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VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Configuration Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
6.8
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
vCenter Configuration Manager
Ranking in Configuration Management
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Configuration Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (16th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.4%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Configuration Manager is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.4%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Intune9.4%
VMware Aria Automation5.4%
vCenter Configuration Manager0.8%
Other84.4%
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.
Nikhil Nikhil - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"...Intune itself integrates with that entire Microsoft ecosystem. As an individual product itself, it's okay. It holds up. But when you start saying "I've bought this as part of a wider solution, as a company we are going Microsoft throughout," then it makes more sense to have Microsoft Intune... so you have that single dashboard."
"The overall user experience is quite nice. I have no complaints from end users regarding their devices enrolled in Intune."
"Users can make screenshots, and devices only need the minimal version of iOS."
"One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Intune is the detection and remediation script capability."
"The best features of Microsoft Intune include helping to know if computers are configured correctly and if users have access to apps or the platform."
"The performance of Microsoft Intune is good."
"I like how Microsoft Intune lets me lock down the email profile and make it accessible only on certain devices."
"The ability to switch between Affinity and non-Affinity enrollment is great."
"The platform is straightforward and user friendly."
"This solution supports multiple platforms in a single solution."
"This solution is good for individual storage."
"I would rate the scalability quite good. You can extend your environment effectively with appropriate investment."
"There are a lot of useful features, such as DRS, ease of use, and many configuration options."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"It is a stable solution."
"The platform's automation capabilities help reduce manual configuration efforts, speeding up deployment and management tasks."
"It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"In terms of scalability, vRA has connections to a lot of different systems. It's very flexible and an impressive product."
"The most valuable features are the Catalog View and the access control business group. Access provisioning is probably the main use case for us, so we can separate access to different Catalog items among the different business groups and have that tied back to our AD LDAP systems."
"The most valuable feature is vRA’s ability to integrate whether with additional VMware vRealize suites or other vendors' cloud products."
"The most valuable feature is the way that it plugs into our monitoring systems, and Infoblox and Puppet."
"The whole VMR ecosystem allows us to serve multiple customers, multiple organizations and also multiple units per customer. We can cover every level without using the whole VRA and the rest of the ecosystem. We don't need to use a separate product to provide separate functionalities for the customer. We can cover all the use cases using only one product on our side which is really helpful. T"
"For repeated installations and provisioning of VMs, we now have a clear definition of what has been installed, and we can monitor all that stuff."
 

Cons

"There should be more predictability in the release cycle. We don't feel we have any control over when new updates come out, and whether there are changes to the backend functionality or to the user interface. Updates just happen."
"Enrollment into the Microsoft Intune service can still get easier, especially for legacy-managed systems, such as how we get it from a GPO or an SCCM configuration into Intune."
"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."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Intune's reporting and logging could be improved. When troubleshooting, it's difficult to collect the logs and determine what's happening. If I want to filter out the compliant devices, I can see it from the logs, but I would like the option to drill down further."
"The most important thing is reporting. They should improve their reporting. They should give a free hand to users. In SCCM, I can create my own reports. For example, in SCCM, I can create an inventory report for my PC or for all PCs, but in Intune, we don't have an option to create any report. Microsoft claims that Intune is a successor of SCCM, but SCCM is more powerful than Intune. So, they should develop Intune more and make it equivalent to SCCM. Then, their product will be great in the market."
"There are challenges with Intune, specifically in reporting. Many third-party companies offer single-pane-of-glass reporting that shows you what your update environment looks like, how your patch is doing, application status, etc., but Intune's reporting is not intuitive. You can connect to Azure, monitoring, and the workbooks, but it's not streamlined."
"Its integration with Mac and Linux devices can be better. They should provide more features similar to Windows. We should be able to manage policies within Linux and Mac machines. If we can have more granular controls for these two operating systems, it will be really helpful."
"The product's high price is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"They could improve the hybrid-cloud environment and its management, not only for the local host but also including the connection between public and private cloud."
"The ease of setup and installations could be improved."
"The solution could be more integrated with the Microsoft environment."
"Regarding the licensing part, previously I was able to acquire the license with an eight-core configuration. Now it requires a 16-core setup, which is difficult for customers who have fewer connections to the servers."
"It is not so user-friendly that you can just start the host and everything works."
"The reporting could be improved."
"The platform's certificate management functionality can be challenging, along with troubleshooting when issues arise."
"VMware should go the way of vROps, with everything in one machine, the ability to scale out, and a more distributed environment instead of having the usual centralized SQL database."
"VMware needs to make it to where it is not as custom. Right now, you spend a lot of time making the services work. In order to get it up and running initially, that takes time."
"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."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"I'm not wanting any particular feature; but there should be cost reductions. VMware comes at a high cost, and that's why we are in the process of transitioning to a more affordable alternative."
"The back-end has a steep learning curve."
"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."
"It would be better if VMware would provide API documentation for developers and customers on the Internet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is average. Some of the costs are quite high depending on what the customer currently uses, but overall, it is not bad. I would not say that I would not recommend Intune based on the cost. I definitely would, but they can definitely improve on the cost. So overall, its cost is not bad."
"We don't pay for Intune because it is bundled with the premium subscription to Office 365. It includes Intune and Defender. I don't have to buy two extra products to manage my enterprise."
"Even if they charge a premium, they aim to provide equal value."
"There is a cost benefit of using Microsoft Intune because of the packaging with other Microsoft products."
"With our standard E5 agreement with Microsoft, there have been no pricing concerns. Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs."
"It is expensive. The cost depends on the license that we choose."
"The tool is cheaper than our company's other MDM tools."
"The E5 license is expensive."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten. The product has increased its cost by at least two to three times its previous cost."
"The price of the solution is too expensive for us and we are looking to move to another solution."
"vCenter's pricing is reasonable, but nowadays, they are drastically increasing their prices, which is pathetic."
"Users need to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."
"The product is highly-priced."
"The pricing is mid-range so I rate it a six out of ten."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, it is reasonably priced compared to competitors."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"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."
"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business116
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise152
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

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 do you like most about vCenter Configuration Manager?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
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'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
vCM
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Bank Al Bilad, Thomas-Krenn.AG, Pronto!, Unimed Juiz de Fora
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. vCenter Configuration Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.