Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs vCenter Configuration Manager comparison

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. vCenter Configuration Manager

Download the complete report

Helped 902,894 peers since 2012

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 July 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 10.1%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Configuration Manager is 2.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	4.7%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform	10.1%
vCenter Configuration Manager	2.1%
Other	83.1%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

OluwashileAdeniyi

Senior Infrastructure Security Engineer at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees

Centralized endpoint security has improved and supports hybrid work and BYOD policies

Regarding what I dislike about Microsoft Intune and its downsides, I would say that more Mac controls are needed because we have limited Mac and Linux control. When comparing controls and policies between Windows, Mac, and Linux, Windows has almost everything you can think of, while Mac and Linux have limited types of control. You cannot implement certain things on Mac and Linux that you can on Windows. The limited controls are a major issue. Additionally, if Microsoft could find a way to embed servers into Microsoft Intune, that would be beneficial. Microsoft Intune is not really designed for servers or Windows servers. It is more tailored towards Windows 11 and Windows 10 operating systems. Windows servers are not fully supported. Enterprise organizations usually have both servers and endpoints, which are users' workstations. For servers, most people look for other solutions such as SCCM, which is Configuration Manager. However, SCCM is what Microsoft Intune is trying to replace. Both SCCM and Microsoft Intune belong to Microsoft. Microsoft is trying to transition organizations into Microsoft Intune, the native cloud solution. However, because this update is still in process, servers are not fully compatible with Microsoft Intune and cannot be managed by it. The current policy that has emerged from issues with clients is what they call co-management, which is relatively new, and I do not know if adoption is significant. Many legacy or older customers who have been using these products for decades still have SCCM. When it is time for them to manage their Windows devices, they use what is called cloud attach. Cloud attach is a term whereby your SCCM is connected to your Microsoft Intune. Most people do not know about it, but I have deployed it for several organizations. Cloud attach and co-management work together so that your device is in SCCM, but some policies are pushed from Microsoft Intune. It is like two different solutions working hand in hand. That is what they call co-management. Microsoft Intune does not bring all of your endpoint and security management tools into one place, which is the goal and how it should be. However, as I mentioned, servers are not included. If we talk about end users, Microsoft Intune does bring all your devices together. In a typical enterprise environment, you have end users with workstations, laptops, company-issued phones, and bring your own devices. You can create policies for all of these. However, for the backend, your servers do not have much coverage. Servers are not really covered by Microsoft Intune in that way.

Read full review

Manas Kashyap

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.

Read full review

Nikhil Nikhil

Information Technology Operations Lead at TT Systems LLC

Compliance management has improved efficiency but licensing changes pose challenges

I am not using any advanced features or AI. I am employing a basic VMware vCenter setup for my infrastructure. Scalability has no major limitations, and the solution is efficient. Overall, it's satisfactory. I would rate the vCenter experience as seven out of ten due to concerns regarding license, pricing, and AI features.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, Microsoft Intune has been a strong platform for modern endpoint management, especially for organizations supporting hybrid work and cloud-first device management strategies."

"It has a useful device management feature."

"The navigation, the keys, and the settings are easy to find. It is easy to understand."

"The best features in Microsoft Intune that I appreciate the most are the strong security, encryption, and operating system version."

"The Asset Management and Auto Pilot are valuable features."

"With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."

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

"Intune does consolidate all endpoint and security management tools into one place, making everything easier to manage."

More Microsoft Intune pros

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

"With this solution, we're able to cover our client's needs, the automation is very good, the operational automation and DevOps are the most valuable features for us, it's easy to set up, the solution can scale, and it's very stable."

"Installing it is a PIP command. So, it's pretty easy. It is a one liner."

"It increases our company's efficiency, automating all the simple tasks which used to take hours of somebody's time."

"The easy-to-read syntax for YAML files and the interoperability between modules are valuable."

"The Organizations feature, where I can give clear silos and hand them over to different teams, that's amazing; everybody says that it's their own Tower. It's like they have their own Tower out there."

"I like the fact that Ansible is agentless."

"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

"We prefer to pay for these products that are integrated and straightforward."

"Configuration Manager simplifies management. Cloning via live migration is a useful feature."

