AWS CloudFormation vs Microsoft Configuration Manager comparison

AWS CloudFormation vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager

Download the complete report

Helped 845,406 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 April 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS CloudFormation is 1.1%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 12.8%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi

Collaborations engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Everything has worked better since we started using it

Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.

Read full review

Mbula Mboma

AWS Cloud Re-Start Program Specialist at Orange RDC (Congo)

Facilitates efficient infrastructure deployment with visibility into resource connections

I primarily use AWS CloudFormation for deploying infrastructure efficiently. For instance, if I want to create load balancers with target groups and EC2 instances, I find CloudFormation simplifies the process of deployment and configuration, reducing the possibility of errors AWS CloudFormation…

Read full review

MikeNelson2

IT Infrastructure Coordinator at NSW Government

Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements

While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

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

"Intune has automated the deployment of patches and applications, which is more efficient and easier."

"The solution is easy to use and it has good performance."

"I would say the biggest benefit is the single-pane view. There's no jumping around multiple UI's to do your overall management."

"The most valuable features in Microsoft Intune for me are application deployment, Defender deployment, and asset management."

"Intune's most valuable features are the device, compliance, and configuration policies."

"The device profiling which uses the official Outlook email enabled us to control the screenshot feature and prevent copying outside of the organization's application."

"The most important thing for me is the autopilot feature."

"This product works very well for companies already using the full Microsoft suite."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"Scripting does what we need to reinstall something from scratch."

"It is easy to work from the console and deploy new database services."

"The most beneficial aspect lies in its capability to handle input acquisition and assessment."

"By using AWS CloudFormation, I can automate tasks like creating VPCs and load balancers instead of doing them manually each time. The features I like most include improved scalability, resource management, ease of deployment, template creation, and resource provisioning."

"The solution has helped with automation. I don't have to worry about provisioning machines and ensuring everything is set up. AWS CloudFormation takes care of the entire infrastructure for me."

"AWS CloudFormation makes infrastructure deployment easy."

"I appreciate the flexibility of infrastructure as code. With CloudFormation, we can define ground rules, control usage limits, and scale our infrastructure up or down programmatically. Having this level of control through code on infra is a major benefit. That's the beauty of CloudFormation."

"With CloudFormation, there is no need to use complicated coding."

More AWS CloudFormation pros

"Technical support was helpful and responsive."

"The scalability to deploy the package."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is patch management."

"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."

"The initial setup is straightforward and not too complicated."

"It is a very well-rounded product. It is a complete package with all the features using which we are able to manage our PCs very efficiently."

"One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages efficiently and deploy them to specific groups within our network. This streamlined process has significantly improved our software distribution workflows."

"It lets you know what your infrastructure is like and what state you are in."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pros

Cons

"Microsoft Intune could improve by being more user-friendly and having it geared toward device management. The graphic interface is not very good."

"I rate Microsoft support four out of 10. Support is one area where Microsoft needs to improve a lot. I recently raised a ticket for a Microsoft Azure issue, and it took two and a half weeks for support to reply. They need to improve support across their entire catalog of products."

"There are a few security features that are not available in Microsoft Intune, when compared to other products."

"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."

"The reporting dashboard is really limited."

"Customer service used to be better. In the last couple of years, support has not been very good, even with Premier and Premium support. It's been very hit-or-miss."

"It would be interesting to integrate the server side of Intune. Some group policy updates we have on the Windows Server side and possibly some on the client side could also be included."

"At this time, I do not have any areas for improvement. I have heard about some downtime, but I am not in the local IT team."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Improving the quality of support would be helpful."

"One area where AWS CloudFormation could improve is by offering more flexibility in creating custom templates."

"The solution must enable more hands-on designing of the templates."

"The code we write in AWS CloudFormation is pretty big compared to Terraform. We need to have more modules in the solution. A library should also be there where we can save code lines. A dashboard feature would be good for designers."

"The Infrastructure Composer is not fully complete, making it necessary to tweak the code manually after generating it, which could be improved."

"The product should be made cloud-agnostic, allowing users to deploy the same environment with minimal tweaks across different cloud platforms, similar to Terraform. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have the ability to manage templates outside of the AWS environment."

"There could be better error handling. It would be a good way to improve the solution."

"It's not that easy to use, but I can learn very fast."

More AWS CloudFormation cons

"The solution does not support remote devices so the CMG is still required."

"It is not easy to get good technical support, especially at level one."

"The cost of the product can be improved."

"It needs to be able to load faster during deployment."

"Devices like smartphones and tablets are managed very well on VMware, however, they are absent in SCCM. I could configure iPad from the VMware site and it was done very easily. It should be just as possible on SCCM."

"It should provide the ability to remotely connect to mobile devices. There are some solutions that are doing that, but with Microsoft Intune, the only way to remotely connect to devices outside the organization and mobile devices is by using TeamViewer. It is pretty strange for a big company like Microsoft to not have something for that."

"SCCM can improve on third-party application support."

"The main thing is that SCCM has to become an appliance instead of a server. When I say appliance, it has to come preconfigured so that it is drop-shipped into the enterprise and then you activate the feature sets that you want. It should pull down all the latest binaries. Once that is all there, it should have a discovery tool which goes out and discovers the assets within an enterprise. If the server, workstation, and applications are all coming from the same vendor, why not have the vendor do this work for us and automate it as much as it possibly can?"

