Best Automation

To find the right IT automation software for your business, read this review of the most popular IT automation tools.

Software that supports the development, management, and monitoring of automated processes for IT enterprises is called IT Process Automation Software.

Best Automation

This is a difficult task to manage since IT processes are spread across multiple environments, tools, and technologies. Using IT Automation Tools will help you manage them effectively.

Process automation software automates repetitive tasks and manual processes to reduce human error and cost. The tools also provide monitoring and management capabilities for distributed networks.

What Is IT Automation?

Automation of jobs, batch processes, and workflows in the IT department is known as IT automation. A wide range of tools, practices, and capabilities are included.

It can be used for a variety of purposes. The field is rapidly evolving and incorporates new technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence.

By automating workflows from multiple sources, IT automation tools can integrate a variety of digital tools.

Such tools include Workload Automation, Batch Process Automation, Big Data Automation, Business Process Automation, Digital Process Automation, Enterprise Automation, Robotic Process Automation, etc.

  • IT automation is used to automate and schedule repetitive, time-consuming, and error-prone tasks. For example, daily batch processes or large data transfers. These tools help with developing versatile and scalable architectures.
  • Benefits: It will save a lot of time, reduce operating costs, and will increase efficiency.
  • Challenges faced by organizations in adopting IT Automation: Lack of executive support, lack of tools, lack of processes, homegrown tools that are difficult to change, budget, etc.

What Makes IT Automation Software Different From Workload Automation Software?

Automation of IT processes can be accomplished by using Workload Automation Software.

Automation software provides endless integrations and is an intelligent tool. With it, you can build, monitor, and manage end-to-end processes.

These tools enable centralized orchestration. Using these tools, you can automate Business Processes, Data Centers, Infrastructures, and Secure File Transfers.

Benefits of IT Automation Software

Automation tools will allow you to automate workflows without scripting and in less than half the time. They will reduce operating costs and increase efficiency. You will receive security-driven automation. You will be able to provision resources in real time.

These tools will provide intelligent analytics. You can monitor workflows in detail. By monitoring workflows in detail, job failures will be significantly reduced.

There are some tools that provide a no-code workflow designer that allows you to integrate directly with popular tools such as Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, etc.

Additionally, it can provide you with platform-agnostic integrations you can drag-and-drop to build, automate, and orchestrate workflows.

A high degree of customization of alerts will improve workload execution and SLAs. Utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence reduces bottlenecks and slack time by optimizing resources and workload placement.

The Orchestration Hub allows you to coordinate and consolidate a variety of solutions like Process Automation, Business Process Management, Business Applications, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Back Office, etc.

List of Top IT Automation Tools

ActiveBatch

ActiveBatch is best for orchestrating your automated processes. It is suitable for medium to large businesses.

The ActiveBatch IT Process Automation Software integrates, automates, and orchestrates your entire IT landscape. Among its powerful features are IT process automation. 

ActiveBatch enables seamless integration and coordination of IT and Business Process Automation tasks with a low-code workflow automation and enterprise job scheduler.

This software has features and capabilities that can be used to monitor and manage distributed IT environments. ActiveBatch tools can be used to drive innovation and digital transformation. It acts as a central hub for orchestration.

Features:

  • A wide range of event triggers like email, FTP file events, message queues are supported in ActiveBatch’s event-driven architecture.
  • By scheduling a business day, you will be able to run workflows when needed.
  • Workflows can be monitored in detail.
  • The process modeling features will be helpful to developers for optimizing and testing workflows before going live.
  • ActiveBatch has Intelligent Automation Tools that utilize Machine Learning and AI.

ActiveBatch provides enterprise job scheduler capabilities and low-code workflow automation through its low-code workflow automation feature.

You can customize the alerts, which will help you improve workload execution and service level agreements. By using its integrated Jobs Library, you will be able to streamline development and automate faster.

Redwood RunMyJobs

The Redwood RunMyJobs workload automation platform accelerates digital transformation. Provides functionalities such as process creation, delivering real-time results, proactive monitoring, and reducing manual intervention.

Features:

  • Using Redwood RunMyJobs, SAP, Oracle, and other systems can be orchestrated.
  • It enables the coordination and management of data pipelines to Hadoop, Redshift, etc.
  • Simple API wizards make it easy to integrate REST or SOAP web services.
  • Automated processes can be published as microservices or interactive service endpoints.

Overall, Redwood RunMyJobs can be used to automate anything. All the connectors are included. It offers features for automating processes in on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments. The pricing is straightforward, and the security is uncompromising.

BMC Control-M

BMC Control-M is a workload automation software. It simplifies the orchestration of business applications. AWS and Azure integrations simplify workflows across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Features:

  • Integrating workflow orchestration into your CI/CD pipeline will help you deliver better apps faster.
  • It follows Jobs-as-Code, extending Dev and Ops collaboration.
  • As a result, you will be able to deliver data-driven outcomes faster and manage big data workflows more efficiently.
  • Through intelligent file movement and enhanced visibility, you can control your file transfer operations.

The Control-M system streamlines application workflow orchestration. As a result, it will improve SLAs and make it easier to identify, schedule, manage, and monitor workflows.

Broadcom CA Automatic

Broadcom offers a digital business automation platform. Workload Automation, Self-service Automation, Big Data Automation, SAP Automation, and Workload Automation for Oracle Technologies are all supported.

It is an open API automation platform that can integrate your tools and applications across the enterprise.

Through this API-driven feature, you can create one comprehensive automation strategy. Across development, test, and production environments, it can be used to automate policies.

Features:

  • Broadcom CA Automic is an incredibly scalable platform. The platform can scale up to 100K agents and 100M jobs per instance.
  • It provides features for infrastructure management, allows developers to code automation artifacts directly and supports automation as an artifact.
  • It supports mainframe, distributed, virtual, and cloud environments.
  • It guarantees zero downtime upgrades.

Broadcom CA Automic eliminates up to 90% of manual errors and increases efficiency. During the installation of new versions or patches, a maintenance window will not be required.

Broadcom CA IT Process Automation Manager

The IT Process Automation Manager is a tool for automating the delivery of IT services. Processes will be defined, automated, and orchestrated across the organization.

Automation of IT processes across multiple organizations and systems will be possible. The time to deliver services will be shortened with this tool. Standards and compliance policies will be enforced across departments.

Features:

  • The IT Process Automation Manager will speed up service delivery.
  • It will enforce policies and improve standards.
  • The provision of business services, applications, and infrastructure will be faster.
  • Manual errors will be reduced.

As a result of automating the IT processes with IT Process Automation Manager, you will reduce operational expenses, increase staff productivity, speed up IT service delivery, improve service quality, and enforce compliance policies.

SMA OpCon

For digital transformation, SMA Technologies offers a platform called OpCon that automates workloads. Using OpCon, you can automate repetitive tasks.

This allows you to create repeatable and reliable workflows. You can manage workflows from a single platform. An automation platform will be used by the entire enterprise.

Features:

  • SMA Technologies OpCon eliminates complexity and integrates globally.
  • ADS or OpenLDAP will allow you to manage users. Role-based privileges can be assigned, data can be secured, and audit trails can be created.
  • Disaster recovery can be fully automated.
  • Auditing and reporting will be simplified.

As a result of OpCon’s integration of systems, applications, and people across the enterprise, digital transformation will be accelerated.

Through OpCon, everything from tools to applications and legacy systems to cloud can be managed. It has a steep learning curve, according to reviews.

Microsoft System Center

Data center management will be easier with Microsoft System Center. System Center comes in two editions, the Data Center Edition and the Standard Edition. The Data Center Edition manages virtual servers, while the Standard Edition manages physical servers.

Features:

  • Endpoint protection is provided by Microsoft System Center.
  • A service manager and orchestrator are provided.
  • Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager are included.

It will be easier to manage numerous workstations or servers with this solution. Customer reviews indicate that it has a robust set of features and is the most effective patch management solution.

Chef

Chef INFRA automates the configuration of infrastructure. It ensures that every system is configured correctly and consistently. The infrastructure is defined as a code.

Chef INFRA will ensure the automatic correction of configuration drift and universal application of configuration changes through a continuous evaluation of the servers for the desired state.

Features:

  • Chef INFRA’s Infrastructure Automation functionality makes infrastructure configurations testable, portable, and auditable.
  • Patch Management automates the validation and configuration of your infrastructure.
  • The system will configure all systems against the desired state, ensuring that every system is configured correctly and consistently.

