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KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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
6.7
Number of Reviews
309
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
KACE Systems Deployment App...
Ranking in Configuration Management
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Configuration Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

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 KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Intune8.2%
VMware Aria Automation5.5%
KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA)0.7%
Other85.6%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MH
Server Administrator III at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
User interface and deployment efficiency save time and reduce staff needs
The best features KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) offers include the ease of operation and the ability to create images for deployment. When I say ease of operation, the user interface is easy to create the images, and the people deploying do not have to have access to the appliance in order to deploy images. KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to keep labs with over 300 machines all up to the exact same image for every semester. This has saved our team hundreds of man hours and reduced it down to just a few people doing the deployment compared to how things were done before SDA.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For our office workers who are not based in Norway, when we order the PC, we can do some of the settings for them. These are standardized settings. We can set them up exactly as they are in Norway so that they're the same."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature."
"The user experience of Microsoft Intune is quite good because there's not much disturbance in the background; it's just running in the background."
"Its price is reasonable. It is a part of our M365 suite."
"Conditional access helps me control uncontrolled access."
"This solution saves us a lot of time once it's implemented."
"It is a cloud-based service. It is easy to use and offers privacy."
"If the product works, remote access will be a benefit. To this point we have not had reason to have confidence in achieving that access."
"KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to keep labs with over 300 machines all up to the exact same image for every semester, saving our team hundreds of man hours and reducing it down to just a few people doing the deployment compared to how things were done before SDA."
"Its ticketing is pretty good."
"I personally spend a lot of time in vRealize Orchestrator, so being able to directly tie into the back end on the APIs, I find that to be what really is the most advantageous thing for me."
"The blueprint functionality of the product is intuitive and user-friendly. The concept of the blueprints is visual and easy to use."
"The most valuable features are that it's multi-tenant and the ability for scale."
"A lot of its DevOps for infrastructure capabilities improve reliability. Much effort was put in by some customers, like a large automobile manufacturer, a large telecom, and two large banks, to achieve a certain level of capabilities in this space. These DevOps for infrastructure capabilities have saved time for developers. In one use case for a large marketplace, a typical release cycle took about 80 hours and was brought down to three hours by automating deployment for developers. The quicker that deployments happen, the faster that they can do their product release cycles."
"Upgrades have been extremely simple with their Lifecycle Manager product."
"We provided the ability to request virtual machines to our end users. Before, this was a very manual process, which took engineers to do. Now, it's an automated process."
"It is mostly for our tech support to test new versions, find bugs, and troubleshoot what is happening at customer sites."
"The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, the process is unsuccessful when we attempt to reset a device and wipe the data using Intune."
"There are some issues using the solution with macOS and iOS, and it offers limited granular control with them. Intune works better on Windows and Android."
"There are a few security features that are not available in Microsoft Intune, when compared to other products."
"Applying security recommendations can be difficult in Microsoft Intune. Sometimes, they give you recommendations, but you need a different server to manage the pieces, or you have to go to each device individually. However, it has been improving. Before, there were certain policies you could not implement directly in Intune, but now I see progress. I would like to see more improvement in policy management, similar to how we used group policies on-premises."
"Historically, Group Policy has simplified the management of various items, such as printer and drive mappings and while Intune offers workarounds, it lacks native support for these functionalities. This is an area I believe needs improvement."
"Once it's configured it is unobtrusive, but it does take some hands-on to configure and deploy it properly."
"There's a significant discrepancy in Intune pricing between tenants."
"A detailed device diagnostic feature is missing. Also, operating system deployment and imaging are missing."
"KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) works well, but it would be nice if it were org based like the SMA, allowing one SDA to service several different departments."
"I have heard feedback that the imaging is slow. It takes somewhere around an hour to image one PC."
"My impression of its stability is "middle of the road." We've had some issues where it seems to be a little bit sensitive, where deployments fail and we don't really know a specific reason why. We'll dig through logs and try and figure out what's going on, but it's not always apparent as to why it failed. And you can kick it off again and it'll succeed. So stability could be better."
"We have seen some issues with upgrades or installations. This means we have to raise a call every time with VMware."
"I don't think it's intuitive or user-friendly. I think it's a good tool. Any automation tool, these days, the learning curve is kind of high. You're teaching sysadmins who never developed stuff. Maybe they modified a little bit of code and now you tell them, "Hey, here's the tool, use it." But you have to know a little bit of DevOps. So you have to train them how to do the scripting."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"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."
"We still struggle a little bit with the configuration as far as making sure that we have all the endpoints where they need to be, because that's not as agile as we'd like in the back-end. We're working towards that with our DevOps teams to make sure that we're touching the right endpoints and getting the right data."
"I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration."
"Our current use cases aren't very complex, but as our environment grows, we're seeing a greater need for automation. We're considering expanding our automation efforts, especially since other competitive products are starting to offer similar features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."
"Every customer used to purchase licenses based on their needs."
"The cost is handled through our Office 365 license, so I have yet to be able to compare it directly with other tools in its class."
"Generally, we get favorable discounts, so it's not too bad. Obviously, we're looking at decreasing those wherever we can to bring value back to the public purse because it's all charity based. It's all publicly funded."
"Consider the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite rather than choosing specific sub-components, e.g. only Microsoft Intune."
"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."
"It's affordable for the protection it gives. There are no additional costs."
"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."
Information not available
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise153
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
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Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kace Systems Deployment Appliance?
The pricing for KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) is straightforward, and the setup was easy.
What needs improvement with Kace Systems Deployment Appliance?
KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) works well, but it would be nice if it were org based like the SMA, allowing ...
What is your primary use case for Kace Systems Deployment Appliance?
Our main use case for KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) is to deploy workstations as well as lab machines. We u...
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Information Not Available
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA) vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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