HCL BigFix vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
HCL BigFix
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
BigFix, now supported by HCL Technologies since the acquisition of BigFix from IBM in 2018, is an endpoint management solution providing endpoint visibility and IT asset discovery, automated endpoint patching (BigFix Lifecycle and BigFix Patch) policy enforcement (BigFix Compliance), and software asset discovery for licensed and unlicensed software (BigFix Inventory).N/A
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.
$5,000
per year
Pricing
HCL BigFixRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic Tower
5,000
per year
Enterprise Tower
10,000
per year
Premium Tower
14,000
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCL BigFixAnsible
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HCL BigFixRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Features
HCL BigFixRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Configuration Management
Comparison of Configuration Management features of Product A and Product B
HCL BigFix
-
Ratings
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
8.5
139 Ratings
6% above category average
Infrastructure Automation00 Ratings9.0133 Ratings
Automated Provisioning00 Ratings8.7130 Ratings
Parallel Execution00 Ratings8.7123 Ratings
Node Management00 Ratings8.3115 Ratings
Reporting & Logging00 Ratings7.6129 Ratings
Version Control00 Ratings8.4114 Ratings
Best Alternatives
HCL BigFixRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Small Businesses
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Score 10.0 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
KACE Systems Management Appliance
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Score 9.1 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
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Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
KACE Systems Management Appliance
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Score 9.1 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
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Score 8.6 out of 10
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User Ratings
HCL BigFixRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(5 ratings)
9.4
(208 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(5 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(100 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
HCL BigFixRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
HCLSoftware
HCL BigFix is well-suited:
  1. Patch Management for Diverse Devices: HCL BigFix is ideal for organizations with a diverse range of devices, including laptops, desktops, cloud, virtual machines, and mobile devices. Its endpoint management functionality enables seamless patching across various operating systems such as Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Linux.
  2. Comprehensive Patch Management: With HCL BigFix, organizations can achieve comprehensive patch management across their IT infrastructures. It ensures that all endpoints, regardless of the operating system, receive timely and secure patches, reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing overall security.
  3. Troubleshooting and Monitoring: HCL BigFix excels in providing a dashboard that effectively displays problematic and functional machines. This feature allows IT teams to quickly identify and address issues, improving overall troubleshooting efficiency.
    However, there are some scenarios where HCL BigFix may be less appropriate or areas for improvement: 1. Coverage Expansion: It is important for HCL BigFix to continue expanding its coverage to include all possible resources installed within the IT infrastructure. Ensuring comprehensive coverage can enhance its effectiveness. 2.On-Site and OS Upgrades: Optimizing the process of on-site and operating system upgrades can help streamline the deployment process further. Improvements in this area would contribute to a smoother and more efficient upgrade experience. 3.Communication Speed: Enhancing the speed of communication between the HCL BigFix agent and the server can help improve the overall responsiveness and efficiency of the solution.
  4. Pricing Optimization: Adjusting the pricing of HCL BigFix to be more cost-effective would make it more accessible and attractive to organizations of different sizes and budgets.
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Red Hat
I'm going to say it is best suited for configuration management. Like I said, patching even with security, things of that nature. Probably less suited is hardware management, but Red Hat IBM/IBM has Terraform for that. So it's a trade off.
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Pros
HCLSoftware
  • Software inventory.
  • Patch deployment.
  • Patch review.
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Red Hat
  • Debugging is easy, as it tells you exactly within your job where the job failed, even when jumping around several playbooks.
  • Ansible seems to integrate with everything, and the community is big enough that if you are unsure how to approach converting a process into a playbook, you can usually find something similar to what you are trying to do.
  • Security in AAP seems to be pretty straightforward. Easy to organize and identify who has what permissions or can only see the content based on the organization they belong to.
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Cons
HCLSoftware
  • The patching function is difficult for RedHat Linux servers, and can be improved.
  • The site configuration and access control appears to be cumbersome.
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Red Hat
  • Better documentation of how all the options/parameters are meant to be used (when creating things like jobs, templates, inventories, etc)
  • More recommendations of best practices as far as the best way to organize job templates, workflows, roles. Much can be found on how to organize pure Ansible, but not so much for AAP specifically.
  • I have found some things that seem like they should be easy but are not possible. Things like moving a host from one inventory to a different inventory. As far as I know this is not possible and requires deletion and recreation. Maybe I just don't know how this could be done or don't understand the design decisions behind this?
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Likelihood to Renew
HCLSoftware
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
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.
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Usability
HCLSoftware
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
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
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Performance
HCLSoftware
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
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.
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Support Rating
HCLSoftware
Recently we noticed the customer service on the support has dropped compared to when we first deployed the software.
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Red Hat
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.
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Implementation Rating
HCLSoftware
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
I spoke on this topic today!
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Alternatives Considered
HCLSoftware
We have significantly enhanced our ability to patch desktops, including laptops, desktop, cloud, virtual machines and other mobile devices used by end-users. BigFix's endpoint management functionality allows us to seamlessly patch a wide range of operating systems, such as Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Linux systems, ensuring comprehensive patch management across IT infrastructures. We have established a track record of delivering secure and hassle-free patching solutions to our clients
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Red Hat
I used puppet prior to moving to open source Ansible and eventually to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. I appreciate the agentless approach of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and feel that its deterministic approach to applying code is superior to puppet
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Return on Investment
HCLSoftware
  • When there is a need to patch a Windows System it has worked
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Red Hat
  • 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..)
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ScreenShots