improvement: Users indicate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform could improve by enhancing its documentation, reducing its complexity for new users, and streamlining its overall architecture. AWS Systems Manager users suggest better support for non-AWS resources, a more intuitive setup process, and improved user interface design. The complexity of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform poses a significant challenge for new users, while AWS Systems Manager’s limitation with non-AWS resources is its primary drawback.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is recognized for its flexibility in deployment across various environments but can be time-consuming to configure. Users commend its responsive customer support. AWS Systems Manager is noted for its straightforward deployment in AWS ecosystems but requires additional effort for hybrid environments. AWS’s support is well-regarded but can be inconsistent. AWS Systems Manager offers quicker deployment within AWS, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides versatile deployment options.

Pricing and ROI: Users find Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's pricing justified by its extensive capabilities and report favorable ROI when thoroughly utilized. AWS Systems Manager is generally seen as cost-effective, particularly for AWS-centric organizations, with users perceiving good value for the integration benefits it offers. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform may have higher upfront costs but delivers substantial ROI, whereas AWS Systems Manager is praised for its cost-effectiveness, especially within AWS environments.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

June 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 June 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.3%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Systems Manager is 10.7%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 17.3%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi

Collaborations engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Everything has worked better since we started using it

Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.

Read full review

Ambe Frankline

Cloud/DevOps Engineer at Innovative Technology Systems

Tracks every action on AWS accounts in a centralized way

Setting up AWS Systems Manager to monitor and control other services is easy. You need to link the services you want to observe and track. The time it takes to deploy depends on factors like connectivity, latency, and the complexity of the services. For example, setting up a simple application is faster than setting up a more complicated three-tier or multi-tier system. Using the solution for batch updates varies depending on the number of servers involved and the commands needed. Personally, when I do small projects at home, deploying a few servers doesn't take long. But at work, where we handle larger deployments with hundreds of servers, it's faster due to better connectivity and resources.

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Muralitharan KS

Software Architect at OSELabs

Efficient server management and detailed reporting with flexible deployment capabilities

We are primarily using Ansible for automation purposes as it is a configuration management tool. It is utilized for various activities such as DNS activity, changes to web servers, virtual host settings, and other day-to-day tasks, all of which are templated in Ansible Ansible allows us to manage…

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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

"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."

"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 security features are most definitely valuable. If I have to give an example, the lockdown features that prevent employees from configuring anything or downloading company data are valuable. We get high-quality device protection, malware protection, and information protection at the same time."

"The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult."

"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 system itself is great."

"I like how Microsoft Intune lets me lock down the email profile and make it accessible only on certain devices."

"The biggest benefits of Intune are the ability to push changes and the added security. When we moved forward with Defender, we onboarded all those machines automatically. That helps dramatically. For a while, we were left with machines that weren't protected. We could see where people had done things they shouldn't have done, and Defender saved our skins a few times. It didn't happen a lot, but it happened enough that it made us glad we made that decision."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"I use AWS Systems Manager primarily for infrastructure management and automation. One of its key benefits is managing patches and updates for our EC2 instances, including both Windows and Linux workloads. It can perform compliance checks on all managed workloads, identifying which systems aren't compliant or haven't been patched."

"The solution's ability to scale is good."

"Has a variety of automation options."

"The store organizes parameters hierarchically, making it easier to configure and control versions. It also ensures scalability and high availability, automatically scaling to handle increasing workloads and providing reliable access to configuration data across multiple AWS availability zones."

"The solution is user-friendly"

"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts."

"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts"

"Systems Manager has a feature where it analyzes the logs and gives us a performance overview in the form of a graph. We know when it's taking up more resources and when there are spikes, so we can predict the usability."

More AWS Systems Manager pros

"The Organizations feature, where I can give clear silos and hand them over to different teams, that's amazing; everybody says that it's their own Tower. It's like they have their own Tower out there."

"I like the inventory management. It's a very nice, simple, concise way to keep all that data together. And the API allows us to use it even for things that are not Ansible."

"It does not require staff for deployment and maintenance. It just works."

"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."

"The playbooks and the code the solution uses are quite useful."

"The solution is very simple to use."

"It allows control over thousands of servers, whether virtual or physical."

"It is very easy to use, and there is less room for error."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

Cons

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

"In terms of the admin experience, it is straightforward, but the Windows enrollment experience could be improved. Sometimes, for enrollment, we have to reset devices and re-enroll them. Just configuring Windows, Azure, or Active Directory doesn't enroll the devices. We need easy enrollment for Windows."

"There is room for improvement in integrating additional features such as Purview and SharePoint activities into Intune."

"Customer service used to be better. In the last couple of years, support has not been very good, even with Premier and Premium support. It's been very hit-or-miss."

"Having a dedicated configuration server that assists in modifying the configuration service, and creating personalized structures, interfaces, and web services could enhance usability."

"The most important thing is reporting. They should improve their reporting. They should give a free hand to users. In SCCM, I can create my own reports. For example, in SCCM, I can create an inventory report for my PC or for all PCs, but in Intune, we don't have an option to create any report. Microsoft claims that Intune is a successor of SCCM, but SCCM is more powerful than Intune. So, they should develop Intune more and make it equivalent to SCCM. Then, their product will be great in the market."

"The backend of Microsoft Intune needs to be improved. We have seen a little bit of delay as compared to other MDM solutions. That needs to be improved. A little bit more granularity should also be added"

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

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Ensuring broader OS coverage in patch management could be beneficial for the product."

"AWS does not have EKS cluster backup."

"One area that could be enhanced is dynamic configuration management. Additionally, improving integration with other AWS services like Lambda and CloudFormation would be beneficial."

