Perforce Puppet vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Perforce and VMware are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Perforce is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.5, while VMware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.8. Perforce holds a 0.8% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Perforce users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

Perforce Puppet and VMware Aria Automation are products within IT automation and system management, with VMware Aria Automation generally having an advantage due to its comprehensive features, which justify its costs despite Perforce Puppet's competitive support and pricing.

Features: Perforce Puppet provides robust configuration management with features such as automation capabilities, strong integration options, and a centralized control system. VMware Aria Automation offers advanced orchestration, lifecycle management, and hybrid cloud support, providing distinct advantages with superior orchestration features and supporting complex workflows.

Room for Improvement: Perforce Puppet could enhance its advanced orchestration capabilities, improve hybrid cloud support, and further simplify complex workflows to stay competitive. VMware Aria Automation may benefit from simplifying its deployment process, reducing initial costs, and enhancing its support offerings for more user-friendly experiences.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Perforce Puppet is known for its straightforward deployment and effective customer support, ensuring smooth ongoing use. On the other hand, VMware Aria Automation, while more complex in deployment, provides extensive documentation and support that helps to overcome these challenges.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet offers a cost-effective solution, providing a good ROI for configurations and management. VMware Aria Automation, though more expensive at the start, delivers significant ROI due to its extensive capabilities, which many customers find worth the investment for advanced features.

To learn more, read our detailed Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

April 2025

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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 Perforce Puppet is 0.8%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, up from 5.5% 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.

Read full review

Erik Ableson

Owner at Infrageeks

A stable solution that is more suited for larger companies with mature CI/CD structures and image management processes

Puppet Enterprise is more suitable for clients working up much more structured deployment images they manage internally. Before choosing Puppet Enterprise, users should think seriously about what they're trying to accomplish and ensure they put the right pieces in place. Overall, I rate Puppet Enterprise an eight out of ten.

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Le Quang Long

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.

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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

"The most valuable feature of Intune is the user-friendly portal for end users."

"Microsoft Intune has definitely reduced management burdens."

"If you need only to load a specific profile and you don't have deep security functionalities, et cetera, Intune is very nice and good."

"Windows Autopatch is the most valuable because it removes the burden of patch management."

"The conditional access policies that we set up are very useful."

"The best part of Intune is device control. If we need to block a user from opening something in their organization's system, we can do it from Intune. If we want to restrict the movement of an organization's data to prevent users from copying the data into Outlook, WhatsApp, or their personal Gmail, we can limit that via Intune. It secures all corporate data."

"The key benefit of Intune is its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem."

"The automatic patch management feature in the Intune Suite is helpful."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."

"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."

"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."

"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."

"The versatility is great."

"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."

More Perforce Puppet pros

"Having an enterprise service catalog and being able to automate various parts of our infrastructure are among the most important components."

"Our speed of provisioning has improved. We used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day. Nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template... and it takes about 20 minutes."

"vRealize automation stability is pretty good. They are always fixing bugs. The product team is doing a great job of addressing any issues that we might have."

"Currently, the primary feature we're using in VMware Aria Automation is its ability to execute tasks quickly. However, we haven't explored other features like workload management or the full stack yet. So it's hard to make comparisons or fully utilize its potential until we expand our usage."

"It allows some of the tenants to self-provision their machines, so they don't have to wait for us to create the machine for them."

"vRA provides that single pane of glass for our cloud tenants to deploy, monitor, access, and manage their VMs/guest operating systems."

"Scalability is probably the best part about it. You can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort."

"The most valuable features for us are capacity planning as well as environment life management; putting in specific templates and workflows that we know are secure. That solidifies the environments that we're in or that are being provisioned. We also know that every environment being provisioned has a lifespan. It affects capacity, so it's great for budgeting, from my perspective, and good for my team."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"Intune endpoint analytics can be challenging."

"The product needs to upgrade itself when the server is overloaded."

"Lacks the ability to deploy more ways of management, managing devices and processing the policies."

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

"The pricing can be expensive if you are not combining it with other products."

"I'm still playing around with it and haven't had any issues with the product yet, but support can definitely be improved."

"The solution's app deployment needs to be improved."

