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OpenText Network Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

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 Network Automation
Ranking in Network Automation
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Network Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of OpenText Network Automation is 2.9%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 17.7%, down from 23.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1480065 - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows to upload necessary firmware to your device and perform the upgrade
With OpenText Network Automation, firmware can be uploaded for specific devices. If you need to upgrade a device, you can use this tool, though it may not apply to all devices. The software allows you to upload the necessary firmware to your device and perform the upgrade. Additionally, it enables you to check multiple devices for specific configurations and automates the search process and the configuration of multiple devices.
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

"When compared with SolarWinds, it is more user-friendly, and tasks can be completed more quickly."
"With OpenText Network Automation, firmware can be uploaded for specific devices. If you need to upgrade a device, you can use this tool, though it may not apply to all devices."
"Pushing the network configuration to bulk devices. This saves a considerable amount of time that the engineer spends in pushing the network configuration."
"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to build playbooks. The learning curve is not that steep."
"Its checking and validating ensures our packages are properly patched."
"The easy-to-read syntax for YAML files and the interoperability between modules are valuable."
"One of the most valuable features is that Ansible is agentless. It does not have dependencies, other than Python, which is very generic in terms of dependencies for all systems and for any environment. Being agentless, Ansible is very convenient for everything."
"I like Ansible's ease of use. If you have Linux skills, you can create a reusable template for the dependencies and other configurations. I can store the templates in a repository and share them with my customers or other developers. It's a popular solution, so there is a large user base that can share templates."
"The ease of being able to use the modules and collections to define what our business processes are is valuable. We are able to give non-technical people the ability to look at a process and say, "We need a step here. Someone do something and put it right here.""
 

Cons

"Compatibility of the devices needs to be enhanced, as it seems to be limited."
"The tool performs slowly."
"Level one administration task can be defined in Micro Focus Network Automation but it could be more simplified."
"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."
"The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved."
"There should be better Windows support. We have had to develop a lot of our own roles because of the Windows platform. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux ones existed but not the Windows versions, so I have had to develop a bunch of Windows ones."
"At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue."
"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."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"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."
"On the Dashboard, when you view a template run, it shows all the output. There is a search filter, but it would be nice to able to select one server in that run and then see all that output from just that one server, instead of having to do the search on that one server and find the results."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is reasonable, but if you compare it with other network Operation Management tools that are available on the market, it's expensive."
"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."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
"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."
"It’s an open-source tool."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
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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
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Network Automation?
There is a team responsible for network automation to check devices for compliance. I connect to the device, make the necessary configurations, and inform the team that certain rules must be remove...
What advice do you have for others considering Micro Focus Network Automation?
When managing a large number of devices, network automation simplifies the process of locating specific configurations. For example, if you need to find a particular configuration, network automati...
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 Network Automation, HPE Network Automation
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tech Mahindra, Avea, China Merchants Bank, NNIT, Distinctive Software Solutions, Virgin Media, NEC Australia, Osiatis, Hostworks, Retegal, Allianz Shared Infrastructure Services SE (ASIC), State of Kansas Division of Information Services and Communications (DISC)
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Network Automation vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.