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IBM Workload Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Workload Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (12th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Workload Automation and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Workload Automation is designed for Workload Automation and holds a mindshare of 7.2%, down 8.4% compared to last year.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Configuration Management, holds 17.8% mindshare, down 18.3% since last year.
Workload Automation
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ilhami Arikan - PeerSpot reviewer
With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes
Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.
Surya Chapagain - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to manage and simple to learn
We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is its holistic view, which helps me find technical solutions quickly. For instance, if a customer has an issue completing their workload within a specific time frame, the tool provides enough information to identify and resolve the issue. One of the main challenges is dealing with data infrastructure problems and pending updates. Workload Automation helps me leverage current AI capabilities to recommend architectural updates to avoid these issues. It also allows me to balance CPU usage effectively, ensuring service level agreements are met. The interface is user-friendly and facilitates this process smoothly."
"The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years"
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"Having the Dashboard from an admin point of view, and seeing how all the projects and all the jobs lay out, is helpful."
"On the network side, I already have a lot of our firewall related processes automated. If it's not automated all the way from the ticket system, our network team members, our tier-one guys in India, can just go into the Tower web interface and fill in a couple of survey questions."
"It was easy to read and learn. It is a YAML-based syntax, which makes it easily understand and pick up."
"The solution is capable of integrating with many applications and devices in comparison to BigFix."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is valuable due to the simplicity of the YAML language."
"Since it is in YAML, if I have to explain it to somebody else, they can easily understand it."
"The solution can scale."
"It is agentless. I don't have to think about which client system my unit has understanding in or not, because I can execute from my system. It will go and configure it, and any module that it is looking for will be shipped out."
 

Cons

"The solution should offer more free technical sessions to customers so that they can gain more experience or learn more about how to use it."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"To improve IBM Workload Automation, I suggest enhancing automation features further, as more automation would be beneficial. The product is good enough for my current customers, but improving technical support and pricing would be welcome. We often need quicker responses and better solutions than we can manage manually. These improvements would make the product even better."
"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"Additional features could be added."
"The user interface on the Ansible Tower product could be better, but it is functional."
"In Community, there's a lot of effort towards testing, standardizing, and testing for module development to role development, which is why Molecule is now becoming real. Same thing with Zuul, which we are starting to implement. Zulu tests out modules from third-party sources, like ourselves, and verifies that the modules work before they are committed to the code. Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there."
"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."
"The product could do a better job at building infrastructure."
"In modern infrastructure, there are more than just servers. The initial server-centric approach in Ansible is a bit strange."
"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."
"There needs to be improvement in the orchestration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"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."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Educational Organization
32%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?
IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach. For example, IBM still refers to machines as 'workstations,' whereas other systems, like Control-M, use m...
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 have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...
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 the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, Redwood Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.