Likelihood to Recommend Serena CM is well suited to highly controlled, audited, and process driven environments. It will allow strict segregation of duties, and change traceability. If implemented correctly it will help you quickly build trusts with your auditors. It is also well suited to environments that require constant branching and merging. Due to the complexity of the product and learning curve for your development and operations team it may be overkill in a small shop with loose rules
Read full review The thing I mentioned earlier where we're constantly dealing with federal regulations or new agents that they want us to install and deploy and just getting those out in a consistent manner in a canned installation via Playbook is ideal
Read full review Pros Code Promotion: Dimensions CM allows supervisors to control changes to code, in that they delegate requests to developers, and act as a gatekeeper prior to promoting to the next environment. This functionality is configurable so you can set up a workflow that best fits the structure and requirements of your own company. Code Repository for changes and versioning: Code can be checked out by item or by synchronizing folders. Code revisions can be compared against other revisions or work files. Item histories show which developers made which modifications, and which supervisor and operations personnel were involved in assigning the request and promoting the code to each environment. Additionally a pedigree will show a stream diagram which graphically displays branches and merges. Deployment: Serena Change Management offers help automating deployment including integrations with SVN and Jenkins. Its newer versions also have a powerful graphical deployment automation tool (Serena Deployment Automation- SDA). It comes with a certain amount of licenses built-in. If you have a many nodes to deploy to there will be separate licensing costs for that. Read full review Makes it easy to create and share automation in one central hub. Ansible content collections give me the ability to reuse code, making it rapid to carry out complex IT processes. Event-driven automation allows me to reduce manual tasks: it is rapid to know which action to take and respond automatically by receiving events from external apps automatically. Read full review Cons The only major negative that I have encountered with Serena CM product is that the very power and flexibility of the tool means there is a risk that you will make a mess of things. In other words it gives you plenty of rope to tangle yourself with. I recommend careful, well thought out deployments implementing the built in roles and workflows that can be turned on and configured, using a consistent methodology. My experience with the Serena help desk support has not been impressive. Though reasonably polite and diligent, the technicians were well trained, and often gave bad advise and terrible scripts. On several occasions I had to rewrite scripts they have me; if I had run them as provided they would have caused even more difficulties than the problem I was trying to solve. I speak of the support in the past tense because I conditioned myself not to call them, it was usually just easier to solve nay problems my self. They do have a good account management team though, and for any major issues you can go thru them. Read full review Workflows should have more flexible paths than just success or failure. The upgrade process can be challenging with differences in security and environment. There is an opportunity to add CICD functionality into the tool. For development, it would be nice to have the option of editing a repo directly from AAP to allow quick tests/reruns. Then, allow it to push the updates back or create a new branch/PR in GitHub. The RBAC is good but could use improvements. One example would be an option that allows admins to assume the access of another user to validate it works as expected. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are deploying Ansible at all levels of the organization
Read full review Usability the yaml is easy to write and most people can be taught to write basic playbooks in a few weeks
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating I spoke on this topic today!
Read full review Alternatives Considered Serena CM is superior to Microsoft
Team Foundation Server (
TFS ) in overall functionality, but does not have very good native integration with Microsoft. Therefore in a Microsoft centric shop with no audit needs ,
TFS would be better. Otherwise I would choose Serena CM
Read full review AAP doesn't truly stack up against any of the products mentioned except for
Aria Automation. But, it is extensible and open and has a lower cost to entry.
Read full review Return on Investment Serena has facilitated our annual completion of various audit and technology control certifications. These certifications make a huge difference to our company's reputation and bottom line. There has been no negative impact on our company. Read full review Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers automation and ML tools that allow me to automate complex IT tasks. Through automation analytics, it is seamless to gain full visibility into automation performance allowing me to make informed decisions. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform allows me to move rapidly from insights to action. Creating and sharing automation content in one place unify a team in one place hence enhancing real-time collaboration. Read full review ScreenShots