Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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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 May 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.3%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 12.5%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 17.4%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi

Collaborations engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Everything has worked better since we started using it

Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.

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MikeNelson2

IT Infrastructure Coordinator at NSW Government

Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements

While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

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Surya Chapagain

Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Easy to manage and simple to learn

We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.

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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

"Fortunately, now everything is streamlined into a single, unified platform."

"I appreciate how easy it is to deploy certificates to end users to get control over their device with Microsoft Intune; that's what Microsoft Intune is known for, and that's what we use them for."

"Intune simplifies compliance. The ability to manage software updates and policies on endpoints has helped us meet contract requirements."

"I appreciate Intune's autopilot feature, which allows us to enroll devices and install applications to meet corporate requirements seamlessly."

"For Windows services, there are multiple options within Intune to modernize it to be more internet-facing and dynamic."

"Our bank's most valuable Intune features are centered around the dedicated device concept."

"One of the most valuable aspects of Microsoft Intune is its seamless integration with Azure Active Directory, offering capabilities akin to Group Policy Objects."

"The Autopilot feature is the most valuable because it saves significant time on managing devices. We can ship devices globally, and users can set them up on their own. It's convenient."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"SCCM does everything from A to Z for a Windows operating system."

"Technical support is very helpful and very responsive."

"This solution captures all the devices in our infrastructure."

"Valuable features include configurations enforcement, compliance data gathering, and deployment of a standardized OS."

"The tool's most valuable features are easy patch management and software deployment."

"It works well for the endpoints for the customer I'm consulting. It has a bunch of knobs, and you can tune it to do lots of things."

"This has made the management of our environment easier."

"The main, clear valuable feature is updating the latest, patches and updates from Windows. This is the main feature we really utilize a lot."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pros

"This solution allows us to stitch a lot of different parts of the workflow together."

"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."

"We can automate a few host configurations using the product."

"We can manage all the configuration consistency between all our servers."

"Automation is valuable. It saves us time in performing tedious tasks or repetitive tasks."

"Automation tracking is the most valuable feature."

"The most useful features are the playbooks. We can develop our playbooks and simplify them doing something like a cross platform."

"Role-based access control and agentless architecture are the main features which may attract users."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

Cons

"It would be awesome if Microsoft opened their API so we could filter more properties. If we have to do anything outside of Intune that requires a third-party solution to talk back to it, we're very limited in what we can do."

"It would really be helpful to have the option to manage server operating systems as well, like Windows Server, at least. That way, we could scrap the use of SCCM, which requires a lot of on-premises infrastructure."

"Microsoft support was not very responsive, and it took approximately one and a half months to get on a call to clear what the problem was."

"A new Intune feature allows application packaging, but it incurs additional licensing costs for a significant number of applications."

"Microsoft Intune fails a lot when it comes to device compliance."

"The current Intune reporting functionality could benefit from some improvements."

"The synchronization of devices takes a significant amount of time, between 15 minutes and two hours. Microsoft should work on reducing this sync time to improve efficiency."

"A major challenge is making all the products work within device management solutions like Intune. It would be beneficial if Microsoft removed support for older products much earlier in the process."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Regarding this, I'd like to mention the agent situation. When the agent on an end-user device is not functioning correctly, it can be quite problematic. It would be highly beneficial if there were a self-healing mechanism in place. Essentially, if the agent becomes corrupted or encounters issues, it should be able to rectify itself autonomously. This is particularly critical because, in order to utilize a tool like MECM (assuming you're referring to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager), we need to deploy agents, known as AsMs, on all the devices we use, such as Windows 10 or Windows Server. Sometimes, when we deploy configurations or updates, they don't apply properly due to agent issues. This issue has been present since we began using MECM around 23 years ago. Unfortunately, there is currently no built-in mechanism for the agent to detect its own problems and initiate self-repair. Microsoft doesn’t have any feature to scan vulnerabilities and hence, they could include those."

"Its client interface should be more accessible, and the notifications should be more customizable from the console. It should be more user friendly and have some kind of customized notifications so that we can use it on the client side. These are the reasons why we restricted its use only for the server environment and didn't use it on the client side."

"It is a bit of an old and outdated product."

"SCCM should strive to enhance the accuracy of its reporting functions in order to avoid any issues with incorrect or inaccurate data."

"The configuration of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager could be improved, it is a bit complicated."

"With Microsoft Premier Support, you get what you pay for. There's Third Tier Support that you pay for. If you pay for that, you get excellent support, and if you don't pay for that, then you get the less experienced staff."

"The solution does not support remote devices so the CMG is still required."

"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."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager cons

"The SSM connection access needs improvement"

"In Community, there's a lot of effort towards testing, standardizing, and testing for module development to role development, which is why Molecule is now becoming real. Same thing with Zuul, which we are starting to implement. Zulu tests out modules from third-party sources, like ourselves, and verifies that the modules work before they are committed to the code. Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there."