"The product's deployment phase was easy."

"I would recommend people use this solution because it can make your life a lot easier and it has a lot of features which could help a system administrator prevent problems and foresee potential issues."

"There are a lot of useful features, such as DRS, ease of use, and many configuration options."

"All of these features serve different purposes and are very useful."

"The clustering part and the load balancing part are most valuable."

"The solution overall is very good, the online configuration, especially in the latest version, is very good, and it's worked well for us so far and hasn't disappointed on any level."

More vCenter Configuration Manager pros

Cons

"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."

"Yes, there are a couple of issues with stability."

"The reporting dashboard is really limited."

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

"However, I dislike how it lags sometimes. I cannot work on multiple processes at the same time."

"One big problem with Microsoft is that they're changing the names of the products quite often, or they're quite consistently doing so. Intune is now Endpoint administration. Constantly switching the user interface or the administrative interface makes it quite hard to keep pace. If you are on a two-week holiday and you come back and look at the same screen you have looked at for the last couple of months, it looks different, which is annoying. Changing things around all the time doesn't make it easy."

"Currently, Microsoft Intune's focus is mainly on Windows, but they can make much more improvement in terms of other platforms."

"Due to the abundance of features, there's a lot to organize, which makes managing and setting up the solution challenging. The setup is immense, and it would be good to see improvement in this area."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"The web GUI can be a little bit better. There should be a couple of more features."

"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."

"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."

"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."

"At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue."

"I have observed that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform could improve by creating modules for upcoming AI and ML tech stacks, as currently, specific modules for these are not available."

"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."

"There could be more stuff in the workflows. I hope that if I have ten templates with different services on it, workflow could auto-populate all the template-based services."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

"Configuration Manager should decrease the deployment time in the data center and the management time as this could help many data centers reduce their operating costs."

"It should be easier to use alternate storage."

"The technical support is not bad. It is good internally for our organization, and we are not facing any problems now. We have not taken platinum support, so our teams that are operating from the client site will have to wait longer to get their problems fixed."

"It can take a long time for the first information to become available."

"There could be an option for clients to manage the tool as well."

"The product's high price is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"Acquiring certifications often require extensive training and successfully passing an exam, which can be costly and time-consuming, particularly if you already possess experience in the domain. As a result, this can increase the overall cost of obtaining certification and may present a challenge that requires addressing."

"I would like there to be support for this solution in Iran."

More vCenter Configuration Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't get Intune as a separate module. Most of the time, we use it within an enterprise agreement like E3 or E5. Those licenses are at a good price, but what is annoying is that every single year they go higher."

"With one user base license, we can use Intune for up to five devices. However, with Soti MobiControl, each license is tied to a single device, meaning one license is dedicated to one device only."

"If you're subscribing to Premium or E3, there are no additional costs for Intune, it's included."

"Intune is available as an individual product, but it also comes with Office 365 Premium or an Enterprise license, and the price varies for each version."

"Intune is included in the Microsoft 365 licensing package that we have."

"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."

"Intune is included with our F3 and E5 licenses."

"The price is reasonable, but they should lower it a bit to make it more competitive. It's cheaper than AirWatch and other products, but I still feel like Microsoft can make a base version or with Exchange online or a la carte only Intune version which will be useful. A customer who doesn't want to go full-fledged E3 or E5 can take out or consume an Intune solution only for their purpose, and we want to target that customer."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."

"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."

"The pricing is okay."

"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."

"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."

"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

"It is on a yearly basis."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The price of the solution is expensive. However, it is reasonably priced compared to competitors."

"We have to pay for the whole bundle and individual pricing is not available. One license costs us almost $200 every year."

"I am not knowledgeable with the pricing of the product."

"While the pricing is reasonable for large corporations, it presents a substantial financial challenge for medium-sized businesses."

"It's a large application. It consumes a lot of resources. Sometimes the price is too high for our customers. If they buy it directly from VMware, its hard to convince the customer that we will bring down the total cost of ownership, in the end."

"The product is highly-priced."

More vCenter Configuration Manager pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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

See recommendations

902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	189
Midsize Enterprise	65
Large Enterprise	185

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	52

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

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 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...

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 ...

