We performed a comparison between Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Ansible comes out on top in this comparison due to its easy setup, high performance, open-source license, and proven ROI.
"It's not working perfectly, but Microsoft's Autopilot offers great visibility into automated deployment solutions."
"Agile and easy to deploy MDM solution that covers the maximum number of policies. Stable, scalable, and with knowledgeable technical support."
"The technical support of Microsoft Intune is good."
"The Autopilot feature is fantastic. It is a Microsoft product, so it deals best with Microsoft operating systems, but it can integrate with iOS, Mac OS, Linux, and Android."
"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."
"The security-related tools are excellent; these features allow us to secure devices, lock them down, and ensure compliance."
"It's easy to deploy a configuration or policy to a system, especially when you don't have Azure AD. Now we are talking to all these small and medium-sized customers who don't necessarily have an on-premise Windows Active Directory. If they have invested in Office 365 Premium, this functionality becomes available to them."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"Offers good patching."
"This solution captures all the devices in our infrastructure."
"The cloud account management is a valuable feature."
"The solution doesn't require any maintenance from our end because it is a cloud-based solution and Microsoft takes care of everything."
"You can remote control or RDP. That has been the most valuable because we can go into one console and can get to anything we want. Instead of going to all these different consoles, we centralized everything."
"It is a very well-rounded product. It is a complete package with all the features using which we are able to manage our PCs very efficiently."
"The technical support is good."
"The most valuable feature is the graphical-based reports of software updates that have been successful, the ones that have failed, and a summary of where the failures are what security breaches may occur."
"It increases our company's efficiency, automating all the simple tasks which used to take hours of somebody's time."
"Ansible provides great reliability when coupled with a versioning system (git). It helps providing predictability to the network by knowing exactly what's being pushed after validating it in production."
"It is agentless. I don't have to think about which client system my unit has understanding in or not, because I can execute from my system. It will go and configure it, and any module that it is looking for will be shipped out."
"Ansible Galaxy is helpful for roles and Git Submodules: No dependency in managing playbooks. Also, fact caching in redis for host/role grp information speeds up execution. Finally, variable management is easy."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation."
"The solution can scale."
"The solution is capable of integrating with many applications and devices in comparison to BigFix."
"I like the fact that Ansible is agentless."
"It just doesn't handle software updates well at all by itself. You need to be a scripting wizard to make those happen properly, or you use third-party tools. The Windows feature updates are very difficult to implement. I would like to see a proprietary built-in remote control tool. I know that they have Team Viewer integrated, but it is not seamless. It would be nice if they had a seamless remote desktop capability directly from the Intune console."
"We faced issues with macOS support. The product should have better inventory and asset management."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with Apple."
"The main disadvantage seen today is regarding Linux clients. We have a lot of development resources that have Linux on their clients, and we can't manage them on the same platform, as we do with other clients such as macOS and Windows. So, it should have support for Linux clients. It should also have better support for macOS."
"The reporting and cost have room for improvement."
"The feature that allows us to import the business application from the configuration manager to Intune is not very good at this time."
"Reporting in Microsoft solutions is pathetic. With Intune, I'm getting a free inventory tool, but I don't get a reporting tool. When I go to Intune, I can see one machine's entire data in terms of the hardware and the software running on it, but I cannot generate a report for all the machines in the organization. The reporting is the only feature holding back the functionality that is already there."
"Once it's configured it is unobtrusive, but it does take some hands-on to configure and deploy it properly."
"Not everything is readily available, and there are a lot of commands that are only executable via PowerShell."
"One area of improvement is regarding the patching of Office 365 products. We have some difficulties on this side, and it can be improved."
"The tool's deployment can be cumbersome."
"The solution is on-premises. The cloud version of the product, if a person needs to be on the cloud, would be InTune, which already exists as an option. SCCM doesn't need to offer cloud features for this reason."
"The deployment process is lengthy and should be quicker to complete."
"It would be nice to have everything in one place. Now they have Intune for the desktops and SCCM to handle their servers."
"The main room for improvement is the on-screen display. I think it would be good if some improvements were made."
"The setup was complex and I faced a lot of problems initially because I was new to the solution."
"It needs better documentation."
"There needs to be improvement in the orchestration."
"Some of the modules in Ansible could be a bit more mature. There is still a little room for further development. Some performance aspects could be improved, perhaps in the form of parallelism within Ansible."
"From Red Hat Insights point of view, the product is not on top as it is not responding as per the demand...Like on cloud platforms, you can see the main parts of Red Hat Insights, along with the inventory of all your apps. So, that is missing in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform."
"It would be good to make the solution more user-friendly,"
"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."
"The area which I feel can be improved is the custom modules. For example, there are something like 106 official modules available in the Ansible library. A year ago, that number was somewhere around 58. While Ansible is improving day by day, this can be improved more. For instance, when you need to configure in the cloud, you need to write up a module for that."
"One problem that I'm facing right now is the mismatch between the new version of Python and Ansible. Sometimes it's Python 2, and sometimes it's Python 3. When things get a bit dicey, I wish that Ansible would solve this issue by itself. I don't want to have to specify if it is Python 3 or version 2."
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 78 reviews while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 58 reviews. Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Capable of broad integrations with easy-to-operate infrastructure and user controls". Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium, AWS Systems Manager and Red Hat Satellite, whereas Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is most compared with Red Hat Satellite, VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Azure DevOps, BMC TrueSight Server Automation and BigFix. See our Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report.
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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.
