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OpenText Dimensions CM vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    OpenText Dimensions CM

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ADimensions CM is Software Change and Configuration Management for Agile development, developed by Serena Software and now sold by OpenText.N/A

    Ansible

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AThe 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

    Splunk Observability Cloud

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ASplunk Observability Cloud aims to enable operational agility and better customer experience through real-time AI-driven streaming analytics allowing accurate alerts in seconds. It is designed to shorten MTTD and MTTR by providing real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure and services.

    $180

    per year per host

    Pricing
    OpenText Dimensions CMAnsibleSplunk Observability Cloud
    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
    Infrastructure
    $15
    per month (billed annually) per host
    App & Infra
    $60
    per month (billed annually) per host
    End-to-End
    $75
    per month (billed annually) per host
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    OpenText Dimensions CMAnsibleSplunk Observability Cloud
    Free Trial
    NoNoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    OpenText Dimensions CMAnsibleSplunk Observability Cloud
    Considered Multiple Products
    OpenText
    No answer on this topic
    Red Hat
    No answer on this topic
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    99%
    Would buy again
    265 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    55 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    210 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    263 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    57 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    166 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    201 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    45 Answers
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    User Ratings
    OpenText Dimensions CMAnsibleSplunk Observability Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.8
    (292 ratings)
    7.9
    (59 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (8 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.3
    (184 ratings)
    7.6
    (18 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    OpenText Dimensions CMAnsibleSplunk Observability Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    OpenText
    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
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    I think it's the best defacto orchestrator for automation because it's so easy to integrate in other tools to it (dynatrace, cyberark, terraform, etc). It is a lot for a new or smaller team to use so I wouldn't recommend it to a new team using Ansible, in that case using Ansible navigator is a better start to understanding playbooks/inventories before diving into the complexity of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. EDA also takes a lot of connectivity between Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and target systems to get working which can be difficult in very locked down envs unless you have approval from many other teams like networking and security.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Its great if you need real-time visibility across complex or regulated environments. Also strong for hybrid or multi-cloud setups where uptime, observability and fast IR are required. It’s probably overkill for smaller teams or environments that don’t have constant changes or compliance reporting needs. It's expensive and has a steep learning curve. Also, in my opinion, do not get yourself into a consumption based model. Costs can certainly get out of control quickly.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    OpenText
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • Standardize controls and visibility for automation.
    • Provide RBAC and Vault for improved automation security and support.
    • Job Scheduling is much more effective than Cron or other home-grown solutions.
    • The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform API is one of the best features as it makes automation accessible from any other platform.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • The first one is its Kubernetes container monitoring.
    • I really like this features because as we know how much K8s is vast and to manually monitor each part of the Kubernetes it takes so much time but Splunk Observability Cloud makes it easier. And even once we integrate K8s with Splunk Observability Cloud it gives us some prebuilt dashboards which gives holistic view of our Cluster and its nodes, pods, etc.
    • The dashbaord feature of Splunk Observability Cloud, it gives us full flexibility to customize our dashboard with a wide range of predefined chart types.
    • Now it also supports OTEL, which is a plus point for observability. As now everyone is moving towards Otel and in current market there are only few tools who supports OTEL based integrations, Splunk Observability Cloud is one out of them.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    OpenText
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • Ansible is still not truly declarative like Terraform.
    • Simple automation is fine, but creating complex, scalable automation scripts is very difficult to learn.
    • For a higher number of nodes, Ansible consumes a lot of resources. It needs the paid version of AAP, which requires a cost.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • You can use table-like functionality to generate dashboards, but these queries are heavy on the system.
    • It could be easier to give insight into what type of line parsing is used for specific documents in a company-managed environment and/or show ways to gain the insights needed.
    • I would like to see ways to anonymize specific data for shared reports without pre-formatting this in a dashboard on which reports could be based.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    OpenText
    No answers on this topic
    Red Hat
    We are extremely happy with the use of AAP. It's better than expected, There is almost no limit when thinking of automation. The only problem is that the day to day is consuming a big part of our time. Patching and checking vulnerabilities are virtually killing us. But we can only improve with AAP.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Good: Stable system with low error rate Easy to use for simple use cases Bad: UI is not very clear for complex usage Mobile view (when logged in from phone) is bad No library for .net
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    OpenText
    No answers on this topic
    Red Hat
    Everything has room for improvement, but Ansible is the best tool out there for what it does and what it can do. There are plenty of features and capabilities that can be added, but it's just a matter of time before it happens.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    When there is an issue, it’s a win if one can easily identify the root cause. To do the same, it should allow the user to dig deep with multiple data points and compare the data and identify the anomaly. In this use case, it’s good to drive from Splunk 011y.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    OpenText
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    OpenText
    No answers on this topic
    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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    Cisco
    Splunk support is very quick and efficient. Pre-sale specialists are very skilled and available.
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    Implementation Rating
    OpenText
    No answers on this topic
    Red Hat
    I spoke on this topic today!
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Follow a training before starting.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    OpenText
    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
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring provides far superior options for anybody using a complex hybrid multi-cloud environment and allows both your SOC and NOC to work together on the same data while driving their own insights. We found other products are still in the old world view of servers and agents residing together within a single data centre, but modern apps are no longer like this.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    OpenText
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • First, it keeps our entire server infrastructure aligned with our standards and reduces the time and effort needed to maintain our systems.
    • Automate routine IT tasks to save time, reduce errors, and ensure every server is configured and updated consistently.
    • Tasks that used to take our teams weeks to complete manually now run automatically and reliably, with full visibility, making our infrastructure management more effective and our compliance tracking much easier.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • Significantly reduced the MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), which in turn has improved the end-user experience tremendously.
    • Meets compliance requirements of security policies, audit, regulation, and forensics.
    • Helps us to track/manage the resource usage on our cloud instances which has a direct implication on the recurring cost.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Splunk Observability Cloud Screenshots

    Screenshot of Real-time monitoring for public, private and hybrid cloud