"Intune could add more Linux security features and more integration with on-prem devices. The application deployments can also be improved."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"The solution has really complex code, you have to understand the Ruby language. However, once you know the code then you can move ahead without any problems."

"It's a bit of a pain point to make sure that everything works once we've upgraded it because Puppet has been evolving pretty fast."

"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."

"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."

"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."

"There's a lot of scope for enhancement on the DevSecOps side. They should definitely include features for compliance, for both the Linux and Windows side of the devices, as well as for network devices. Compliance is something they need to work on."

"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."

"Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team members leave the organization, leaving others uncertain about using the tool."

"in general, it took us a long time to get it off the ground. We had a lot of issues upfront and we determined that we just needed to scrap it. I think we scrapped it two or three times before we actually got it built the way we wanted, and we're still not where we need to be. We have had downtime. There have been some issues, but we're also two iterations behind on version."

"vRO can get out of sync with vRA. We've run into every once in a while."

"The solution could be lighter. As an administrator, I would like to simplify the number of services I need to deploy. They took a significant step in that direction by removing all the Windows dependencies that we had in the past, but there are still a lot of services consuming resources."

"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."

"The stability is 95 percent. There are some situations where it gets a little bit clumsy. When it gets really big, when you're dealing with a very large deployment, it can be a little bit difficult, but it's better than nothing. It does a significant job, given what it's tasked to do."

"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."

"The initial setup was complex from beginning to delivery. The current version is a bit more complex than version 7 to deploy."

"It does go down from time to time. We have some issues with the appliances sometimes and we have to do reboots in the middle of the day. That affects the ability for them to deploy."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is in the medium range. It is acceptable because you're paying for the features. I am not aware of any additional costs."

"In terms of the product price and licensing costs, my company finds the product to be reasonably priced."

"Licensing depends on how you are providing support to your enterprise, whether it's device-based or user-based."

"There is a cost benefit of using Microsoft Intune because of the packaging with other Microsoft products."

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

"The pricing for Intune and the competitor products are all within the same range, there is no true advantage when it comes to cost."

"Intune's pricing is reasonable considering its benefits and the high costs it helps avoid."

"The price is very reasonable."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"Depending on the size of the organization there is a point when the price of Puppet Enterprise should be lower. However, they provide really good functionality, features, and capabilities."

"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."

"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."

"The main thing that we noticed when we switched from the enterprise version to the community version was the difference in cost — the infrastructure is pretty expensive."

"It is pricey for what you get."

"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."

"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."

"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."

"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."

"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."

"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."

"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

47%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet is not cheap. I would rate its affordability as seven or eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?

Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team m...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

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

AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 40% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 34% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 26% of the time

More Perforce Puppet Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

April 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

April 2025

Download Perforce Puppet product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

April 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Puppet

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

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

Perforce Puppet provides robust features for configuration management, compatible with Linux, Windows, and UNIX. It simplifies infrastructure management with automation and role-based access control, though it requires mastering command-line operations due to limited GUI.

Perforce Puppet utilizes a hub-spoke architecture to enhance automation across production environments, excelling in provisioning and configuration management for on-prem servers. Its infrastructure as code approach eases deployment and maintenance, supported by community resources for stabilization. Support for diverse devices makes it adaptable for complex configurations, but pricing and integration gaps, especially with Infosec tools, pose challenges for some.

What are the key features of Perforce Puppet?

Remote Package Installation: Centralized server management for remote installations
File Management: Streamlined file operations from a single point
Infrastructure as Code: Simplifies infrastructure maintenance
Scalability: Grows with organizational demands
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure user management
Device State Control: Efficient device integration and configuration

What benefits should users expect?

Automation Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks with hub-spoke architecture
Versatility: Supports multiple operating systems
Community Support: Backed by a stable and organized community
Configuration Simplicity: Simplifies and streamlines setup processes

Puppet is implemented across industries for managing production servers, especially in regulated environments. Its security compliance checks ensure adherence to required standards, while public configurations assist in device network integration. Industries benefit from its ability to streamline Linux server automation and explore expansion into Windows systems to meet cross-platform requirements.

Perforce

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

VMware

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

April 2025

Free Report: Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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