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Perforce Puppet vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 2025

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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
279
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Perforce Puppet
Ranking in Configuration Management
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Configuration Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 1.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.2%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
Erik  Ableson - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of Microsoft Intune is good."
"The ability to manage devices with different sets of policies is most valuable."
"Overall, my user experience with Microsoft Intune has been great."
"What I like the most about Microsoft Intune is its ability to manage mobile devices. Through integration with System Center, it can also manage desktops and laptops."
"One of our clients migrated the model workplace based on Intune, achieving a 78 percent cost reduction, which is quite a lot."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"What I appreciate the most about Microsoft Intune is that it's quick and easy to use from an authenticator perspective. There is simplicity in securing our platform. Microsoft Intune benefits my company because of its simplicity of use and cross-functional integration."
"The most valuable feature is that we can manage workstations or Android devices remotely without needing the device to be connected to our local network."
"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."
"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."
"The versatility is great."
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."
"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."
"Today, if I want to provision one VM, it takes me five minutes. Earlier, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes to go and choose everything. Now, I can just do one click and it can provision my whole VM. We also integrated with our Alexa, so even through voice functionality, I can create a VM. One of the guys at VMware, along with our partner, deployed that in our environment. If I say, "Hey, Alexa, I need a VM with four gigs of RAM," it will go and start creating it."
"value; It does a lot of things automatically that would take our group, when we're already strapped for time, a lot of time to go through and clean stuff out of databases and the like."
"Our QA department is able to spin up a new instance of Windows virtual machine and test whatever use case they have, then turn it back down whenever they are done."
"The blueprint functionality of the product is intuitive and user-friendly. The concept of the blueprints is visual and easy to use."
"VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines."
"The solution is user-friendly and intuitive."
"The setup was straightforward. We upgraded to a newer version seamlessly. It worked really well."
"vRA has enabled us to derive value from the cloud faster. It is five to six times faster than traditional solutions."
 

Cons

"To make it a perfect ten, it would be helpful if there was a better way to troubleshoot user issues, as I've had a few users with corrupt files before and had to redeploy it without knowing the root cause."
"Intune is not the most user-friendly mobile device management platform available."
"There should be more focus on mobile device security and integration."
"Intune could be enhanced by automating application upgrades, similar to how it automates operating system upgrades."
"Currently, BitLocker does not support BYOD enrollment, which is a product limitation."
"Once it's configured it is unobtrusive, but it does take some hands-on to configure and deploy it properly."
"It doesn't economize when you scale up. We have over 14,000 employees, and we have between 7,500 and 8,000 city-owned or personal devices being used to conduct city business. Its price can be improved. It is not a cheap solution."
"The user interface should be more user-friendly, as it can sometimes be challenging to navigate. Microsoft often relocates features, making it difficult to consistently find what I need."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."
"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."
"I don't find it to be entirely user-friendly. There are a lot of complicated menus within menus within menus. Things move around from version to version."
"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."
"It's not cheap."
"In terms of usability, It has had its challenges. It requires a lot of custom code to integrate into our environment. It can take a little while to get it to do what we want, takes some code instead of having built-in functionality. Part it is how we use it. It would be a lot easier to use in a greenfield scenario versus brownfield, which is the way we using it."
"It's not a smooth upgrade process. For a DTA environment, which is very simple, it is a smooth process, but for our production environment, which is quite enhanced and has a lot of dependencies, it's not easy at all, and it results in a lot of errors... It takes a lot of retries to upgrade which ends up being costly."
"The back-end has a steep learning curve."
"We are migrating from vRA version 7 to 8, but the migration is really hectic and time-consuming. There are no straightforward paths to migrate. We are doing an entirely new deployment to go to vRA version 8.0, then somehow get all of the VMs to vRA 8.0. Therefore, it would have been great if VMware had some solutions to upgrade from vRA 7 to 8 seamlessly. This includes the management of all the objects or VMs from the older version. Unfortunately, it is not there."
"Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."
"Intune's pricing is competitive. For example, the license of Blackberry's Enterprise Mobility Suite was costly, but Intune is affordable. It is included as an additional feature when you buy security enhancements for your organization. For example, let's say I have fifty users in my organization and all of them are using Microsoft cloud services, like Teams, Office 365, and OneDrive."
"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."
"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."
"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."
"The Intune license model is costly."
"It's a bit expensive from a licensing perspective, especially as we look to have organizations with tenants across the globe."
"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"
"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."
"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."
"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 can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"The pricing is very high."
"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

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 ...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Puppet
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.