Sophos Cloud Optix vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Sophos and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category. Sophos is ranked #31 with an average rating of 7.0, while VMware is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.8. Sophos holds a 0.4% mindshare in CSPM, compared to VMware’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Sophos users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Sophos Cloud Optix

Read 4 Sophos Cloud Optix reviews

427 Views
427 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

8,330 Views
250 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Sophos Cloud Optix

VMware Aria Automation

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Sophos Cloud Optix and VMware Aria Automation based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Sophos Cloud Optix vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Sophos Cloud Optix vs. VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

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Helped 865,384 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

Sophos Cloud Optix

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

31st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of Sophos Cloud Optix is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Featured Reviews

Jean Desir

Sr Network Engineer at Raptor Trading

DLP is a valuable feature that we use a lot for info audits.

The dashboard and the process for applying policies could be more intuitive. Cloud Optix isn't that difficult once you get the hang of it, but the IT folks managing this want it to be more user-friendly. Deploying the agents could be more seamless, too. Ideally, Cloud Optix would automate adding agents into your environment by integrating with Active Directory or some policy.

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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 for me would be the solution's endpoint protection."

"The most valuable feature of Sophos Cloud Optix is the simple way to manage my devices on the network. Additionally, it is easy to navigate and has a user-friendly interface."

"I find Cloud Optix to be a valuable solution since it provides a single, unified dashboard to monitor cloud assets, such as AWS and Azure."

"DLP is a valuable feature that we use a lot for info audits."

"The DevOps for infrastructure capabilities has saved time for our developers by automating processes and reducing provisioning time. Task time has been reduced by 40 percent."

"It benefits the speed of our development, and the speed of anything we test and send through to production."

"The most valuable features are the metrics and reporting aspects. The historical data and extraction enable us to tell where the trends are and where contentions may exist in the future."

"The customer can set up multiple machine blueprints. Therefore, we are able to customize the template of three machines, then the customer can deploy without knowing anything about the IT business."

"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."

"The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook."

"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."

"Even with the virtualization, it would take us at least three or four days to create a VM. With vRA we have brought that down to seven minutes. The solution has helped increase infrastructure, agility, speed of provisioning, time to market, application agility. Everything got super fast."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"Sophos should enhance its AI-driven detection features and anomaly detection."

"There are times when the devices are at maximum capacity, and it takes a while before the device is updated. For example, if the device has a virus, and it's not aligned to connect to the network, even after you've scanned the device, and cleaned out the virus, once the management clears the system to allow it back on the network it takes some time. It can be frustrating when you have your line manager or in management affected trying to access the network."

"The dashboard and the process for applying policies could be more intuitive. Cloud Optix isn't that difficult once you get the hang of it, but the IT folks managing this want it to be more user-friendly."

"The setup was a little bit complex."

"Sophos should enhance its AI-driven detection features and anomaly detection."

"I would like to see a simpler way of provisioning it. As is, we can automate the provisioning of a VM, however, when it comes to the external IPs, that is outside of VMware. But that has to be automated as well. If there was a way for us to have the virtual machines connect to switches that are external to VMware, that would be great. That way, it would handle the entire workflow from creation and provisioning of a VM to the connectivity to the external IP addresses which allow our customers to have access to the VM. Currently, that IP configuration has to be done manually."

"The initial setup is complex. There are too many components to integrate, especially when we integrated with different storage types and backup vendors. All the integration made it more complex."

"I don't think it's intuitive or user-friendly. I think it's a good tool. Any automation tool, these days, the learning curve is kind of high. You're teaching sysadmins who never developed stuff. Maybe they modified a little bit of code and now you tell them, "Hey, here's the tool, use it." But you have to know a little bit of DevOps. So you have to train them how to do the scripting."

"Our current use cases aren't very complex, but as our environment grows, we're seeing a greater need for automation. We're considering expanding our automation efforts, especially since other competitive products are starting to offer similar features."

"There is certainly room for improvement with some of the little things I was talking about, like either better managing of the upgrade process, or just making the infrastructure deployment a little bit easier. It feels like all of the pieces have been automated on one level or another, like with the PowerShell scripts, doing all the IS, Windows boxes preparation. They just need to get it to be more end-to-end."

"I would like them to improve the product training."

"The upgrade experience is horrible. It's not straightforward, there are a lot of failures, a lot of support interactions. It's not something that we are able to pull off ourselves. I've been with vRA since it was termed vCSA. We've gone through multiple rounds, and it has never been easy."

"The integration is a bit tight. I need the right package to use it properly. The new automation processes for VMware are messy, and support could be better."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Regarding the pricing for Sophos Cloud Optix, I would say that it was a very good price."

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."

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

"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."

"The solution is free of cost."

"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."

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

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

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Sophos Cloud Optix?

Sophos should enhance its AI-driven detection features and anomaly detection. The solution focuses on cloud security posture management. Fortinet, having acquired Lacework, seems to be a step ahead...

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What is your primary use case for Sophos Cloud Optix?

One primary use case for Sophos Cloud Optix is cloud visibility. I use it for compliance requirements and improving end user experience. The solution provides a unified dashboard for multi-cloud en...

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What advice do you have for others considering Sophos Cloud Optix?

I rate Sophos Cloud Optix seven out of ten overall. I recommend it for any size of company, considering their current ecosystem and workload. It's particularly suited for those in a Sophos ecosyste...

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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 you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...

See all answers

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 free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...

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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 companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...

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Compared 14% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

July 2025

Download Sophos Cloud Optix product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

Easily identify cloud resource vulnerabilities, ensure compliance, and respond to threats faster.

Sophos

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

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

Sophos Cloud Optix vs. VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

Free Report: Sophos Cloud Optix vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about Sophos Cloud Optix vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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