Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• the size of the vendor itself
• how stable the company is
• how long they have been in the market
• what product suites they have that can help us achieve our goal at the end of the day. 

We look for partners, not vendors per se, that can help us implement our vision with us, and that's why we like Automic.

I give it a good nine out of 10 at this time. The one piece that I think that could help leverage more of the tool is the scripting language barrier at this time. If that's not there, and some of the pieces that could be delivered faster, it might be adopted more out there in the market.

I would suggest look at the complete offering that's out there. I would suggest: Prove it out first with the use case that you have. We were not shy in terms of running some proofs of concept with a couple of big vendors out there, and then making them make the case why their product suits our use case. And don't be shy to restart if there is something that you think is not going right, make sure you fix the problem before it gets too late.

I would recommend not using ARA, but Automatic Workload Automation (AWA) because it is a more flexible tool. You can deploy and do release stuff on it.

Both Ansible and Atomic are good. Automic is more for complex installation for the enterprise. If I want to deploy applications such as Linux, AIX, Windows Server, and a Database and I have a complex environment, it's better to use Automic.

If I just have a Linux machine, it is best to use Ansible. I have heard that Ansible has improved its capabilities in the last couple of years.

We are very happy with this solution but the customers are not happy with the price, therefore I would rate Automic Continuous Delivery Automation an eight out of ten.

Get hands-on experience, because these solutions are very similar to each other on paper.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

From the customer's perspective, the cost of tooling versus the productivity business benefit that it would bring in. Automic excels in this area, because it provides a wonderful user interface which is easy to use.

I would say, when you go to proof of concept, bring your next-to-the-worst-case scenario of what you need to get done; not the most complex but close to it. Because whatever you'll be able to hash out during the proof of concept, it positions you for better success when you actually decide to roll out.

At this point in time we are not investing more because we already bought upfront. We are taking a wait-and-see attitude because, if the maturity of the platform plateaus, meaning we don't have new features, we might decide to move on. 

When we are looking for a new vendor, what is important to us is ease of migration. The other factor is the the currency of the platform, how current is it in terms of alignment to the market we are in.

I give it an eight out of 10 because it does about 60-70 percent of the work. What it does, if it's done correctly, it does well.

I would advise a colleague who is considering this type of solution to look out for the fact it doesn't support the new stuff. But if you're looking for solutions that are based on your existing, traditional infrastructure, I think that's good tool.

I am happy with the product.

I would rate the product as an eight out of 10.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher if the installation was easier and if their file transfers were faster.

It is a good solution. It is very stable and supporting for legacy environments. For complex environments, which have to be installed or managed, then it is a perfect solution.

We are at the starting point of our digital transformation and the speed up is just starting as everybody knows it is necessary. We can't stay with this manual installation, especially as the competition is not. 

Main criteria when selecting a vendor: A simple installation that they could use. 

They wanted a tool which could handle very complex environments with many dependencies and difficult workflows, but focus on installation first.

This product is very strong and, on the other hand, very complex. So they should involve more technical people in the beginning to ensure knowledge transfer, and continuous and quick integrations of applications into this solution. The best option is to create a dedicated automation team before the implementation.

The second important thing is that this solution provides only automated deployment and some orchestration as well, but deployment depends on all steps before, such as build and artifact preparation, testing, and provisioning. So others should use at least the automated build and artifact preparation and interconnect it with deployment. Then, they could achieve bigger benefits from automation.

I would absolutely recommend this product.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

Not a perfect ten because the user interface is brand new and it needs improvement. 

My advice to someone considering this solution is to be very flexible with this product. You can automate everything you want.

The naming of the object is very important because the user's rights depends on the naming of the object.

In the next release, I would like for them to include a workflow engine that I also can automate business processes and not just IT processes.