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Harness vs IBM Rational Build Forge comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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

Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (31st), Cloud Cost Management (15th)
IBM Rational Build Forge
Ranking in Build Automation
23rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Harness is 6.6%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Rational Build Forge is 0.8%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Linwei Yuan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline microservices deployment with integrated execution pipelines and comprehensive monitoring
Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place. It is very convenient since we have many microservices, so having one platform for all of them is beneficial. The dashboard allows me to monitor all core services' deployment status in one place, making it easier to find bugs and check logs.
AD
Great reporting features and very functional
The solution could be more user friendly. Trying to train somebody on it can be difficult. If you're in this field, you kind of learn the tools, but trying to show a PM how to find report sheets to pull data was difficult. I had to show them how to write the queries and pull the data that they needed. It's not a layman's solution. If you're working with a programmer or with an architect, you won't have issues trying to relay how to utilize the tool. It was for those who cut the checks where there were problems enabling them to pull the data they required. I guess the answer is DevOps, but it depends on your environment. Just being able to sign into dashboards and get accurate results was my biggest thing with my PMs on my projects. They like charts and pie graphs, the ability to see things at a glance data where they could make decisions on the fly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"All features are useful. Our customer doesn't have any complaints about the tool. It works pretty well for what they want and what they need to do."
"Very good reporting features."
 

Cons

"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem. It is hard to identify whether the problem is because of low memory in the server or some configuration in Rational Build Forge. The error logs are not very detailed, and they should provide more information. It should also have more integration with third-party tools. It would be great to have more integration with third-party tools."
"Not user friendly for the layman."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
What needs improvement with Harness?
Previously, when deploying a version that had been deployed successfully before, it sometimes failed upon trying again, which seems to be an intermittent issue about stability. I prefer the previou...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
I used Harness for CICD, and it served as the release platform that our team used for Java applications. We do Java microservices, and we used it to deploy them.
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Armory
Rational Build Forge
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Cars.com
Find out what your peers are saying about Harness vs. IBM Rational Build Forge and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.