Perforce Helix Core vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Perforce Helix Core
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Multinational company Perforce, headquartered in Alameda, California offers a version control and peer code review solution. Perforce version control is built around Helix Core with add-on products for code review (Helix Swarm) for free, and add Git support products (Helix4Git and Helix TeamHub). The original Perforce SCM solution was expanded via the Surround SCM, a software configuration management application which was developed by Seapine Software and now owned by Perforce since that…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
Perforce Helix CoreRed 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
Perforce Helix CoreAnsible
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Perforce Helix CoreRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Perforce Helix CoreRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Version Control Software Features
Comparison of Version Control Software Features features of Product A and Product B
Perforce Helix Core
7.9
1 Ratings
1% below category average
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
-
Ratings
Branching and Merging8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Version History8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Version Control Collaboration Tools8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Pull Requests8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Code Review Tools8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Access Control8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Testing Integration8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue Tracking Integration7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Branch Protection8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Configuration Management
Comparison of Configuration Management features of Product A and Product B
Perforce Helix Core
-
Ratings
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
8.6
44 Ratings
7% above category average
Infrastructure Automation00 Ratings9.244 Ratings
Automated Provisioning00 Ratings8.841 Ratings
Parallel Execution00 Ratings8.840 Ratings
Node Management00 Ratings8.432 Ratings
Reporting & Logging00 Ratings7.841 Ratings
Version Control00 Ratings8.738 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Perforce Helix CoreRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Small Businesses
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Perforce Helix CoreRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
5.0
(15 ratings)
9.5
(108 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.6
(5 ratings)
8.2
(3 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(3 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.7
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
9.6
(3 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
Perforce Helix CoreRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Perforce Software
While Perforce Helix is the best version control software out there, it can also be used to track your documentation, training videos and materials, and requirements. If you have strict compliance requirements, it can be used to ensure that those requirements are satisfied. Perforce Helix is incredibly flexible and can meet the needs of individual users as well as companies with thousands of users.
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Red Hat
It has helped save us so much time, as it was designed to automate mundane and repetitive tasks that we were using other tools to perform and that required so much manual intervention. It does not work very well within Windows environments, understandably, but I would love to see more integration. I want it to be sexy and attractive to more than just geeky sysadmins.
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Pros
Perforce Software
  • The branching mechanisms in Perforce allow for an enormous codebase to be duplicated into release versions weekly with little impact upon things such as the speed of queries against the version control.
  • Action triggers permit such things as automated builds of software versions, dynamic messaging when issues are identified either within or prior to a build process, and much more.
  • Locking provides the ability to prevent modifications of stable, tested versions in order to ensure validity when they are released.
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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
Perforce Software
  • Perforce tends to feel backwards in how it approaches certain tasks, like branching and integrating - even once you figure out how it wants you to perform these tasks, you will likely forget when it comes around to the next time you need to do them again.
  • Perforce has a higher price tag, comparatively.
  • Perforce make some tasks very easy, and yet other tasks very difficult - it doesn't always seem to have found its target user's proficiency.
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Red Hat
  • YAML is hard for many to adopt. Moving to a system that is not as white space sensitive would likely increase uptake.
  • AAP and EDA should be more closely aligned. There are differences that can trip users of the integration up. An example would be the way that variables are used.
  • Event-driven Ansible output is not as informative as AAP.
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Likelihood to Renew
Perforce Software
We are fully committed to our use of Perforce. It works well within our organization and our desire to share our code base with our customers. Their support staff are responsive, inquisitive, and eager to improve their software. I feel like we have a direct line to their design/feature team as they often solicit our feedback.
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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
Perforce Software
With Perforce Helix, you can use it via the command line, via P4V, or any of the other APIs included with the product. It is extremely easy for new users to get up and running. Users of Perforce Helix only have to pull in the files of interest to them. Also, Perforce is very easy to script and integrate into your CI/CD pipeline. Streams allows you to have pinpoint control of your workflow, and P4Search is the absolute best--I wish Perforce (the company) would talk more about this. It is absolutely fabulous!
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Red Hat
the yaml is easy to write and most people can be taught to write basic playbooks in a few weeks
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Reliability and Availability
Perforce Software
In our large environment, Perforce is rarely "down". We have regular maintenance windows and from time to time Perforce can feel a little slow, but its always available. Tech support has always worked with our engineers and IT department to make sure that any real performance or stability issues are addressed quickly.
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Red Hat
No answers on this topic
Performance
Perforce Software
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
Perforce Software
I had two representatives from Perforce contact me after downloading it but never responded when I had questions. I also had a difficult time finding good training material for getting started. There is a lot of available support material when running into issues, though, because of how many large companies use it.
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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
Perforce Software
This rating is related to setting up an environment from an existing Perforce repository. Initial setup of Perforce as the repository for the company was done by a separate team long prior to my inception.
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Red Hat
I spoke on this topic today!
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Alternatives Considered
Perforce Software
Git is great, I love Git. But it's not great for dealing with binary assets, even when using Git LFS. Locking is not as simple as on perforce. Git presents some problems on using for non-tech people it can get overwhelming and tech people have to come by and help.
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Red Hat
I haven't thought of any right now other than just doing our own home-brewed shell scripts. Command line scripts. And how does this compare? It's light years ahead, especially with the ability to share credentials without giving the person the actual credentials. You can delegate that within, I guess what used to be called Ansible Tower, which is now the Ansible Automation platform. It lets you share, I can give you the keys without you being able to see the keys. It's great
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Return on Investment
Perforce Software
  • Decreased our implementation costs by allowing versioning and back out of customizations made in the field.
  • saves developers time through automation of changes between branches - they think less of the plumbing and have more time to write code.
  • Downside is training/managing expectations of new developers who come in assuming they will use Git.
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Red Hat
  • 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.
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