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Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs VMware vSphere comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
Microsoft Intune boosts ROI by reducing costs, simplifying management, enhancing security, and increasing productivity through efficient resource use.
Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services allows efficient remote work with rapid deployment, offering great value despite perceived high costs.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSphere increases ROI by reducing server needs, costs, and deployment time, improving efficiency and hardware utilization.
Everything we've gained from it makes my job easier day after day, and I see value in it as an engineer.
Importantly, when someone leaves the company, it helps protect document access on their devices.
Applications are deployed through Intune, and we see fewer tickets for common issues because we can resolve them through the solution.
We can say 10% is the approximate amount of savings because most of the things are automated and streamlined, so the manual work is eliminated in most cases.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.3
Microsoft Intune customer service varies, with premium services praised, but first-level support often lacks effectiveness and speed.
Sentiment score
5.1
Users find Remote Desktop Services user-friendly, often minimizing support needs, with Premier support and online communities offering effective solutions.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware vSphere support is efficient and knowledgeable, though delays occur for low-priority issues; community forums provide additional help.
When a support ticket is submitted, it directly reaches someone with Intune support expertise.
When I contacted Microsoft, they had the same expertise, if not more, which is phenomenal because I felt heard and my problem was solved.
Sometimes, the support provided is excellent, and the representative is knowledgeable, while other times, the service needs improvement.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Microsoft Intune is scalable, integrates with other Microsoft services, and offers flexible licensing, ideal for diverse device management.
Sentiment score
7.1
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services scales well for most organizations, though some experience bandwidth issues or prefer alternatives.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere is praised for its scalable architecture, allowing efficient expansion with minimal downtime, despite potential hardware and licensing issues.
The scalability of Microsoft Intune is ten out of ten.
Ideally, we want to automatically segregate devices based on user properties like primary use, but currently, dynamic groups seem limited to device properties.
It supports organizations with 200 endpoints and those with more than 15,000 endpoints.
My impression is that most of the solutions, especially today, make sense for large corporations with 2000 seats or more.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
It is a highly scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Intune offers high stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and regular updates ensuring a seamless user experience.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is praised for stability, reliability, and consistent performance, although occasional disconnections can occur.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware vSphere is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and strong performance, widely regarded as a robust platform.
We have not experienced downtime, bugs, or glitches.
Microsoft Intune has been very stable.
A couple of years ago, the performance was not as good as it is now, but there are noticeable backend improvements.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Intune needs enhanced reporting, improved platform integration, better device management, user-friendly interface, and advanced remote and security features.
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services faces challenges with security, integration, performance, user interface, and cross-platform support, requiring updates and improvements.
VMware vSphere's cost, stability, integration, and usability issues lead organizations to consider alternatives and seek improved solutions.
Features like unlocking devices sometimes fail, and the support offered for other operating systems is insufficient.
There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now.
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.
It should be easier to create a template and duplicate users.
The only problem I see is that when I am connected, there is a certain lag because of the network.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Intune offers competitive, flexible pricing, especially bundled, despite licensing complexity, making it appealing for enterprises and non-profits.
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services offers seamless integration with Windows, but complex, costly licensing and support fees challenge user flexibility.
VMware vSphere is reliable, but its high pricing and complex licensing can challenge budget-conscious enterprises compared to competitors.
Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs.
The Intune suite and add-ons, such as batch management and remote help, are costly.
It costs approximately forty euros per user per month.
These licenses are not cheap, as they add up in cost.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The solution is too expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Intune enhances user experience with automation, robust security, and seamless Microsoft 365 integration, reducing IT workload.
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services offers secure, scalable remote access and management with seamless Windows integration and user-friendly performance across devices.
VMware vSphere provides efficient virtualization with high availability, scalability, and robust performance, enhancing agility and minimizing downtime.
Intune excels in configuration and compliance management for Windows 10, ensuring devices receive timely updates and adhere to organizational standards.
Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow.
Windows Autopatch is the most valuable because it removes the burden of patch management.
The main benefits that Microsoft Remote Desktop Services provide to me include streamlining my working process, ensuring security, and offering flexibility to connect to virtual desktops and apps from multiple devices.
A valuable feature of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is its native integration with Microsoft platforms.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (2nd), Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Microsoft Remote Desktop Se...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (5th)
VMware vSphere
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
456
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Remote Access
Server Virtualization Software
 

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.
Terje Romen - PeerSpot reviewer
Accessing the same desktop experience from anywhere but user template creation needs improvement
Mostly we are quite happy with it. However, some of us want a more powerful desktop. When not present, we use a remote tool called Splashtop, which is a good solution for some users. We have about ten licenses for those who need a powerful workstation at the office. We have not used many different tools. We are never in contact with Microsoft. These are quite basic configurations, to be honest. It's not complicated. AI is coming to or is already in some applications we are using. Not system-wise, however, it might be good. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It's quite good, yet certainly not perfect.
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services?
In limited use cases, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is free as it is defaulted by any Microsoft license. The paid...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services?
The only problem I see is that when I am connected, there is a certain lag because of the network.
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platfor...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux...
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Remote Desktop Services
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Bank Alfalah Ltd.
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, TeamViewer, Citrix and others in Remote Access. Updated: August 2025.
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