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

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Configuration Manager?

Nowadays, it is a bit expensive. It's costly, primarily due to the licensing aspect.

What needs improvement with vCenter Configuration Manager?

My impression on the impact of the real-time monitoring features of vCenter Configuration Manager is that it's somewh...

What is your primary use case for vCenter Configuration Manager?

My usual use cases for vCenter Configuration Manager mainly involve migration, shift and lift mainly, and some type o...

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Comparisons

Compared 10% of the time

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

SOTI MobiControl vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 5% of the time

BigFix vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Cisco DNA Center vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs vCenter Configuration Manager

Compared 15% of the time

Perforce Puppet vs vCenter Configuration Manager

Compared 10% of the time

BigFix vs vCenter Configuration Manager

Compared 9% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Configuration Manager

Compared 7% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs vCenter Configuration Manager

Compared 4% of the time

More vCenter Configuration Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

vCenter Configuration Manager

Download vCenter Configuration Manager product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS

vCM

Overview

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform streamlines IT operations with features like a simplified GUI and extensive module support. Its agentless architecture and YAML ease make it an adaptable choice for managing diverse infrastructures efficiently.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers a robust automation framework that supports multiple environments and integrates well with various applications. Its agentless Python-based architecture facilitates efficient server management and rapid update deployment. Users benefit from centralized management through Ansible Tower, role-based access control, and dynamic inventory. However, improvement areas include documentation, API integration, network support, and UI scaling. Enhanced community contributions could address module availability and compatibility gaps.

What are the most important features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

Agentless Architecture: Leverages Python for seamless management without needing local agents.
Extensive Module Support: Provides modules for managing multiple environments effectively.
Ansible Tower GUI: Offers a centralized interface for easy automation management.
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures user-specific permissions for improved security.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with a variety of applications to enhance functionality.
Dynamic Inventory: Automatically updates inventory, simplifying large infrastructure management.

What benefits and ROI should one consider?

Automation Efficiency: Significantly reduces manual intervention, saving time and resources.
Adaptability: Easily integrates with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, and Azure.
Security Compliance: Automates compliance checks, ensuring up-to-date security protocols.
Cost Management: Lower operational costs through streamlined processes.
Scalability: Supports infrastructure growth without requiring major adjustments.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and technology, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is used for network management, security compliance, and configuration tasks. Organizations utilize its capabilities for cloud and on-premises deployment, infrastructure provisioning, and workflow orchestration. Many integrate it with tools such as Puppet or Terraform to enhance CI/CD processes, benefiting from its agentless design in adapting to cloud environments.

Red Hat

vCenter Configuration Manager offers a robust platform for managing virtual environments and optimizing IT infrastructure. It supports multiple platforms while facilitating virtualization, migration, and compliance processes.

vCenter Configuration Manager efficiently manages virtual machines, data centers, and servers. It enhances system performance through automation and centralized management of ESXi clusters. Known for its reliability, it also simplifies patch management and supports hyper-converged infrastructure. Challenges include improving integration, user interaction, and support for cloud and hybrid environments. Licensing transitions and compatibility issues with operating systems are areas of focus. Its strong presence in India enhances VMware environments.

What are vCenter Configuration Manager's key features?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies navigation and operation tasks.
VM Management: Efficient management of virtual machines.
Migration Capabilities: Streamlines the migration process.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation without downtime.
Automation: Facilitates automated processes to improve efficiency.
Support for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: Enhances the IT environment's scalability.
vMotion and DRS: Critical for disaster recovery and business continuity.

What benefits and ROI should reviews highlight?

Resource Management: Optimizes resource allocation and utilization.
Ease of Provisioning: Simplifies deploying IT assets across the organization.
Compliance Management: Ensures regulatory compliance and governance.
Reliable Stability: Provides a stable and robust IT environment.

vCenter Configuration Manager is implemented across sectors like healthcare and industry. It manages virtualization, server oversight, and host monitoring. Its automation and patch management streamline IT processes, making it a valuable tool for managing diverse IT infrastructures effectively.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

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

Bank Al Bilad, Thomas-Krenn.AG, Pronto!, Unimed Juiz de Fora

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. vCenter Configuration Manager