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OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

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
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
377
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
OpenText ZENworks Configura...
Ranking in Configuration Management
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.4%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management is 1.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 9.5%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.4%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform9.5%
OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management1.8%
Other84.3%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Senior Business Development Executive at Digitaltrack
Centralized device management has automated onboarding and improves remote security compliance
One thing I feel Microsoft Intune could improve is troubleshooting visibility. In many cases, when a policy or application deployment fails, the error messages are a bit generic. So, admins still spend time checking logs manually or testing on devices one by one. Compared to the simplicity of deployment, troubleshooting sometimes feels less mature. I also think reporting and real-time monitoring could be stronger. The dashboard gives useful information, but in large environments, many teams still depend on additional tools or scripts for deeper reporting and analytics. If I had to focus on one area first, I would probably choose troubleshooting and reporting. Deployment through Microsoft Intune is generally straightforward, but when something fails, identifying the exact root cause can still take more time than expected. Error messages are sometimes too generic, and admins often have to dig through logs, sync status, or multiple portals to understand what actually happened. I think user experience and policy management could also improve further. Microsoft Intune has become much better over the years, but sometimes the admin portal still feels fragmented because certain configurations open in different sections or redirect to older interfaces. For new admins, especially, it can take time to understand where everything is located. Another thing is policy conflict handling. In larger organizations, multiple device policies, compliance rules, and configuration profiles can overlap. When conflicts happen, the visibility is not always very clear, so admins spend time figuring out which policy actually won or caused the issue.
it_user1272306 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Dev Ops Engineer at 11 East Capital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The core management feature in Intune is invaluable to us, especially considering the challenges we often face with System Center when pushing external updates."
"Intune saves time, and it is very easy to use. It allows us to manage applications completely."
"The compliance and configuration policies in Microsoft Intune are the most valuable features, saving significant time compared to manual implementation."
"Microsoft Intune has positively impacted our organization by giving us a more centralized and consistent way to manage endpoints, especially as remote and hybrid work become more common."
"The most valuable feature is Intune's ability to push out updates for the security and antivirus. I also like Intune's copilot and the ability to automate processes. For example, if you have 5,000 employees who are issued new PCs and you need to set them up with everything they need."
"The automatic patching is the most valuable feature of Intune."
"It is a very helpful and easy solution."
"The user experience with Microsoft Intune is excellent because we can manage users and maintain security and policies anywhere they are."
"Helps me perform changes in connected infrastructure thanks to the discovery features."
"Automatic Spiral Discovery: This feature enables deep and dynamic configuration and change management."
"We use it for managing our desktops; we have 350,000 desktops and it allows us to manage and control them relatively easily."
"The most valuable feature is the impact analysis."
"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."
"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."
"The initial setup is easy and takes a few hours to complete."
"On the network side, I already have a lot of our firewall related processes automated. If it's not automated all the way from the ticket system, our network team members, our tier-one guys in India, can just go into the Tower web interface and fill in a couple of survey questions."
"The capacity to install products on the operating system is very valuable."
"The automation capabilities streamline deployment processes, providing reliability and reducing manual intervention and errors."
"The development tools are decent and being able to consistently manage those servers is really the key, which is why we went with Ansible in the first place."
"There is a return on investment as a technical person; it has saved time and effort in maintaining the deployment environment, so on the technical side, it's saved lots of time and effort on the configuration."
"Ansible automation has benefited our organization."
 

Cons

"While the ability to deploy applications at startup is reliable, the policy-based application deployment method has not reached the same level of consistency."
"The product needs to upgrade itself when the server is overloaded."
"More integration with monitoring tools is needed."
"I have faced stability issues with Microsoft Intune plenty of times, but I think it's part of the process."
"I have a lot of Apple products in my environment. It would be nice to have an improved integration of Apple products with Microsoft Intune without Jam."
"Reliability is something that I feel there is a tad bit of concern. The only point is that we need to sync multiple times to get something pushed through."
"It would be beneficial to have a more straightforward understanding of Intune's capabilities, presented in a simplified manner."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in terms of compatibility, extending beyond the well-known major brands."
"The native UI should be simplified because it is outdated and a little bit over-complicated."
"It needs dashboards."
"The infrastructure itself is stable, but the agent has a lot of problems."
"The solution costs a lot. It's not cheap."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."
"It needs better documentation."
"The support could be better."
"We are very satisfied with what we have. From a management point of view, whatever makes it easier for my team to help customers write their own playbooks would be something very beneficial. Everything is going as a service. Creating playbooks can become much more consumer-oriented so that customers do not need to contact us to write their own playbooks."
"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."
"When you set up Playbooks, I may have one version of the Playbook, but another member of the team may have a different vision, and we will not know which version is correct. We want to have one central repository for managing the different versions of Playbooks, so we can have better collaboration among team members. This is our use case for using Git version control."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As a partner, we always look for how we can generate more revenue from a consulting point of view, but I do not see any complaints from the customer side regarding pricing, so they are satisfied with it."
"The product is offered as part of a Microsoft standard bundle. The pricing can be competitive to Airwatch, and Maas360."
"The pricing for Intune and the competitor products are all within the same range, there is no true advantage when it comes to cost."
"All security solutions worldwide are expensive. Microsoft has allowed a small scale of features within Microsoft Intune for cost-efficient solutions. If you want the full suite, you need to invest more to gain better security features."
"Intune's pricing is reasonable considering its benefits and the high costs it helps avoid."
"Cost is not my department, but the product is included in the E5 license that we already pay for every user, so no additional cost is incurred."
"It's a bit expensive from a licensing perspective, especially as we look to have organizations with tenants across the globe."
"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."
"This is a really good tool for the money."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
"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 cost is high, but it still works well."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"It is a little pricey but it is affordable. It is not that bad."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
31%
Construction Company
9%
Government
9%
Transportation Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business192
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise187
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

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Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Micro Focus ZENworks Configuration Management, HPE CMS, HPE Configuration Management, Micro Focus Configuration Management
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Tech Mahindra, NNIT, ASIC
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,322 professionals have used our research since 2012.