We performed a comparison between Chef and Microsoft Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Remote Wipe and Autopilot is one of the best features."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The ability to manage devices with different sets of policies is most valuable."
"I like the group policy management feature, which performs application monitoring and device enrollment."
"Based on my experience, I find Intune very flexible for managing Windows devices. We can use scripting, and we can make use of the self-service portal or the company portal to publish some of the applications for Windows."
"The device profiling which uses the official Outlook email enabled us to control the screenshot feature and prevent copying outside of the organization's application."
"Agile and easy to deploy MDM solution that covers the maximum number of policies. Stable, scalable, and with knowledgeable technical support."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."
"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."
"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"Patching is very effective and reporting is very good."
"With the SCCM inventory, we found a lot of rogue applications. We were able to identify them, find out who was running them, and either put them on our application list or remove them."
"One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages efficiently and deploy them to specific groups within our network. This streamlined process has significantly improved our software distribution workflows."
"It's a stable product."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ability to deploy patches to nearly all applications."
"We are happy with the collaboration of SCCM with Patch My PC, which allows us to do patch work."
"We're a Microsoft-centric organization, so we are happy with the integration between products."
"The most valuable features are Remote Connect, SUP, Cloud functionality, Report, Query, and third-party patching."
"It doesn't economize when you scale up. We have over 14,000 employees, and we have between 7,500 and 8,000 city-owned or personal devices being used to conduct city business. Its price can be improved. It is not a cheap solution."
"Microsoft Intune lacks the ability to provide seamless remote assistance or remote control."
"It would be better if they can reduce the cost of the license."
"I'm still playing around with it and haven't had any issues with the product yet, but support can definitely be improved."
"Intune should be much more granular in terms of supporting more Android cellular devices."
"The installation could be improved to be simplified."
"The reporting is subpar. That's the only issue we have with Intune. We use another solution for that purpose."
"It would be beneficial to have a more straightforward understanding of Intune's capabilities, presented in a simplified manner."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"The downside of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is it's an on-premise-based solution. With the pandemic coming on board the need to support users across the globe has increased. For a while, we would use the in-built Microsoft Teams screen sharing feature but the disadvantage of that is you cannot perform privileged access. Microsoft does not give you access to that. That's where you need cloud-based tools, such as BeyondTrust or Freshservice."
"There should probably be better remote support. They should also continue to improve on patch management, patching, and creating or turning products in software into deployable apps."
"This solution needs to be supported on all Operating systems."
"Microsoft should extend support for additional platforms."
"In terms of scalability, I believe there's room for improvement. While SCCM is capable of handling our current needs effectively, scalability could be enhanced to accommodate future growth and larger deployments."
"SCCM does not scale well, which is one of the reasons we are not going to continue to use it."
"Not everything is readily available, and there are a lot of commands that are only executable via PowerShell."
"The cost of the product can be improved."
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
Chef is ranked 15th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 78 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, BigFix and SaltStack, whereas Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium and AWS Systems Manager. See our Chef vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager report.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.
We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
