AWS Systems Manager vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.1, while VMware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 10.9% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and AWS Systems Manager both compete in the IT automation space. AWS Systems Manager seems to have the upper hand due to its extensive features and integration capabilities.

Features: VMware Aria Automation offers policy-based management, automated delivery, and support for multiple cloud environments. AWS Systems Manager provides automation for compliance, robust monitoring, and seamless integration with other AWS services.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation needs better integration with third-party tools, a more intuitive setup process, and improved overall documentation. AWS Systems Manager users desire better documentation, simplified onboarding for new users, and more frequent updates to address emerging challenges.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation is praised for its smooth deployment but has mixed reviews on customer service. AWS Systems Manager is highly rated for deployment simplicity and superior customer support.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation has higher setup costs but offers solid ROI through streamlined processes. AWS Systems Manager has competitive pricing and provides excellent ROI through its comprehensive features and seamless AWS integration.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Systems Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Systems Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

April 2025

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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 May 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.3%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Systems Manager is 10.9%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, up from 5.5% 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.

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Ambe Frankline

Cloud/DevOps Engineer at Innovative Technology Systems

Tracks every action on AWS accounts in a centralized way

Setting up AWS Systems Manager to monitor and control other services is easy. You need to link the services you want to observe and track. The time it takes to deploy depends on factors like connectivity, latency, and the complexity of the services. For example, setting up a simple application is faster than setting up a more complicated three-tier or multi-tier system. Using the solution for batch updates varies depending on the number of servers involved and the commands needed. Personally, when I do small projects at home, deploying a few servers doesn't take long. But at work, where we handle larger deployments with hundreds of servers, it's faster due to better connectivity and resources.

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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

"I haven't used other mobile device management solutions, but compared to SCCM, we eliminate a lot of on-premises infrastructure and maintenance by using Intune."

"The synchronization of Intune with other Microsoft solutions is a valuable feature."

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

"The solution is fully integrated with the Microsoft platform and the Autopilot feature, which is a unique feature."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is that it is more of a one-stop shop, providing an easier experience."

"Internet-based access with security is what I have found to be most valuable. It is also a stable and scalable solution."

"The feature that we need occasionally but is really important is the ability to remotely wipe a device, control it, and perform similar functions."

"The stability is good."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"It is beginner-friendly with extensive features that can be learned gradually based on the user's needs and tasks."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the change management option. It tracks every action on my AWS accounts in a centralized way, acting like a control tool for me. This is especially useful when working with Kubernetes and AWS ECS services. Additionally, my colleagues and clients often use the application management tools for configuration, parameters, and installations."

"When we do the automation in the cloud, we use the SSM agent. This helps us to test our automation and documents, and monitor the cloud."

"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts"

"AWS provides Auto Scaling groups."

"The solution's ability to scale is good."

"The solution is user-friendly"

"Has a variety of automation options."

More AWS Systems Manager pros

"Currently, the primary feature we're using in VMware Aria Automation is its ability to execute tasks quickly. However, we haven't explored other features like workload management or the full stack yet. So it's hard to make comparisons or fully utilize its potential until we expand our usage."

"Our speed of provisioning has improved. We used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day. Nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template... and it takes about 20 minutes."

"quality-of-latest-release; Compared to the earlier versions, from my experience, the upgrade process is easier; for example, the compatibility checks. I also don't need to go and find out the resources that are required. It tells me in one report what the current environment is like and, if I want to go to the next level, what things I need to take care of. Based on that I can make things happen."

"compare-to-competition; Citrix was on our short list. But over the last ten years, we have been a big VMware shop. We wanted to continue with VMware because we are confident that VMware can address any kind of problem situation, any challenges. But with Citrix, we didn't find that kind of credibility when we did solution testing, a PoC."

"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 solution is intuitive and user-friendly. E.g., you have less number of logins."

"The feature of automated balancing which implemented between two data centers solely for the purpose of a recovery plan is valuable."

"Instead of deploying a VM from a template and going through the process of configuring that VM, with vRA we're able to click once and it does everything: grabs an IP, joins it to the domain, loads whatever configuration agents are needed. It does all of that without manual intervention."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"The add-ons must be integrated into the solution."

"It would be great if Intune offered better data protection controls for BYOD Windows PCs."

"Areas for improvement in Intune include expanding support beyond Samsung devices to accommodate other Android manufacturers like Redmi and Motorola."

"There is room for improvement in the remediation and detection modules, which are currently about eighty percent fully functional."

"Reporting can be better. Only global administrators can see detailed reports at the moment, and I don't want to use the global admin."

"I would like to see the ability to deploy custom packages as a Windows 64-bit package, as opposed to the Windows 32-bit, which is the only one available now."

