Chef vs OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management comparison

Progress Software and OpenText are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Progress Software is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3, while OpenText is ranked #23. Progress Software holds a 2.8% mindshare in CM, compared to OpenText’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Chef and OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management are both leading tools in IT automation and configuration management. Chef leads with its robust automation across diverse operating systems, while OpenText ZENworks excels in comprehensive endpoint management and integration with other OpenText solutions.

Features:Chef is known for its reusable code, comprehensive test-kitchen features, and smooth automation scripts integration. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management stands out with its endpoint management, patch management, and asset inventory capabilities.

Room for Improvement:Chef needs better native support for Windows, improved documentation, and simplified use for non-Linux environments. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management requires a more intuitive upgrade process, better reporting features, and enhanced user guidance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Chef's deployment is straightforward in Linux environments and backed by an active user community and extensive resources. OpenText ZENworks requires more effort during setup due to its broader scope but benefits from dedicated, structured customer service.

Pricing and ROI:Chef offers flexible pricing models that suit different organizational sizes, delivering quick ROI through automation efficiencies. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management has higher initial costs but justifies them with extensive features and integration options, leading to long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management

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 Chef is 2.8%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management is 1.7%, up from 1.1% 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%
Chef	2.8%
OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management	1.7%
Other	87.3%

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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Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Automation has transformed daily infrastructure work and now frees teams to focus on new challenges

One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible. There should be a focus on how to make it understandable, not just to infrastructure people, but also to those working in monitoring. How can we ensure that it is part of their daily input? That is something that still has a small missing link. We are almost there, but it can help us achieve outcomes in the future in terms of objectives, not just workflows and visibility. How can we make real-time interactive dashboards more available? Look at what kind of tools can be integrated with them, not just working with the ones like Chef Kitchen and Habitat, but trying to make it even more flexible than what we have right now. On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.

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it_user1272306

Chief Technology Officer at DoITWise

Helpful impact analysis and the discovery capability is quite good

This tool works hand-in-hand with RPA technology. RPA will allow you to control your servers by deploying the server automation agent. You don't have the discovery, but then you can deploy the policies that maintain the authorized versus current state. On top of that, you can use server automation to deploy patches or remediate configuration issues on the operating system. My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to ensure that the process is set up properly, first. Once the process is set up, the tool will do the rest for you. Overall, this is a comprehensive tool that works well, and I wouldn't touch it other than to enhance the UI and make containerization work without the CDF. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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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

"There are no complaints about the stability. It works one hundred percent of the time."

"I like Intune's ability to install software to a device remotely and push policy through the Azure portal."

"What I appreciate the most about Microsoft Intune is that it's quick and easy to use from an authenticator perspective. There is simplicity in securing our platform. Microsoft Intune benefits my company because of its simplicity of use and cross-functional integration."

"We are transforming our flat network by adopting different cloud solutions, and our own applications are hosted in the cloud. Intune ensures our security throughout our entire cloud-based system, improving our security posture."

"I would recommend Microsoft Intune to others; it is a very good and scalable solution."

"The key benefit of Intune is its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem."

"Intune has automated the deployment of patches and applications, which is more efficient and easier. It allows us to deploy applications, packages, Windows updates, and security updates like BitLocker encryption more efficiently and easily."

"It is absolutely a positive investment."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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."

"Chef benefited my organization by definitely reducing time because we were provisioning tens of thousands of servers."

"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."

"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."

"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."

"The scalability of the product is quite nice."

"Using Chef for automating infrastructure and applications in my organization has helped us reduce manual tasks by more than forty percent, thereby saving significant revenue for the client."

"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."

More Chef pros

"Helps me perform changes in connected infrastructure thanks to the discovery features."

"The most valuable feature is the impact analysis."

Cons

"There should be more focus on mobile device security and integration."

"I am not involved in the day-to-day with Intune, but we have gone with a different product for updating mobile device software. We do not integrate many of our mobile devices that are not Microsoft-based devices, such as Dell laptops, with Intune."

"Manually syncing devices to enforce policies is cumbersome."

"The security aspect could be more effective."

"The tool's tunnel gateway is not very good, making it an area where improvements are required."

"They need to add more group policies. Intune currently does not have many group policies that you can deploy. Its reporting, which is very limited at the moment, also needs improvement. It will be great if they can add report customization. Its stability needs to be improved. Sometimes, when you register a device in Intune, it doesn't show up instantly on the engine portal on the admin side. They need to provide better support for complicated issues. They also have a long turnaround time."

"Cost is the biggest factor for us right now. Microsoft Intune and AD P1 together in a bundle is a good thing to have, but it is very costly compared to other products in the market. Otherwise, Microsoft Intune is the best."

"I rate Microsoft support four out of 10. Support is one area where Microsoft needs to improve a lot. I recently raised a ticket for a Microsoft Azure issue, and it took two and a half weeks for support to reply. They need to improve support across their entire catalog of products."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."

"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."

"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."

"It is an old technology."

"One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible."

"Other things would be the need to use Cinc if you want to use the open-source version because Progress Software's policy on copyright is confusing for new users and it puts a barrier in the way to adoption because many small, medium enterprises, startups, and non-profits who might want to use Chef would find the whole Cinc versus Chef situation confusing and the fact that there is not an easy path to install Chef and then go to a paid version without having to change from Cinc to Chef or Chef to Cinc."

"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."

"In terms of revenue, I have not observed much because it is holistically depending on the project."

More Chef cons

"The native UI should be simplified because it is outdated and a little bit over-complicated."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."

"We work in the charity sector, so a lot of our clients get Microsoft Premium licenses or Business Premium for free. They get ten licenses free, and a lot of our clients do not have more than ten staff members. They are getting the tool for free, so its cost is not an issue."

"The product is offered as part of a Microsoft standard bundle. The pricing can be competitive to Airwatch, and Maas360."

"For Microsoft 365 E5 clients, cost is not an issue as this product is one of the benefits."

"Our Office 365 Business Premium license, including Office 365 and Intune Management, offers excellent value."

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

"I would rate the price a four out of ten with ten being the most expensive."

"My team members bundled it together with their Microsoft solutions, including Microsoft 365 and related products."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."

"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."

"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."

"Pricing for Chef is high."

"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."

"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

"This is a really good tool for the money."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Government

16%

Educational Organization

11%

Comms Service Provider

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	19

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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Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the fun...

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What needs improvement with Chef?

I would add that Ruby is a domain-specific language in the Chef dialect, which is a learning curve, but so is Terrafo...

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What is your primary use case for Chef?

My main use case for Chef is configuration and deployments. We receive blank servers and use Chef to build predefined...

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IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

GitLab vs Chef

Compared 4% of the time

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Microsoft Configuration Manager vs OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management

Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

December 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

January 2026

Download Chef product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

December 2025

OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management report

Download OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Micro Focus ZENworks Configuration Management, HPE CMS, HPE Configuration Management, Micro Focus Configuration Management

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

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management helps you manage both devices and software across your entire environment. A single, unified web console provides insight to both devices and software, improves visibility, and helps reduce costs.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

Tech Mahindra, NNIT, ASIC

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management

December 2025

Free Report: Chef vs. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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