"Accessibility. Ansible uses a CLI by default. Those accustomed to it can find their way and adopt the YAML files easily over time. But, some users are more comfortable using UIs..."

"Additional features could be added."

"The product could do a better job at building infrastructure."

"In modern infrastructure, there are more than just servers. The initial server-centric approach in Ansible is a bit strange."

"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."

"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."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."

"There are licenses required for this solution. We enable licenses on the devices we need to manage."

"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."

"With our standard E5 agreement with Microsoft, there have been no pricing concerns. Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs."

"They have categorized the licenses according to the size of the business. So, if it's a smaller organization, we can choose the license accordingly. If it's a big organization, then we can choose accordingly. Everything is clearly mentioned, and we can decide. It's suitable for all kinds of infrastructure, and that's very goo"

"Microsoft Intune is a cost effective choice. It is less expensive than other products on the market."

"The purchase of the product was handled by someone else."

"While Microsoft Intune boasts a wide range of features, its user-friendliness and bundled licensing cost are key considerations for me."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Along with buying a license for MECM, we also have to buy a service called CMG (Cloud Management Gateway) which is a virtual machine in the cloud with which you can link your MECM to the Azure tenant so as to manage teleworkers."

"The price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is expensive."

"The price could be better."

"I rate the price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager an eight out of ten."

"Overall, I think it's fine. It's pretty much in-line because there are ways to offset it with the Office 365 licensing."

"There is not a license needed to use the solution."

"Microsoft provides a steep price for their enterprise products, but they offer very competitive pricing for their legacy customers."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pricing and cost advice

"The cost is high, but it still works well."

"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."

"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."

"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."

"The pricing is pretty standard."

"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."

"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."

"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

28%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

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...

How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?

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

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 do you like most about SCCM?

One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages effi...

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?

Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...

What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

I know Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform costs money since I am using a trial license. The pricing is high, and sin...

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Comparisons

Compared 13% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 12% of the time

Tanium vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 8% of the time

BigFix vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 5% of the time

PDQ Deploy vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Configuration Manager Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 8% of the time

BigFix vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 5% of the time

BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Microsoft Configuration Manager

Download Microsoft Configuration Manager product report

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )

Ansible

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

Microsoft Configuration Manager helps IT manage PCs and servers, keeping software up-to-date, setting configuration and security policies, and monitoring system status while giving employees access to corporate applications on the devices that they choose. When Configuration Manager is integrated with Microsoft Intune, you can manage corporate-connected PCs and Macs along with cloud-based mobile devices running Windows, iOS, and Android, all from a single management console.

New features of Configuration Manager, such as the support of Windows 10 in-place upgrade, co-management with Microsoft Intune, Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Servicing Dashboard, integration with Windows Update for Business, and more make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before.

Microsoft

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful network automation solution that allows organizations to handle every aspect of their application launch process within a single product. It enables users to share their automations so that teams within an organization can collaborate on various projects with ease. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be used by all employees involved in the network automation process.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform include:

Maximum benefit for reduced overhead. Ansible Automation Platform is an all-in-one solution that can enable users to do the jobs of multiple products with one. Users do not need to purchase multiple products to handle their network automation and application development needs. It is equipped with prefabricated content from more than one hundred companies that are partnered with it.

Scalable. Ansible Automation Platform is a highly scalable solution. It can easily be scaled up so that automations can be extended across the various devices that make up an organization’s network.

Flexibility. Ansible Automation Platform is highly flexible. It enables users to tackle any and all automation-related tasks.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Features

Automation analytics. Ansible Automation Platform comes equipped with an automation analytics feature. This feature enables organizations to measure the effects of their automations and plan how they are going to implement automations moving forward. It makes it easy for administrators to spot anomalies in their automations and resolve them before they can escalate and become major issues.

Integration suite. Ansible Automation Platform gives organizations access to a wide variety of integrations that enable them to connect to Ansible’s partners. Now users can augment their capabilities without needing to purchase additional solutions that will enable them to run features that are not normally a part of Ansible’s array of tools. The Ansible environment is built to handle the wide variety of integrations that their partners offer. In order to accomplish this it includes the APIs that users need in order to fully benefit from the integrations.

Centralized interface. Ansible Automation Platform comes with a centralized GUI interface that enables users to manage all of their network automation and application creation activities from a single location. Businesses can guarantee that their operations are going to be handled efficiently and according to a single standard. The management process is greatly simplified. All of the tools that users need are located in one place.

Reviews from Real Users

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its automation manager and its comprehensive centralized GUI-based management interface.

MD J., a solution architect at STBL, says, “The automation manager is very good and makes things easier for customers with multi-cloud platforms.”

Aankit G., a Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS, writes, “We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.”

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform