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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

"IBM Workload Automation provides good performance and monitoring."
"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 whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."
"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."
"It has made our infrastructure more testable. We are able to build our infrastructure in CI, then are more confident in what we are deploying will work, not breaking everything."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to build playbooks. The learning curve is not that steep."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is valuable due to the simplicity of the YAML language."
"The automation capabilities streamline deployment processes, providing reliability and reducing manual intervention and errors."
"I like the fact that Ansible is agentless."
"Feature-wise, the solution is a good open-source software offering broad support. Also, it's reliable."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is quite stable. If you set it up correctly with the right configurations and there are no hiccups during installation and deployment, it will be stable. I'd give stability a rating of eight out of ten."
"Automation is valuable. It saves us time in performing tedious tasks or repetitive tasks."
 

Cons

"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"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."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"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."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"They should think of this product as an end-to-end solution and begin to develop it that way."
"The SSM connection access needs improvement"
"I have seen indications that the documentation needs improvement. They are providing a "How to Improve Your Documentation" presentation at this conference."
"The area which I feel can be improved is the custom modules. For example, there are something like 106 official modules available in the Ansible library. A year ago, that number was somewhere around 58. While Ansible is improving day by day, this can be improved more. For instance, when you need to configure in the cloud, you need to write up a module for that."
"The governance features could be improved."
"The scalability of the solution has some shortcomings."
"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 tool should allow us to create infrastructure. It has everything when it comes to management, but it lacks the provisioning aspect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 is a little bit expensive."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"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."
"It is a little pricey but it is affordable. It is not that bad."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
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.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.