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BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
254
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
BMC TrueSight Server Automa...
Ranking in Configuration Management
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC TrueSight Server Automation is 3.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 17.8%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
JonathanShilling - PeerSpot reviewer
Able to access server info and file systems directly through TSSA but system can be sluggish
Resource management on the base servers could be improved. We're using a site that's supposed to cover all of our affiliates. I don't know what is causing the problem but we've had to increase RAM and CPU processing in order to alleviate some of the sluggishness during patching. I find the solution to be rather cumbersome. It's supposed to be able to support 50,000 or 100,000 servers. We only have 5,000 servers and during our patch processes, it gets very sluggish. We wanted to automate our patching, and not be stuck monitoring patches for three-quarters of every month. We have a main site and then multiple repeaters at each of the affiliate locations. Theoretically, patches are supposed to be delivered to the repeaters and your affiliates are supposed to pull the patches from those repeaters. We've noticed that doesn't always work and it pulls transfer patches from the main site rather than going to the repeater. TrueSight brought some standardization across the affiliates, however, it has also increased workloads and has made some things more complex. The requirement to have a local account with no password (password is random in TSSA, but not able to be changed through Windows) has caused some grief with our security team, and many complaints across affiliates. There are several features that appear to be very good but they don't always work as expected.
Surya Chapagain - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to manage and simple to learn
We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I can reach devices or computers over the internet. I don't need to worry about the network connectivity between the offices. I can manage any device. That is the most important part."
"The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult."
"Everything has worked better since we started using Intune."
"Microsoft Intune is far more efficient and faster than MECM."
"Microsoft integrated BitLocker and Active Directory into Intune, simplifying management."
"I like Intune's ability to install software to a device remotely and push policy through the Azure portal."
"The thing I appreciate most about Microsoft Intune is that the management of the devices was very simplified. We have all machines connected to it at all times, whether they are in the office or working from home."
"The feature of remotely wiping devices in Microsoft Intune is what I prefer the most."
"The most important feature is the schedulings."
"The solution is stable."
"Technical support is good."
"The ability to script and create BL packages to perform various functions. This makes automating our environment relatively easy to do."
"BMC Bladelogic Automation can be used across many OS platforms, providing us flexibility for deployments."
"With BMC, we even configured applications, like IE or things that were Java-related. When we scheduled the jobs, it worked fine. It saved us time and there was no need for resources to monitor them."
"It makes deployment easier and allows us to put restrictions on the server using role-based authorization."
"BladeLogic lets users view the filesystem with minimal authorization to the server."
"Its checking and validating ensures our packages are properly patched."
"The most useful features are the playbooks. We can develop our playbooks and simplify them doing something like a cross platform."
"One of the most valuable features is automation. We are doing automation infrastructure, which allows us to automate regular tasks. This solution provides us with a service catalog, like building new services and automating daily tasks."
"It has an easy-to-use interface. It is REST API driven, and it integrates with Active Directory. It provides the ability to grant permissions to other users who would not necessarily have those permissions via the GUI so that they could run other people's jobs. For example, you could have the Oracle team grant permissions to the Linux team so that they can use each of those playbooks or each other's code. It is called shift-left."
"Feature-wise, the solution is a good open-source software offering broad support. Also, it's reliable."
"Since it is in YAML, if I have to explain it to somebody else, they can easily understand it."
"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."
"Some colleagues and other companies use it and comment that it is easy to use, easy to understand, and offers good features."
 

Cons

"Integration with Mac devices requires some improvement."
"Deploying an app can be a complex process due to dependencies."
"It would be beneficial to have a more straightforward understanding of Intune's capabilities, presented in a simplified manner."
"There is room for improvement in the reporting capabilities, specifically app reporting. It is challenging to report which apps are installed on which device."
"We had an APNS certificate set to expire last week. We tried to renew it two days before it expired. We logged in to the APNS portal but could not find that certificate. We didn't know where it went. All the iOS devices stopped working. We contacted the Apple and Microsoft teams, and each blamed the other. This is something that Microsoft should take care of. Last week, we had so many escalations from high-profile users who couldn't access corporate data on their devices."
"I would like to see Intune improve its handling of hybrid domain joins."
"Intune endpoint analytics can be challenging."
"When somebody has a customized application or their own company's application, we cannot deploy that application."
"We would like to see this solution handle more multitasking."
"The number of APIs available within the tool needs improvement. At the moment, we have a couple of different scanning tools used within the organization, but only one of those is integrated back into Server Automation. There is another tool that they use in another part of the business where it doesn't have an out-of-the-box adaptor for it. We would have to go and create or develop something bespoke to be able to integrate it with that scanning tool. Whereas, with the other scanning tool, there was an API available. To make it easier, I would like to have more APIs available for different scanning tools within that line of business."
"We encountered some reporting issues. Also, we needed to gather information from the backend before the product execution. The output's format is not good."
"The architecture is big, so the initial setup is not a straightforward task."
"There is no option to see all the servers we patch and we cannot find what the server status is. Of course, we can what has been completed and what is pending and which servers have failed, but we cannot find server status from the BMC tool. For example, is the RDP up or not. We are using separate scripts for that."
"BMC TrueSight Server Automation's scripting needs improvement."
"A better CLI Database cleanup tool would help us with our regular maintenance of BladeLogic Server Automation."
"Needs more use cases into compliance management and the remediation process."
"There is always room for improvement in features or customer support."
"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."
"The solution must be made easier to configure."
"They should think of this product as an end-to-end solution and begin to develop it that way."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"Some of the Cisco modules could be expanded, which would be great, along with not having to do so much coding in the background to make it work."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"There could be more stuff in the workflows. I hope that if I have ten templates with different services on it, workflow could auto-populate all the template-based services."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While I can't provide insights from a business perspective, it's worth noting that the pricing may differ significantly, and the discount we received might not be reflective of standard business rates."
"I am not that aware of the pricing, but as compared to other MDM solutions, Microsoft is providing a lot of things at the organizational level. So, it is quite reasonable as compared to other MDM solutions."
"Intune is linked with Microsoft. We can deploy the Microsoft E365 license to users by Intune. There are different types of licenses, such as device administrator licenses, E5 licenses for device enrollment manually, and P1 and p2 licenses for device enrollment automatically. These are the licenses required for the administration."
"With our standard E5 agreement with Microsoft, there have been no pricing concerns. Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs."
"The cost is somewhat on the higher side, particularly when considering certain price points, especially in markets like India."
"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."
"It is reasonable for the features it has."
"If you ask the accountant or the finance department, they'll tell you that it is way too expensive, but when I look at the cost and compare it with the value you actually get, it's more than fair."
"The product's pricing depends on the number of servers."
"The product is expensive."
"Licensing is a bit pricey. Be mindful about the components that you need and buy as appropriate."
"The solution is quite expensive compared to other vendors."
"We're looking at less than $100,000 USD for this solution."
"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."
"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"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."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Wholesaler/Distributor
5%
Educational Organization
28%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

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 ...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about BMC TrueSight Server Automation?
The product's valuable feature is its ability to conduct patching for multiple servers simultaneously.
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Server Automation?
More use cases can be automated. The user interface of BMC TrueSight Server Automation could benefit from enhancement...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
TrueSight Server Automation, BladeLogic Server Automation, BladeLogic Automation Suite
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
State of Michigan, Fujitsu FSAS, Transamerica Life Insurance Company, SAP
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.