More Microsoft Configuration Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."

"For Microsoft 365 E5 clients, cost is not an issue as this product is one of the benefits."

"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."

"Microsoft Intune is moderately priced. There is a monthly license required to use the solution and it is approximately eight dollars per month."

"Microsoft Intune is more expensive than other solutions, but it offers a wider range of features and control."

"Intune is linked with Microsoft. We can deploy the Microsoft E365 license to users by Intune. There are different types of licenses, such as device administrator licenses, E5 licenses for device enrollment manually, and P1 and p2 licenses for device enrollment automatically. These are the licenses required for the administration."

"I liked the tool's pricing until P2 came into effect. I am unsure about the current value versus the cost of the new licensing model."

"In terms of the product price and licensing costs, my company finds the product to be reasonably priced."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"AWS CloudFormation doesn't have any cost because it's only the resources that you deploy with the solution that'll incur costs."

"The pricing is not notably high."

"The solution's cost is normal, neither cheap nor expensive."

"The tool's pricing depends on the page model."

"If you compared serverless and container-based, serverless is less expensive. If you use certain instances the price can increase and become too expensive."

"This solution is free to use and does not require a license."

"The tool is free for the AWS environment."

"There's no cost for launching any template using CloudFormation."

More AWS CloudFormation pricing and cost advice

"The license price could be reduced for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager They should make the price more affordable for smaller companies, most companies would be able to use the solution if it was priced better. There are more people on this cloud because you don't have to have either a server room or an on-premise server. You can have one IT person handle this without any local infrastructure."

"We use the tool's free license. It is expensive."

"As far as I know, it is an annual operating expense license."

"I would rate the cost as eight out of ten."

"Along with buying a license for MECM, we also have to buy a service called CMG (Cloud Management Gateway) which is a virtual machine in the cloud with which you can link your MECM to the Azure tenant so as to manage teleworkers."

"There is not a license needed to use the solution."

"When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."

"The price could be better."

More Microsoft 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

845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

22%

Government

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 AWS CloudFormation?

AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudFormation?

AWS CloudFormation is free. However, there may be unexpected costs if developers deploy services incorrectly without ...

What needs improvement with AWS CloudFormation?

Improvements are needed for sharing resources between template files, especially when using AWS ( /products/amazon-aw...

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 ...

How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?

ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. Wh...

What do you like most about SCCM?

One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages effi...

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Comparisons

Compared 14% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs AWS CloudFormation

Compared 79% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs AWS CloudFormation

Compared 21% of the time

More AWS CloudFormation Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 13% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 13% of the time

Tanium vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 8% of the time

BigFix vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 6% of the time

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Configuration Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

AWS CloudFormation

Download AWS CloudFormation product report

Microsoft Configuration Manager

Download Microsoft Configuration Manager product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

CloudFormation

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )

Overview

Microsoft Intune provides centralized management of mobile devices and applications, ensuring security, compliance, and productivity through integration with Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory.

Organizations use Intune for managing mobile devices and applications, enhancing security and compliance across platforms. With features like single sign-on, conditional access, and zero-touch deployment via Autopilot, it facilitates efficient operations. Intune's scalability, easy enrollment, and capabilities such as remote wipe support diverse device management, offering robust data protection and efficient operation. Despite its features, improvement areas include reporting, compatibility with non-Microsoft devices, and better support for macOS and Linux devices.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Seamless Integration: Works with Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and System Center for streamlined management.
Conditional Access: Enhances security with policies that restrict access based on conditions.
Autopilot: Provides zero-touch deployment for setting up new devices efficiently.
Mobile Device Management: Enables control over both personal and corporate devices.
Application Deployment: Facilitates app delivery across a range of devices.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Centralized Management: Reduces complexity by managing devices and applications in one place.
Security Enhancement: Protects data with features like remote wipe and compliance monitoring.
Improved Productivity: Enhances efficiency with seamless integration and automation features.
Device Scalability: Supports diverse device management for growing business needs.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure secure and compliant device management. Companies leverage its capabilities to deploy security policies and manage both corporate-owned and BYOD environments, facilitating a unified approach to data protection and compliance.

Microsoft

AWS CloudFormation provides a common language for you to model and provision AWS and third party application resources in your cloud environment. AWS CloudFormation allows you to use programming languages or a simple text file to model and provision, in an automated and secure manner, all the resources needed for your applications across all regions and accounts. This gives you a single source of truth for your AWS and third party resources.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Configuration Manager helps IT manage PCs and servers, keeping software up-to-date, setting configuration and security policies, and monitoring system status while giving employees access to corporate applications on the devices that they choose. When Configuration Manager is integrated with Microsoft Intune, you can manage corporate-connected PCs and Macs along with cloud-based mobile devices running Windows, iOS, and Android, all from a single management console.

New features of Configuration Manager, such as the support of Windows 10 in-place upgrade, co-management with Microsoft Intune, Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Servicing Dashboard, integration with Windows Update for Business, and more make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Nextdoor, Coinbase, Expedia

Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad

AWS CloudFormation vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager