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Micro Focus Asset Manager [EOL] vs Microsoft Configuration Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
668
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Micro Focus Asset Manager [...
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Configuration Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Software Distribution (2nd), Server Monitoring (5th), Configuration Management (4th), Patch Management (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
reviewer1700715 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Asset Manager Lead at Boeing at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
A stable and clever solution, but it is very complex and it needs a lot of improvements
There are a lot of things that need improvement. Software recognition, software licensing, software compliance, data inputs, reporting, and support are some of the areas. It needs a discovery tool of its own. You have to get that from other Micro Focus products, which means you have to pay more to get those products.
NS
Senior System Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Centralized endpoint control has streamlined deployments and improved security compliance
In my experience, the best features of Microsoft Configuration Manager are software deployments and updates, OSD, hardware and software inventory, compliance and configuration baseline, reporting and monitoring, and integration with Intune hybrid management. These features make endpoint management efficient and scalable. The feature I rely on the most day-to-day is software deployment and patch management. It keeps endpoints updated and secure with minimal manual effort. Inventory and compliance monitoring are also important, but daily deployments are critical. Microsoft Configuration Manager has had a significant positive impact on our organization in several ways: improved efficiency, enhanced security and compliance, standardization, scalability, and visibility reporting. Overall, Microsoft Configuration Manager has helped us save time, reduce risk, improve operational efficiency, and maintain strong control over our endpoints. One of the biggest impacts Microsoft Configuration Manager has had on efficiency is the reduced manual work for software deployment and patching. For example, deploying a new application or security updates to hundreds or thousands of devices previously required several days of manual effort, including running scripts, checking devices individually, and validating installation. With Microsoft Configuration Manager, these tasks are automated and managed, allowing deployments to complete in hours rather than days. We also have automated reporting for deployment success and compliance which saved the IT team significant time that used to be spent gathering and reconciling inventory data from multiple tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform itself is intuitive and easy to use. I have even mentioned to people who aren't developers or very computer savvy that they could pick up Automation Anywhere and just get started."
"The IQ Bot is very impressive to us, as we have tried several tools in the industry and we have not been able to automate to the same level as provided by this solution."
"Co-pilot certainly makes the job easier if the client has a subscription. It allows me to analyze desktop flows and activities and create flows using natural language."
"With Automation Anywhere, they receive their financial statements while still on the call."
"It is easy to understand how to use the tool. For a developer, it is very easy to understand the opportunities and how to use and learn these features. It is very business-oriented."
"By automating most of our LOB's on the healthcare side and putting it on production, we have saved millions of dollars and were also able to achieve FTE benefits."
"The most valuable feature of the platform right now for us is just getting the most out of the tool. When I first joined the company, we were on version 11, which is the on-premise version of Automation Anywhere. Getting over to the new cloud platform A360 has enabled us to get the most out of general RPA or robotic process automation."
"They have an AI platform with GenAI implemented to help us generate anything that is necessary for automation."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The most important features are the flexibility of the product and the way that we can use it to ensure software compliance within our organization."
"This product can be customized according to the needs of any company."
"We are constantly using this product and we are constantly improving this product."
"Actually we have now automatic and immediate control of assets usage, and we can now better manage our assets pool and get benefits through that."
"The tool's most valuable features are easy patch management and software deployment."
"I like its ease of use. It does what you need it to do, and it's a one-stop-shop for the company and for all your deployments. If you incorporate Intune into it, you can have both. You can bring your own devices and corporate devices, and everything runs out of SCCM and Intune."
"I find the product valuable for deployment recovery and it has done much more than that."
"MECM has given us many benefits, but the main benefit is that we no longer have to deploy software manually onto hard drives or with USB flash drives, and instead you can do everything over the network."
"I have found some valuable features to be the built-in reporting tool, the ability to get visibility on your organization, compliance reports, software remitting for all your products in your organization, and the management of all machines in your environment including a new domain and workgroups."
"The technical support is good."
"The major features of this product are the reporting tools. The most valuable features are package deployment and application deployment. Security management is also good because any vulnerability will be identified, and you can fix it. It's the best tool because you never know what kind of client you will have. For example, you may have your offices in low bandwidth remote areas. But it's achievable because it accommodates the bandwidth that you have available. Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is an excellent reporting tool for your environment. If you want to know the details about the hardware configuration, software configuration, what is causing a problem, or when a new feature update comes in for Windows, even that goes on SCCM itself. A lot of deployment stuff."
"It deploys all the bare metals using PXE and it gathers all of the information of the device using a discovery, whatever it is in the domain and we can schedule the deployment according to our need."
 

Cons

"In Automation Anywhere, the logging process is manual."
"There is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of stability. It is a concern, because right now we are close to 20 to 25 percent false negatives that are coming up."
"Sometimes the tool is timing out, which would be a good thing to have resolved."
"Bringing a DevOps model for bot implementation integrated through private bot store might be a good idea to improve the tool."
"Automation Anywhere lacks a desktop version and is solely web-based and cloud-based. Automation Anywhere is not so easy for business users who are not technical."
"It would be nice to have the IQ Bots integrated with the Enterprise Edition without requiring extra licenses. That would be great."
"We need a native way in Automation Anywhere's framework to tie all that information together, including AI dashboard, governance dashboards, and document automation results."
"Technical support needs to be much faster."
"There are a lot of things that need improvement. Software recognition, software licensing, software compliance, data inputs, reporting, and support are some of the areas."
"The technology used is outdated, the interface is outdated, the database is outdated, everything is outdated."
"Technical support is very frustrating because we have probably 12 or 15 years’ experience with the products."
"The usability of this product is still out-of-date and could be improved. The interface could be improved."
"The tool's deployment is difficult. Microsoft needs to improve documentation with videos."
"We have had a lot of issues with Mac application deployment support. They need to improve the support for the Mac operating system."
"It should provide the ability to remotely connect to mobile devices. There are some solutions that are doing that, but with Microsoft Intune, the only way to remotely connect to devices outside the organization and mobile devices is by using TeamViewer. It is pretty strange for a big company like Microsoft to not have something for that."
"Overall, Microsoft Configuration Manager is a powerful and reliable platform. However, there are a few areas where it could be improved: user interface and usability, cloud and remote device management, reporting analysis analytics, performance on large environments, automation, and proactive guidance."
"The time the solution takes for updating systems could be quicker. For example, the system information status is not updating as it should. Additionally, the database synchronization querying is slow and could be improved."
"Not everything is readily available, and there are a lot of commands that are only executable via PowerShell."
"Based on my experience with SCCM 2016, the main, big issue is not having a good user-friendly environment. It needs much better GUI."
"The reports are too busy. They could be simpler. I'm a technician, so I don't care how pretty the reports look. They should be easy to read. I'm designing this for production folks. They need to read the reports quickly when they're patching in the middle of the night."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Roughly, as of today, it is around $250,000 annually."
"Automation Anywhere is costlier than the general competition. That is aligned with the share of the market it has."
"Including the AWS setup and everything per license, it costs us around $10,000 on an annual basis. I believe that is pretty reasonable considering the teams that we have."
"Automation Anywhere is somewhat expensive. The prices are slightly higher, but if you need something, you must pay for it."
"Our advice is that anybody interested in this product should negotiate product bundles in order to reduce the cost of installation and setup."
"The price for Automation Anywhere is reasonable."
"More than 40 to 50 percent of the IT budget will be for the cost of automation projects in the coming years since these projects enhance operations add value."
"We would like to use Citrix going forward. We use Bot Runners to scale up, and it gets to be expensive. Using Citrix, it can mitigate costs."
"From my experience, Asset Manager is expensive."
"As far as I know, it is an annual operating expense license."
"We use the tool's free license. It is expensive."
"The license price could be reduced for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager They should make the price more affordable for smaller companies, most companies would be able to use the solution if it was priced better. There are more people on this cloud because you don't have to have either a server room or an on-premise server. You can have one IT person handle this without any local infrastructure."
"The price of SCCM depends on the size of the organization. The price is competitive."
"For enterprises, there is an annual license required to use this solution. The price of the solution could be cheaper. However, this is mostly because of the exchange rate from the dollar to the Nigerian currency."
"The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for."
"Its price is okay because it is part of our licensing."
"Pricing and licensing are a downside of SCCM. It's expensive. I'd have to confirm this, but I think they changed the licensing to core-based instead of socket-based. It's not cheap, because you have to buy the software, you have to buy SQL. Another thing we learned from talking to Microsoft is that they provide you a license for SQL if you run it on the same box as the primary server. If you run it outside that box, you have to buy SQL. Microsoft does recommend you running it on the same box because of performance. But then, in order to run SQL, SCCM, and everything on the same box, you better have some resources. It's an expensive solution. There's no doubt about it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise565
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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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 ...
How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. Wh...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCCM?
The setup cost is considered sufficient. It is not significant enough for us to consider a change at the moment.
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Asset Manager, HPE Asset Manager
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM ), Microsoft SMS
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Finansbank, MTS India, Sprint
Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Lansweeper, Device42 and others in IT Asset Management. Updated: October 2026.
920,336 professionals have used our research since 2012.