We performed a comparison between Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Ansible comes out on top in this comparison due to its easy setup, high performance, open-source license, and proven ROI.
"The stability of Microsoft Intune is good."
"One of the most valuable aspects of Microsoft Intune is its seamless integration with Azure Active Directory, offering capabilities akin to Group Policy Objects."
"I believe that the solution is actually in Gartner's top quadrant at the moment for mobile device management."
"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."
"Microsoft Endpoint Manager is not expensive overall, especially for small environments."
"One of the standout features of Intune is its seamless accessibility to work data, eliminating the need to be tied to an office or a desktop."
"We use a local Active Directory, but we weren't able to manage all our on-site systems without a solution like Intune, and we needed to deploy software like VPNs and other things. It's seamless now to to this through Intune."
"Autopilot is a great feature. Most users are looking for a zero-touch deployment."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is the availability of being able to manage the Microsoft estate. It handles many areas, such as asset management and tracking."
"It gives us the ability to set up schedules, according to what our security requirements are, to automate the patching of our servers and desktops."
"I like the data collection."
"You can remote control or RDP. That has been the most valuable because we can go into one console and can get to anything we want. Instead of going to all these different consoles, we centralized everything."
"The scalability to deploy the package."
"The ease of usability is the most valuable feature. It's user-friendly."
"I like a lot of the reporting capabilities and baseline configurations."
"The automation manager is very good."
"The solution can scale."
"Installing it is a PIP command. So, it's pretty easy. It is a one liner."
"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."
"The user interface is well-built and very easy to navigate around."
"The most valuable feature is that Ansible is agentless."
"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."
"There are no agents by default, so adding a new server is a matter of a couple lines of configuration (on a new server and the configuration master)."
"Microsoft Intune has a latency response time issue. The latency has room for improvement."
"They should make it easier to order it, however, that's generally true for everything from Microsoft."
"Intune's third-party patch management could be better. It should be easier for the average system admin to keep non-Microsoft applications updated."
"I think there should be a better tracking of the cell phones used on the Intune."
"I'd suggest adding more features for macOS in Intune. There should be more functionality for managing macOS. There should be a better capability for pushing things down on macOS. Currently, Intune is not capable of managing macOS at the same level as Windows."
"I would like some integration with the Microsoft reporting platform Power BI."
"Onboarding of endpoint devices is not straightforward. The onboarding process was a little heavier than I thought it would be. That's the key improvement area. Obviously, the more control you have over the devices, the better it is."
"Regarding mobile devices, Intune is good, but there are other services that I would say are ahead of Intune from an administration and reporting point of view."
"SCCM does not scale well, which is one of the reasons we are not going to continue to use it."
"The solution could improve the functionality for automating, license management. Additionally, more and better-looking reports are needed."
"A lot of experience is needed in terms of troubleshooting, as this is one of the most difficult tasks in MECM. We were seven people in a group and I was the only one that had the patience to do the troubleshooting at times."
"Initial setup was complex. There's a lot that goes into it."
"As far as load balancing across, they don't have that support yet, so that you can actually build multiple primaries and have it load balance across. They don't have any of that functionality yet. That would be a nice feature, to scale that way."
"On some hardware, we'd like an easier way to get peripherals attached."
"I would like to see more automation."
"There is no asset management package included."
"The tool should allow us to create infrastructure. It has everything when it comes to management, but it lacks the provisioning aspect."
"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."
"Accessibility. Ansible uses a CLI by default. Those accustomed to it can find their way and adopt the YAML files easily over time. But, some users are more comfortable using UIs..."
"The governance features could be improved."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"We would like support for the post-integration of this product before cloud frameworks because right now their approach is to avoid using on-premises activities and move everything to the cloud."
"Some of the modules in Ansible could be a bit more mature. There is still a little room for further development. Some performance aspects could be improved, perhaps in the form of parallelism within Ansible."
"The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved."
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 78 reviews while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 58 reviews. Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Its agentless, making the deployment fast and easy". Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium, AWS Systems Manager and Red Hat Satellite, whereas Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is most compared with Red Hat Satellite, VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Azure DevOps, BMC TrueSight Server Automation and BigFix. See our Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report.
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We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
