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Perforce Puppet vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
384
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (3rd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Perforce Puppet
Ranking in Configuration Management
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Configuration Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (29th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.2%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 4.0%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 3.9%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.2%
VMware Aria Automation3.9%
Perforce Puppet4.0%
Other87.9%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Senior Business Development Executive at Digitaltrack
Centralized device management has automated onboarding and improves remote security compliance
One thing I feel Microsoft Intune could improve is troubleshooting visibility. In many cases, when a policy or application deployment fails, the error messages are a bit generic. So, admins still spend time checking logs manually or testing on devices one by one. Compared to the simplicity of deployment, troubleshooting sometimes feels less mature. I also think reporting and real-time monitoring could be stronger. The dashboard gives useful information, but in large environments, many teams still depend on additional tools or scripts for deeper reporting and analytics. If I had to focus on one area first, I would probably choose troubleshooting and reporting. Deployment through Microsoft Intune is generally straightforward, but when something fails, identifying the exact root cause can still take more time than expected. Error messages are sometimes too generic, and admins often have to dig through logs, sync status, or multiple portals to understand what actually happened. I think user experience and policy management could also improve further. Microsoft Intune has become much better over the years, but sometimes the admin portal still feels fragmented because certain configurations open in different sections or redirect to older interfaces. For new admins, especially, it can take time to understand where everything is located. Another thing is policy conflict handling. In larger organizations, multiple device policies, compliance rules, and configuration profiles can overlap. When conflicts happen, the visibility is not always very clear, so admins spend time figuring out which policy actually won or caused the issue.
MS
Unix Consultant at ExxonMobil
Have managed configurations efficiently with an adaptable tool
I am using Perforce Puppet in the IT industry. I have experience with configuration management tools, specifically Perforce Puppet. I am a user of Perforce Puppet. I have used modular architecture to customize and integrate with my current IT environment. It is flexible and able to address my specific needs. I have worked with event-driven automation, and it helps to identify potential issues when someone manually changes any configuration on the server. Perforce Puppet reinforces the intended configuration that we have set earlier. I recommend Perforce Puppet as it's a good tool for all kinds of business and easy to use. It takes less than three months to learn how to use Perforce Puppet. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Perforce Puppet an eight.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main value of Microsoft Intune is better asset management from a security perspective, ensuring that the security baseline is enforced on all devices, including mobile devices."
"The solution appears to be stable and scalable."
"Its security is most valuable. It gives us a way to secure devices, not only those that are steady. We do have a few tablets and other devices, and it is a way for us to secure these devices and manage them. We know they're out there and what's their status. We can manage their life cycle and verify that they're updated properly."
"I like how Microsoft Intune lets me lock down the email profile and make it accessible only on certain devices."
"The most valuable features are that users can make screenshots, and devices only need the minimal version of iOS."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Intune as eight out of ten."
"This improved control and visibility has helped my organization by reducing risks, saving time, and making compliance easier."
"Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow."
"The valuable features I found are installing packages remotely and pushing files from a centralized server, and we can also create users and monitor services remotely."
"Puppet Enterprise provides an autonomous delivery solution and agent-server architecture that was really helpful on our case for Internet base device management."
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"The versatility is great."
"Good tools to automate your servers, the time and effort to learn writing manifest is quiet high but it's worth on the long run"
"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."
"In one use case for a large marketplace, a typical release cycle took about 80 hours and was brought down to three hours by automating deployment for developers."
"We use it as a self-service customer portal for all of our present customers, and so far it's going pretty well with a lot fewer tickets and much faster onboarding."
"This is such an all-encompassing solution."
"vRealize Automation has improved the speed of provisioning just by automating things, making people think about whether a human really needs to do something or can we make the machines do it for us. It is a lot faster to deploy things now."
"The most valuable feature would be the scalability, as it's very easy to add more capacity once it's set up, and in terms of provisioning, it has definitely helped speed-wise by simplifying making the environment bigger without the downtime of waiting for more hardware."
