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OpenText Cloud Service 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

OpenText Cloud Service Auto...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (36th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

OpenText Cloud Service Automation and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. OpenText Cloud Service Automation is designed for Cloud Management and holds a mindshare of 0.8%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Configuration Management, holds 16.6% mindshare, down 18.9% since last year.
Cloud Management
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

SunpritSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
A user friendly solution that makes it easy to submit and view jobs
The most valuable feature of Micro Focus Cloud Service is how user-friendly the solution is. Traditionally, when we use a mainframe system to submit jobs, we have to see the spool or any error we might get in the spool. It is very command-based and uses a green screen, which is not user-friendly. Micro Focus enterprise makes it easy to submit and view jobs. We just have to log into the particular portal, go to the catalog and view any files we want. The same can be said about submitting jobs. We know what JCL we want to submit, give it the path, and then submit it with no command required. It is very user-friendly.
Muralitharan KS - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient server management and detailed reporting with flexible deployment capabilities
We are primarily using Ansible for automation purposes as it is a configuration management tool. It is utilized for various activities such as DNS activity, changes to web servers, virtual host settings, and other day-to-day tasks, all of which are templated in Ansible Ansible allows us to manage…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Micro Focus Cloud Service is how user friendly the solution is."
"The tool's most valuable feature is life cycle management."
"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."
"Ansible Tower provides a GUI, which is an enhancement, and a well-liked feature by operation teams."
"This solution allows us to stitch a lot of different parts of the workflow together."
"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening. When we do get a new VM, we have been able to bring on a provisioned machine in less than a day. This morning alone, I provisioned two machines within an hour. I am talking about hardening, installing antivirus software on it, and creating user accounts because the Playbooks were predesigned. From the time we got the servers to the actual hand-off, it takes less than an hour. We are talking about having the servers actually authenticate Red Hat Satellites and run the yum updates. All of that can be done within an hour."
"The solution is very simple to use."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
"RBAC is great around Organizations and I can use that backend as our lab. Ingesting stuff into the JSON logs, into any sort of logging collector; it works with Splunk and there are other collectors as well. It supports Sumo and that helps, I can go create reports in Sumo Logic. Workflows are an interesting feature. I can collect a lot of templates and create a workflow out of them."
"When you have an enterprise-level number of network devices, the ability to quickly push out security updates to thousands of devices is the biggest thing"
 

Cons

"I would like fewer restrictions as a software tester."
"OpenText Cloud Service Automation needs to incorporate easier installation. It should improve skills and quality of support."
"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."
"They should think of this product as an end-to-end solution and begin to develop it that way."
"Some of the Cisco modules could be expanded, which would be great, along with not having to do so much coding in the background to make it work."
"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."
"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."
"Documentation could be improved. Many times, if I'm looking for something, I have to Google it in a lot of places, then figure out what the best approach will be. There are some best practices documents, but they don't give you the information."
"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."
"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OpenText Cloud Service Automation's pricing is average."
"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"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."
"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
"The pricing is okay."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Cloud Service Automation?
The tool's most valuable feature is life cycle management.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Cloud Service Automation?
OpenText Cloud Service Automation needs to incorporate easier installation. It should improve skills and quality of support.
What advice do you have for others considering Micro Focus Cloud Service Automation?
We have large customers for OpenText Cloud Service Automation. I rate it a nine out of ten.
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

Micro Focus Cloud Service Automation, Cloud Service Automation Manager, HPE Cloud Service Automation
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China Merchants Bank, Osiatis
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, VMware, IBM and others in Cloud Management. Updated: July 2025.
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