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 features I found most valuable in Intune are its user visibility and troubleshooting options."
"We are a remote company, and the product helps us manage the global endpoints. It helps us natively manage the endpoints in the cloud from anywhere."
"It's easy to manage."
"The biggest thing for us is enforcing logins only from devices that are managed by Intune."
"Maturity makes it a stable product."
"In terms of technical support, you will get an immediate response."
"The ability to push applications on devices is valuable. You do not have to manually install applications one by one. If you like to use ten different applications, you do not have to manually go and download them one by one. Intune can compile a package for you, and then you can just push them from the admin center."
"We have a BYOD policy, and this solution helps us manage our devices."
"It is a good choice for deployment that performs very well."
"The initial setup is straightforward and not too complicated."
"The major features of this product are the reporting tools. The most valuable features are package deployment and application deployment. Security management is also good because any vulnerability will be identified, and you can fix it. It's the best tool because you never know what kind of client you will have. For example, you may have your offices in low bandwidth remote areas. But it's achievable because it accommodates the bandwidth that you have available. Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is an excellent reporting tool for your environment. If you want to know the details about the hardware configuration, software configuration, what is causing a problem, or when a new feature update comes in for Windows, even that goes on SCCM itself. A lot of deployment stuff."
"Microsoft is being very competitive right now, and they are really investing in a lot of new features to be more competitive in the marketplace."
"The most valuable feature of SCCM is the application distribution."
"The solution is stable."
"I like the data collection."
"It's a stable product."
"I like being able to control multiple systems and push out updates quickly with just a couple of clicks of a button and commands. I like the automation because it is a time saver."
"Installing it is a PIP command. So, it's pretty easy. It is a one liner."
"It was easy to read and learn. It is a YAML-based syntax, which makes it easily understand and pick up."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation."
"It has an easy-to-use interface. It is REST API driven, and it integrates with Active Directory. It provides the ability to grant permissions to other users who would not necessarily have those permissions via the GUI so that they could run other people's jobs. For example, you could have the Oracle team grant permissions to the Linux team so that they can use each of those playbooks or each other's code. It is called shift-left."
"Since it is in YAML, if I have to explain it to somebody else, they can easily understand it."
"The solution can scale."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
"We need the capabilities of the Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) to be enhanced through Intune instead of Azure."
"The security features should be improved."
"Data leak prevention can be integrated into it. Currently, it does not have data leak prevention."
"What would make this product better is adding more security policies and features in the next upgrade."
"There's quite a lot of development that they can do within their Intune dashboard. I think there are too many lines hyperlinked to move you around. Others, in contrast, give you a simple dashboard and an intuitive administrative walkthrough."
"Sometimes, customers compare it with AirWatch, but the concept of Intune is different from other solutions. It's an application management app. It gets a bit difficult to explain it to customers, but it's not a product limitation. It takes a presale document or presentation to explain it to customers."
"Reporting needs improvement."
"The pricing can be expensive if you are not combining it with other products."
"It would be nice to have everything in one place. Now they have Intune for the desktops and SCCM to handle their servers."
"The solution should be more compatible with different versions of Linux."
"The assets have reached their end-of-life, and patching them is a complex and laborious task. It would be highly advantageous if there were an integrated solution that provided distinct options for each end-of-life asset, streamlining the process and facilitating comprehension."
"In spite of us being a premier customer we find the support unsatisfactory."
"Could do with some cosmetic improvements on the user interface."
"I'm looking for a single solution for all discovery needs. It fulfills about 40% of the requirements, and I'd like to see the other 60% so that I don't have to keep doing this."
"In terms of scalability, I believe there's room for improvement. While SCCM is capable of handling our current needs effectively, scalability could be enhanced to accommodate future growth and larger deployments."
"The tool's deployment is difficult. Microsoft needs to improve documentation with videos."
"The solution must be made easier to configure."
"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."
"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."
"It needs better documentation."
"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."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"On the Dashboard, when you view a template run, it shows all the output. There is a search filter, but it would be nice to able to select one server in that run and then see all that output from just that one server, instead of having to do the search on that one server and find the results."
"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."
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.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.
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.