"The most valuable features for us are capacity planning as well as environment life management; putting in specific templates and workflows that we know are secure. That solidifies the environments that we're in or that are being provisioned. We also know that every environment being provisioned has a lifespan. It affects capacity, so it's great for budgeting, from my perspective, and good for my team."
"The best feature I saw with the VMware Aria Automation product was that it was easy to handle."
"The new version is user-friendly and intuitive."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of small use cases where we realized that some technical solution was missing in Microsoft in comparison to other products. For example, it lacks something similar to sensing or location-based rules and configurations."
"I personally work in a Samsung Android environment and there's a lot more feature support in other EMMs."
"One area where Microsoft Intune could be improved is troubleshooting and reporting."
"Technical support can be challenging when resources shift, requiring repeated explanations. Support from India sometimes provides information without the right solution."
"The UI is not user-friendly and has room for improvement."
"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."
"When pushing anything from Microsoft Intune, the sync timing is 48 hours. While sometimes it takes 5 to 10 minutes, the official period given by Microsoft is within 48 hours, which can be time-consuming for policies, applications, or patches."
"The reporting and cost have room for improvement."
"Puppet has a steep learning curve so you need to spend some time before you can use Puppet daily."
"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."
"Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always."
"It's a bit of a pain point to make sure that everything works once we've upgraded it because Puppet has been evolving pretty fast."
"It needs GUI based automation. There is way too much command line work involved."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"There's a lot of scope for enhancement on the DevSecOps side. They should definitely include features for compliance, for both the Linux and Windows side of the devices, as well as for network devices. Compliance is something they need to work on."
"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."
"From my experience, vRA requires a highly skilled team to maintain, version upgrades without downtime are not possible, and overall it doesn’t scale fast."
"Our customers feel it's very costly."
"The solution is intuitive, but not necessarily user-friendly. In particular, it's the documentation."
"Automation: We want to be able to have a lot more preconfigured solutions."
"Minion-based deployment is not very smooth. Most of the time, many minions were in a stale state and didn't respond to the salt-master."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"Technical support could be improved. I definitely feel that the product is accelerating faster than the support engineers are able to keep up with the knowledge needed to know what's going on. The developers maintaining vRealize Automation are doing a great job improving it, but VMware is not doing a great job of training the people who we call to get support for it."
"It's not a smooth upgrade process. For a DTA environment, which is very simple, it is a smooth process, but for our production environment, which is quite enhanced and has a lot of dependencies, it's not easy at all, and it results in a lot of errors... It takes a lot of retries to upgrade which ends up being costly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."
"It is not a cheap solution. The price for a device when you start using it at a large scale can be improved. It is covered under our enterprise agreement. We pay once a year. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"The E5 license is expensive."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The pricing is inherently reasonable, as Microsoft leverages market insights to maintain the total cost of ownership at around ninety to ninety-five percent of what would be incurred in an on-premise scenario."
"It's affordable. In comparison to the competitors, the price depends on what features you need from Intune, but it's affordable. There are no hidden costs, but there are some features that go for a premium price. Those are the add-ons for which you have to pay extra."
"Microsoft Intune is moderately priced. There is a monthly license required to use the solution and it is approximately eight dollars per month."
"Depending on the size of the organization there is a point when the price of Puppet Enterprise should be lower. However, they provide really good functionality, features, and capabilities."
"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."
"The main thing that we noticed when we switched from the enterprise version to the community version was the difference in cost — the infrastructure is pretty expensive."
"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"It is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business195
Midsize Enterprise64
Large Enterprise190
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

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 Puppet Enterprise?
Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always. I don't know how much the license would cost per year or per user ap...
What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?
I don't know what could be improved in Perforce Puppet to make this tool better for the next release. I can't think o...
What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?
My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Puppet
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Perforce Puppet vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.