"It would be helpful if there was proactive remediation."

"We faced issues with macOS support. The product should have better inventory and asset management."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"I'd like to see more automation for monitoring and managing things like AWS CloudWatch and AWS Config. It would be a significant improvement if it could automatically handle these tasks and address issues as they arise."

"The AWS UIs are not the most intuitive. Also, the usability needs room for improvement."

"It could be agentless if there's room for improvement in the AWS Systems Manager. Currently, you have to install agents, although, for most of the latest EC2 images, the agents come preinstalled. If it could be at the level of Ansible, which is agentless, that would be fantastic. When you compare the solution to Ansible, one of the most widely accepted tools, the agentless feature stands out. So, if the AWS Systems Manager could become agentless, that would be a significant improvement."

"Lacks sufficient integrations."

"Every AWS service comes with some associated costs."

"We formerly used third-party products to analyze the log, give us information, and find bottlenecks. Systems Manager could provide more tools that conduct this analysis, so we don't have to do it ourselves."

"Additional features can be added as per customer requirements."

"One area that could be enhanced is dynamic configuration management. Additionally, improving integration with other AWS services like Lambda and CloudFormation would be beneficial."

More AWS Systems Manager cons

"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."

"It has a learning curve."

"The stability is 95 percent. There are some situations where it gets a little bit clumsy. When it gets really big, when you're dealing with a very large deployment, it can be a little bit difficult, but it's better than nothing. It does a significant job, given what it's tasked to do."

"The initial setup was complex because we have a high availability cluster. Especially when it comes to upgrades, we have a lot of downtimes and problems. The upgrade experience has been painful."

"Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration."

"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."

"I want to see HTML5. I want to get rid of JavaScript... we have a lot of issues with Java crashing when we're using vCenter. I obviously don't want that to happen with the vRealize Automation and Orchestrator side."

"It is not intuitive or user-friendly. It's complicated as heck. We actually hired VMware Professional Services to come in. I understand the newer version, which we're not quite on yet, is easier and that the interface is better. But the product is really a profession unto itself. The user interface could be improved on."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't get Intune as a separate module. Most of the time, we use it within an enterprise agreement like E3 or E5. Those licenses are at a good price, but what is annoying is that every single year they go higher."

"The pricing needs improvement."

"It's bundled with Business Premium and an E3 license, which is beneficial. If you have to pay extra, it's pricey, but with the bundled package, it's acceptable. They recently increased the Business Premium pricing, which we don't appreciate. The price increase and yearly commitment are causing some problems for us."

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."

"The product is relatively pricey, but considering its benefits, I'd say it's fair. The benefits outweigh the expensive licensing fees, especially for large organizations, but medium-sized and smaller businesses may be unable to afford it."

"The clients pay for a license and each can have a different type of license, such as an E3 or E5."

"We use Defender ATP and E5 licenses."

"Intune's pricing is reasonable considering its benefits and the high costs it helps avoid."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"An AWS cloud engineer can bring down the costs."

"Most of the features are free. I'm not entirely certain, but I believe the pricing is generally very low. Some services that are part of Ops Manager might have associated costs."

"As we were doing a government project so the government got the project at a very nominal cost."

"The platform provides excellent value for the capabilities it offers when compared to third-party tools for similar tasks."

"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."

"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."

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

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

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."

"It is an open-source product."

"The solution is free of cost."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

18%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

10%

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 ...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about AWS Systems Manager?

With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems m...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Systems Manager?

Every AWS service comes with some associated costs. While using AWS Systems Manager, we continually monitor to optimi...

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What needs improvement with AWS Systems Manager?

There isn't anything specific I remember at the moment.

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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 y...

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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...

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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 compa...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 13% 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

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 15% of the time

AWS Config vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 9% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs AWS Systems Manager

Compared 5% of the time

More AWS Systems Manager Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

May 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

May 2025

Download AWS Systems Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

April 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Amazon Elastic Container Registry

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

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 Systems Manager is a management service that helps you automatically collect software inventory, apply OS patches, create system images, and configure Windows and Linux operating systems. These capabilities help you define and track system configurations, prevent drift, and maintain software compliance of your EC2 and on-premises configurations. By providing a management approach that is designed for the scale and agility of the cloud but extends into your on-premises data center, Systems Manager makes it easier for you to seamlessly bridge your existing infrastructure with AWS.

Systems Manager is easy to use. Simply access Systems Manager from the EC2 Management Console, select the instances you want to manage, and define the management tasks you want to perform. Systems Manager is available now at no cost to manage both your EC2 and on-premises resources.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Systems Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

April 2025

Free Report: AWS Systems Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Systems Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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