"The AWS UIs are not the most intuitive. Also, the usability needs room for improvement."

"I'd like to see more automation for monitoring and managing things like AWS CloudWatch and AWS Config. It would be a significant improvement if it could automatically handle these tasks and address issues as they arise."

"We formerly used third-party products to analyze the log, give us information, and find bottlenecks. Systems Manager could provide more tools that conduct this analysis, so we don't have to do it ourselves."

"Every AWS service comes with some associated costs."

"Additional features can be added as per customer requirements."

More AWS Systems Manager cons

"Ansible can face scalability issues, such as limitations when trying to scale up infrastructure. It might struggle with connection dropping or spawning additional VMs under certain conditions."

"I would like to see improvements in the dashboards. More detailed dashboards would be beneficial because there is a lack of dashboards on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform."

"It would be helpful to have templates for common configurations. It would make it much easier and faster rather than creating a whole script. The templates would decrease the learning curve as well."

"The product could do a better job at building infrastructure."

"In Community, there's a lot of effort towards testing, standardizing, and testing for module development to role development, which is why Molecule is now becoming real. Same thing with Zuul, which we are starting to implement. Zulu tests out modules from third-party sources, like ourselves, and verifies that the modules work before they are committed to the code. Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there."

"The governance features could be improved."

"It needs better documentation."

"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheaper than our company's other MDM tools."

"There is a cost benefit of using Microsoft Intune because of the packaging with other Microsoft products."

"Pricing can be improved."

"We have a limited budget for security investments, so Microsoft should consider reducing pricing in our region. This would make investment more viable, especially since larger businesses in other countries can afford it easily."

"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."

"Its price is in the medium range. It is acceptable because you're paying for the features. I am not aware of any additional costs."

"The price could be better."

"Intune is included with our F3 and E5 licenses."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"Most of the features are free. I'm not entirely certain, but I believe the pricing is generally very low. Some services that are part of Ops Manager might have associated costs."

"The platform provides excellent value for the capabilities it offers when compared to third-party tools for similar tasks."

"An AWS cloud engineer can bring down the costs."

"As we were doing a government project so the government got the project at a very nominal cost."

"It is a little pricey but it is affordable. It is not that bad."

"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."

"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."

"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."

"Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."

"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."

"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

21%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

See all answers

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 Systems Manager?

With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems m...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Systems Manager?

Every AWS service comes with some associated costs. While using AWS Systems Manager, we continually monitor to optimi...

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What needs improvement with AWS Systems Manager?

There isn't anything specific I remember at the moment.

See all answers

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?

Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...

See all answers

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.

See all answers

Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 12% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

SOTI MobiControl vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 15% of the time

AWS Config vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 10% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 5% of the time

BigFix vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 5% of the time

More AWS Systems Manager Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 8% of the time

BigFix vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Automic Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

May 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

May 2025

Download AWS Systems Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

May 2025

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Amazon Elastic Container Registry

Ansible

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 Systems Manager is a management service that helps you automatically collect software inventory, apply OS patches, create system images, and configure Windows and Linux operating systems. These capabilities help you define and track system configurations, prevent drift, and maintain software compliance of your EC2 and on-premises configurations. By providing a management approach that is designed for the scale and agility of the cloud but extends into your on-premises data center, Systems Manager makes it easier for you to seamlessly bridge your existing infrastructure with AWS.

Systems Manager is easy to use. Simply access Systems Manager from the EC2 Management Console, select the instances you want to manage, and define the management tasks you want to perform. Systems Manager is available now at no cost to manage both your EC2 and on-premises resources.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful network automation solution that allows organizations to handle every aspect of their application launch process within a single product. It enables users to share their automations so that teams within an organization can collaborate on various projects with ease. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be used by all employees involved in the network automation process.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform include:

Maximum benefit for reduced overhead. Ansible Automation Platform is an all-in-one solution that can enable users to do the jobs of multiple products with one. Users do not need to purchase multiple products to handle their network automation and application development needs. It is equipped with prefabricated content from more than one hundred companies that are partnered with it.

Scalable. Ansible Automation Platform is a highly scalable solution. It can easily be scaled up so that automations can be extended across the various devices that make up an organization’s network.

Flexibility. Ansible Automation Platform is highly flexible. It enables users to tackle any and all automation-related tasks.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Features

Automation analytics. Ansible Automation Platform comes equipped with an automation analytics feature. This feature enables organizations to measure the effects of their automations and plan how they are going to implement automations moving forward. It makes it easy for administrators to spot anomalies in their automations and resolve them before they can escalate and become major issues.

Integration suite. Ansible Automation Platform gives organizations access to a wide variety of integrations that enable them to connect to Ansible’s partners. Now users can augment their capabilities without needing to purchase additional solutions that will enable them to run features that are not normally a part of Ansible’s array of tools. The Ansible environment is built to handle the wide variety of integrations that their partners offer. In order to accomplish this it includes the APIs that users need in order to fully benefit from the integrations.

Centralized interface. Ansible Automation Platform comes with a centralized GUI interface that enables users to manage all of their network automation and application creation activities from a single location. Businesses can guarantee that their operations are going to be handled efficiently and according to a single standard. The management process is greatly simplified. All of the tools that users need are located in one place.

Reviews from Real Users

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its automation manager and its comprehensive centralized GUI-based management interface.

MD J., a solution architect at STBL, says, “The automation manager is very good and makes things easier for customers with multi-cloud platforms.”

Aankit G., a Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS, writes, “We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.”

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank

Buyer's Guide

AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

June 2025

Free Report: AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Systems Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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