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Chef vs Digital.ai Agility comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Chef
Ranking in Release Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (16th), Configuration Management (17th)
Digital.ai Agility
Ranking in Release Automation
11th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (14th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (9th), Value Stream Management Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Digital.ai Agility is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Arun S . - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 14, 2023
Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve
Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed. The solution is good to manage multiple large infrastructures. We can have 10 to 10,000 users using this solution and it manages them well.
Debbie Brey - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 18, 2022
A scalable, full-package solution with a tech support team that bends over backwards to help
My team is currently using this solution as our backlog management tool. We have both an on-prem version and a public cloud. We have some traditional software development teams that are using the on-prem version. For our cloud version, right now we have non-software teams that are experimenting…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"I wanted to monitor a hybrid cloud environment, one using AWS and Azure. If I have to provision/orchestrate between multiple cloud platforms, I can use Chef as a one-stop solution, to broker between those cloud platforms and orchestrate around them, rather than going directly into each of the cloud-vendors' consoles."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"It can generate reports showing a burndown chart, burnup chart, and the planned vs actual velocity."
"Agility is highly flexible. It can do much more than what our client is doing with it. They use it in a defined way. Some at that company have a much broader knowledge of agile and SAFe, but they're given applications and a mandated way to work. We had to work within their parameters and provide an accurate transition so the data would be mapped and pushed through."
"With some of the other tools, you have to buy 20 different plugins to get to the same capability that comes with the basic Agility capability."
"It allows my clients to have one central tool to manage their agile projects."
"For visualization capabilities, the automation capabilities make it possible to support the different personas. The features and capabilities are excellent and come with excellent support."
 

Cons

"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"The machine learning features are a new capability but could be improved. This is being worked by Digital.ai currently. Multicolor simulation, specifically, could be improved."
"Improve how to create and track releases. Currently, I have to create child projects."
"The user interface can be improved by adding Save, Edit, Add, Cancel, and Return buttons to the popup windows that are displayed when you click on a child item."
"In my work as a contractor, it's always frustrating when a client has multiple software applications that don't talk to each other and they all perform the same function. That presents a huge challenge between their IT groups."
"There is room for improvement in getting the analytics portion of the solution more integrated with the rest of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."
"Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."
"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"You get what you pay for. Don't let your development teams dictate what the portfolio management team should use as the main tool."
"Comparing the pricing to other products, I think this solution is in the middle."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Insurance Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chef?
Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
What needs improvement with Chef?
Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
VersionOne Lifecycle, VersionOne, CollabNet VersionOne, Digital.ai Continuum
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Siemens Health Services (HS), Cerner Corporation, Aaron's, Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, Kelley Blue Book, AOL, Axway, Tideworks, bwin Interactive Entertainment, AG, Intergraph, Eos Group, PeopleCube, Liquid Machines
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Digital.ai Agility and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.