Ultimately, Chef INFRA ensures flexible, versionable, testable, and human-readable configuration policies. Customers have been pleased with its configuration management capabilities.

Puppet

Relay by Puppet assists you with event-driven automation. Cloud providers, DevOps tools, and APIs can be connected.

Relay orchestrates actions on downstream services based on signals from your existing DevOps tools. From an ever-growing library of steps, you can build the right workflow.

The workflows will be stored in the cloud and accessible to all authorized team members. With Puppet Enterprise, you can automate everything across your multi-cloud infrastructure. It offers agentless and agent-based automation in one platform.

Features:

  • Among the features of Puppet Relay are event-based triggers, connections, and modular steps.
  • This feature allows you to add an approval step to your workflow.
  • You’ll have a bird’s eye view of all operations with Relay.
  • The Delegate Authority features allow you to assign roles to team members, ranging from view only to operator to approver.
  • Puppet Enterprise provides predefined workflows for building, testing, and deploying infrastructure.

Verdict: Relay is a platform for all your cloud automation use cases. YAML-based configuration allows you to customize and extend workflows. Steps can be added with ease using the integration library. 

Cloud, infrastructure, or services can be delivered and managed with Puppet Enterprise. It is best used as the best configuration tool, according to reviews.

Ansible

Ansible is an IT Automation platform that makes it simple to automate apps and infrastructure. Application deployment, configuration management, and continuous delivery are possible with this tool. It is designed for multi-tire deployments.

Ansible’s architecture is efficient. Connecting to your nodes, it will push out small programs called “Ansible Modules” to them. These are the resource models of the desired state of your system.

Ansible will execute these modules and remove them when they are finished. No servers, daemons, or databases are required.

Features:

  • Automating deployments, managing complex deployments, and speeding up productivity are all possible with the platform.
  • Teams of IT professionals can use it together.
  • This is an agentless IT automation platform.
  • It can be used by anyone.

A verdict: Ansible helps you automate Infrastructure, Applications, Networks, Containers, Security, and the Cloud.

Reviews indicate that the product is easy to use and good for CI/CD, orchestration, and workflow automation.

Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source automation server. It is a leading tool that offers several plugins to help with building, deploying, and automating any project.

It is a self-contained Java application. It is ready to run right out of the box. It supports Windows, Mac, and other UNIX-like operating systems.

It is possible to set up and configure Jenkins using its web-interface. It also includes on-the-fly error checking and built-in help, making it easy to configure.

Features:

  • Continuous Delivery is possible with Jenkins.
  • Jenkins is useful for building, testing, and deploying applications across a variety of platforms.
  • Many tools in the CI/CD toolchain can be integrated with it through hundreds of plugins.
  • The solution is extensible.

Jenkins is the platform for building great things at any scale. The platform is extensible and offers nearly unlimited possibilities.

Favro

The Favro app helps you plan and organize your work. Four easy-to-learn building blocks make up the solution: Cards, Boards, Collections, and Relations.

The cards can be used for a variety of tasks such as content creation, goals, etc. In Favro, the managers can view the status of the work without interfering with the team’s work.

Features:

  • In cards, you can describe the tasks for multiple teams, along with their workflows.
  • Cards can be on multiple boards, allowing for cross-team collaboration.
  • On the board, cards can be viewed in multiple ways, such as Kanban, Timeline, etc.
  • Through Favro Collections, all boards can be viewed on one screen.
  • By using Favro Relations, everyone in the organization can understand the actual interaction and navigation between horizontal and vertical teams.

Overall, Favro is the most agile tool and an all-in-one planning and organizing solution. Feedback can be given in real-time, and collaboration can be done in real-time. Newbies, team leaders, and CEOs can all benefit from it.

Conclusion

IT Automation Software features ease of use, scalability, reporting & alerting capabilities, and the ability to work across environments are the most important characteristics.

ActiveBatch is our top recommendation based on our research.

Other good choices include BMC Control-M, Broadcom CA Automic, Broadcom CA IT Process Automation Manager, and SMA OpCon.

All but Jenkins are commercial tools. Jenkins is free and open-source. This article should help you choose the right IT Automation tool for your business.