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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
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
377
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Perforce Puppet
Ranking in Configuration Management
14th
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
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (28th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.4%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 4.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 4.1%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.4%
VMware Aria Automation4.1%
Perforce Puppet4.2%
Other87.3%
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.
reviewer2284542 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated configuration management ensures consistent server setups
The strength of Puppet is in automated configuration management. We can configure a server once and set rules with Puppet so that future server configurations are automatic and consistent with company requests. Puppet is declarative, meaning it finds the best state for itself and corrects any deviations in the configuration.
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 biggest benefit for me in Microsoft Intune is control; I can control my users and what they can do and enforce the policies that I want to enforce, and it is a great tool to control and put structure to take the organization to the place I want to take it."
"Technical support is good."
"Overall, Microsoft Intune has been a strong platform for modern endpoint management, especially for organizations supporting hybrid work and cloud-first device management strategies."
"Remote Wipe and Autopilot is one of the best features."
"Autopilot is one of the best features because we can use it during remote migration and it especially helps in this pandemic situation where we don't need any end-user computing engineer support."
"I rate Intune 10 out of 10."
"One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Intune is the detection and remediation script capability."
"Microsoft Intune is reliable, scalable, and user-friendly."
"The versatility is great."
"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."
"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."
"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"
"Return on the IaaS project was breaking even in the same year with deployment of 500 VM servers with a 3-tier app stack, and annual ROI from savings thereafter was to the tune of 60-80%."
"The organization of the overall product in terms of usage is very good."
"Preparation of Hybris Commerce HY300 training laboratory environments and Hybris Expert Services demo infrastructure went from days of effort down to hours."
"It has helped our organization tremendously."
"We are able to provide self-service to all of our IT/development teams to expand and decrease their environments at will."
"Being able to provide automation for my customers, essentially having guard rails on what they can deploy and how much it is they're deploying in my environment."
"The most valuable feature is vRA’s ability to integrate whether with additional VMware vRealize suites or other vendors' cloud products."
"The most valuable feature is, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report."
"vRA's Orchestrator allows you to connect to a huge ecosystem with a huge number of third-party systems to automate any and every IT process that you can think of."
"It's cut our server deployment times down from weeks to an hour."
 

Cons

"You can have a bad day where 80% of the enrollments failed. The next day it's running with the same devices without any changes, and you don't know why."
"I am not involved in the day-to-day with Intune, but we have gone with a different product for updating mobile device software. We do not integrate many of our mobile devices that are not Microsoft-based devices, such as Dell laptops, with Intune."
"It would be better if I could integrate it with my core group policy. I would like to have a group policy in my current environment, which has strict control, but those things are still missing. Although it has maximum compliance and security, it's not available on-premise."
"It just doesn't handle software updates well at all by itself. You need to be a scripting wizard to make those happen properly, or you use third-party tools."
"I'd like to see an ability to deploy more ways of management, managing devices and processing the policies."
"When you have a pressing issue, there is a lack of response. I believe Microsoft support needs to work on the response aspect."
"I think nine is a very good rating for this solution, and I kept one point out because I think in the future it requires improvement based on future scalability in the IT infrastructure."
"The solution requires Mac support."
"The solution has really complex code, you have to understand the Ruby language. However, once you know the code then you can move ahead without any problems."
"It needs GUI based automation. There is way too much command line work involved."
"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."
"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."
"Puppet has a steep learning curve so you need to spend some time before you can use Puppet daily."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team members leave the organization, leaving others uncertain about using the tool."
"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."
"Broadcom has acquired the tool, which could lower its pricing. Many customers are moving away from VMware infrastructure towards enterprise systems like Azure or AWS. This shift could be due to two main reasons: pricing and uncertainty about the future, especially regarding how Broadcom will handle licenses and strategy."
"The deployment mechanisms for the initial deployment of the product line lacks the appropriate documentation to give someone who's never used it before... There might be cases where someone wants to go to the website, go to the doc section, and do a step-by-step on how to deploy it. That's really not as brushed-up as other documents I've seen that they have. That would definitely be an improvement on their end."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"The initial setup is complex. There are too many components to integrate, especially when we integrated with different storage types and backup vendors. All the integration made it more complex."
"I give it a six out of 10 because we still haven't met what we intended it for."
"In terms of usability, It has had its challenges. It requires a lot of custom code to integrate into our environment. It can take a little while to get it to do what we want, takes some code instead of having built-in functionality. Part it is how we use it. It would be a lot easier to use in a greenfield scenario versus brownfield, which is the way we using it."
"The GUI is clunky and hard to use."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."
"If you're ever going to buy an Office 365 environment, then pricing is reasonable given all that it does, but if you're not, then you might find the pricing expensive."
"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 is average. Some of the costs are quite high depending on what the customer currently uses, but overall, it is not bad. I would not say that I would not recommend Intune based on the cost. I definitely would, but they can definitely improve on the cost. So overall, its cost is not bad."
"I am not that aware of the pricing, but as compared to other MDM solutions, Microsoft is providing a lot of things at the organizational level. So, it is quite reasonable as compared to other MDM solutions."
"We spend a lot of money on Intune licensing, and some of our users have to be double licensed just because of how our dev and corporate environments are segmented."
"It's a bit expensive from a licensing perspective, especially as we look to have organizations with tenants across the globe."
"Pricing depends on the features. Microsoft offers special packages if there are more than 10,000 users, and you may be able to get a reduced rate."
"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 can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
"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’s pricing is competitive."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"It is an open-source product."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 Business192
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise187
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: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.