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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs vCenter Configuration Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 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)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
vCenter Configuration Manager
Ranking in Configuration Management
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 9.5%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Configuration Manager is 2.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.4%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform9.5%
vCenter Configuration Manager2.0%
Other84.1%
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.
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Dev Ops Engineer at 11 East Capital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.
Nikhil Nikhil - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Operations Lead at TT Systems LLC
Compliance management has improved efficiency but licensing changes pose challenges
I am not using any advanced features or AI. I am employing a basic VMware vCenter setup for my infrastructure. Scalability has no major limitations, and the solution is efficient. Overall, it's satisfactory. I would rate the vCenter experience as seven out of ten due to concerns regarding license, pricing, and AI features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Intune not only saves costs by reducing the number of personnel needed but also offers a comprehensive solution for managing laptops, applications, security, individual access, and enrollment."
"I like how Intune deploys the policies and makes them customizable. You can deploy it through Intune and forget about it."
"Overall, Microsoft Intune is genuinely built for growth, catering well to both small teams and large enterprises with the same foundation and scaling smoothly without requiring a significant overhaul."
"It is quite policy-enabled, so you can build pretty much any policy to manage remote endpoints."
"The best part of Intune is application deployment. We can deploy an application to several users with a single click. We can use conditional access, granting access to users based on certain conditions, such as location, platform, etc."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"The feature that we can deploy policies and configuration settings and it will be applied to every user who is connected to it around the world just with an internet connection is very good."
"From my perspective, I appreciate the scalability in Microsoft Intune and the portal management, which is extremely intuitive and very simple to use."
"There are no agents by default, so adding a new server is a matter of a couple lines of configuration (on a new server and the configuration master)."
"The capacity to install products on the operating system is very valuable."
"Instead of spending several days going to each device and ripping out config and putting new config in, I just batched our branches, batched our data center, ran three jobs, and called it a day."
"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is quite stable. If you set it up correctly with the right configurations and there are no hiccups during installation and deployment, it will be stable. I'd give stability a rating of eight out of ten."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform are the agentless platform and writing the code is simple using the Yaml computer language."
"Ansible has brought a platform which has allowed us to automate a lot of services, not just server services, but network services as well."
"I like Ansible because it is: Easy to use, easy to read, easy to maintain, easy to support, and it works without an agent."
"The product's deployment phase was easy."
"The most valuable features of vCenter Configuration Manager are highly mature technology."
"By taking manual tasks and automating them, it provides a great value for the customer."
"vCenter alone is enough for me because vCenter is a cluster environment and cluster solution for virtualization environments."
"The most valuable features are vMotion and high availability, and I appreciate it because it's very easy to set up and configure new disks and servers."
"vCenter Configuration Manager is a stable solution that is very easy to manage and deploy."
"The platform is straightforward and user friendly."
"The technical support services are good."
 

Cons

"Automation has room for improvement in Microsoft Intune for fixing some errors."
"Intune could be improved by expanding its third-party patching capabilities for a more comprehensive solution."
"There is room for improvement in integration and security as well."
"Microsoft needs to strategize its licensing structure. When using Microsoft Intune, we bought a small scale of controls, only controlling part of the devices, though Microsoft Intune can do much more. The Intune Suite offers more features, allowing extensive integration with either internal or cloud environments without requiring third-party licensing. However, each feature has a separate license, making logistics and cost management difficult if not strategically bundled together."
"It would be great to see on-premises mailboxes and for the solution to have geofencing capabilities."
"Intune needs to incorporate more tools to reduce the number of third-party applications we rely on."
"There are a few security features that are not available in Microsoft Intune, when compared to other products."
"The solution could improve its flexibility."
"Ansible can face scalability issues, such as limitations when trying to scale up infrastructure. It might struggle with connection dropping or spawning additional VMs under certain conditions."
"They should think of this product as an end-to-end solution and begin to develop it that way."
"There should be consistency. I know that it is always changing, but when we are trying to get some users to do something in basic Ansible that they are not really interested in doing but their job requires them to do it, they start finding inconsistencies."
"Because Ansible is establishing SSH sessions to perform tasks, there is a limit on scalability."
"There needs to be improvement in the orchestration."
"We would like support for the post-integration of this product before cloud frameworks because right now their approach is to avoid using on-premises activities and move everything to the cloud."
"When you set up Playbooks, I may have one version of the Playbook, but another member of the team may have a different vision, and we will not know which version is correct. We want to have one central repository for managing the different versions of Playbooks, so we can have better collaboration among team members. This is our use case for using Git version control."
"What I would like to see is a refined Dashboard to see, when I log in: Here are all my jobs, here are how many times they've executed; some kind graphical stitching-together of the workflows and jobs, and how they're connected. Also, those "failed hosts," what does that mean? We have a problem, a failed host can be anything. Is SSH the reason it failed? Is the job template why it failed? It doesn't really distinguish that."
"The cost of this solution should be improved."
"There isn't a clear document covering all the errors. It would be helpful if the company provided better documentation for solving issues."
"It lacks the capability to manage the other systems."
"The product's high price is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Not very user friendly, too many configurations."
"This is a good solution but it has too many configurations for what it does. In that sense, it's not particularly user friendly and requires too many clicks."
"vCenter Configuration Manager could improve by having more integration."
"Users need to pay a licensing fee for the solution, which could be cheaper."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product is expensive."
"Intune is available as an individual product, but it also comes with Office 365 Premium or an Enterprise license, and the price varies for each version."
"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."
"Microsoft offers some licensing where it's included at no extra cost when customers are already using the licenses. In such a case, it's a really good value. If you have to buy the licensing for it, it's probably on par with other solutions. It isn't substantially more or less expensive. The great thing is that it is included in some of Microsoft's licensed packages. So, some customers don't have to spend additional money for it. Typically, most providers that support Intune do charge a management fee of some sort or some fee. Certainly, we're no exception."
"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 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 pricing is competitive, but it is not cheap."
"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
"The pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"The price of the solution is too expensive for us and we are looking to move to another solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, it is reasonably priced compared to competitors."
"We have to pay for the whole bundle and individual pricing is not available. One license costs us almost $200 every year."
"While the pricing is reasonable for large corporations, it presents a substantial financial challenge for medium-sized businesses."
"Users need to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."
"The pricing is mid-range so I rate it a six out of ten."
"The solution comes with three-year support. We have to renew the support annually after the three years are up."
"vCenter's pricing is reasonable, but nowadays, they are drastically increasing their prices, which is pathetic."
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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
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
7%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare 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 Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise20
 

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 the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Configuration Manager?
Nowadays, it is a bit expensive. It's costly, primarily due to the licensing aspect.
What needs improvement with vCenter Configuration Manager?
My impression on the impact of the real-time monitoring features of vCenter Configuration Manager is that it's somewh...
What is your primary use case for vCenter Configuration Manager?
My usual use cases for vCenter Configuration Manager mainly involve migration, shift and lift mainly, and some type o...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
vCM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Bank Al Bilad, Thomas-Krenn.AG, Pronto!, Unimed Juiz de Fora
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. vCenter Configuration Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.