Buddy (formerly Springloops) is a SVN/Git source code management tool focused on web development teams. It allows users to code in parallel and share code safely concentrating on results, not on lost changes or overwritten files. With quick deployments, users get rapid collaboration in protected space.
$75
per month
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (acquired by Red Hat in 2015) is a foundation for building and operating automation across an organization. The platform includes tools needed to implement enterprise-wide automation, and can automate resource provisioning, and IT environments and configuration of systems and devices. It can be used in a CI/CD process to provision the target environment and to then deploy the application on it.
Springloops is the best tool for deployment to any environment. Especially, the auto-deployment feature on development servers is essential for the early stages of development. The built-in source control mechanisms are a perfect combination of ease of use and a rich feature set that allows the development team to have an easier and more complete view of each part of the project. A section that is lacking is time tracking - but then this is not the main usage of the service.
Red Hat Ansible automates server management, configuration updates, and deployments across our server infrastructure, keeping everything consistent, reducing human error, and saving time. Also provides detailed reports on what is done and uses role-based access controls to keep systems secure by controlling who can make changes.
It reduces custom scripting efforts because everything can be scripted in simple, human-readable YAML playbooks.
Not only servers, but also network devices, VMs, Containers, Kubernetes clusters, etc., can be automated via Ansible, showcasing its extensive list of supported devices.
It is agentless, which makes it lightweight and allows for easy integration into CI/CD and GitOps pipelines.
Many Tier-1 telcos use Ansible for Day 0/1/2 automation of RAN, transport, and core infrastructure (e.g., network function lifecycle management, NE configuration push, patching VNFs).
I can't think of any right now because I've heard about the Lightspeed and I'm really excited about that. Ansible has been really solid for us. We haven't had any issues. Maybe the upgrade process, but other than that, as coming from a user, it's awesome.
Apart from being a great versioning control system Springloops offers the options to automatically deploy code to multiple systems. This feature alone is a determining factor to renew Springloops over and over again. Another important factor is that it offers a full set of tools that help the team during the development cycle. No switching between time-tracking to project management. This is a real time-saver.
Even is if it's a great tool, we are looking to renew our licence for our production servers only. The product is very expensive to use, so we might look for a cheaper solution for our non-production servers. One of the solution we are looking, is AWX, free, and similar to AAP. This is be perfect for our non-production servers.
Easy to use, automatic deployments, comments on projects are only a few factors. Multiple servers per project is another must-have feature. User permissions and rights offer granular control on access to the system
It's overall pretty easy to use foe all the applications I've mentioned before: configuring hosts, installing packages through tools like apt, applying yaml, making changes across wide groups of hosts, etc. Its not a 10 because of the inconveinience of the yaml setup, and the time to write is not worth it for something applied one time to only a few hosts
Great in almost every way compared to any other configuration management software. The only thing I wish for is python3 support. Other than that, YAML is much improved compared to the Ruby of Chef. The agentless nature is incredibly convenient for managing systems quickly, and if a member of your term has no terminal experience whatsoever they can still use the UI.
I rarely use it but when I need it the team is there. During the initial steps of Springloops, I had close contact with one of the founders. He provided support to me over Skype! He didn't have to but he did. We had a couple of long talks about some issues I was facing. He has there regardless of time. It was a great experience
There is a lot of good documentation that Ansible and Red Hat provide which should help get someone started with making Ansible useful. But once you get to more complicated scenarios, you will benefit from learning from others. I have not used Red Hat support for work with Ansible, but many of the online resources are helpful.
Springloops has a built-in feature that is lacking from Bitbucket (at least on the out-of-the-box functionality). Deployment of projects to various servers/development stages. The process is so easy and painless that even remote servers can act as local environments. This is a feature that differentiates Springloops from other solutions that require other tools to perform the same task.
AAP compares favorably with Terraform and Power Automate. I don't have much experience with Terraform, but I find AAP and Ansible easier to use as well as having more capabilities. Power Platform is also an excellent automation tool that is user friendly but I feel that Ansible has more compatibility with a variety of technologies.
POSITIVE: currently used by the IT department and some others, but we want others to use it.
NEGATIVE: We need less technical output for the non-technical. It should be controllable or a setting within playbooks. We also need more graphical responses (non-technical).
POSITIVE: Always being updated and expanded (CaC, EDA, Policy as Code, execution environments, AI, etc..)
