Red Hat Elevates Enterprise Automation with New Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

ATLANTA – ANSIBLEFEST
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September 24, 2019
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Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, an expansive, enterprise-grade solution for building and operating automation at scale. With Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, organizations can accelerate collaboration between teams for improved operational efficiencies, reduced risk and a consistent user experience across infrastructure and technology domains.

Recently named a Leader by Forrester Research in the Forrester Wave(TM): Infrastructure Automation Platforms, Q3 2019, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform integrates Red Hat’s powerful automation suite consisting of Red Hat Ansible Tower, Red Hat Ansible Engine and Red Hat Network Automation along with new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based capabilities and features designed for organization-wide effectiveness. Regardless of whether an organization is just beginning its digital transformation journey through automation or is working to expand automation across more use-cases and domains, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides the tools needed to more quickly implement automation without starting from scratch.

The Platform provides more secure content management, powerful analytics around automation deployments over time and building blocks that can shorten the time to value when getting started with automation. The new SaaS capabilities help to drive a more consistent automation user experience and fuel better collaboration to solve more IT challenges at once. The new capabilities include:

“Automation has become a top priority for organizations due to the increased speed, scale and complexity of their hybrid and multicloud environments. Enterprises not only need the ability to easily create automation, but they also need to be able to share and reuse automation across projects and teams with the right level of governance and control. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is the industry’s first enterprise automation platform that combines the simplicity and composability of Ansible, together with the ability to scalably and more securely share automation. The Platform will enable enterprises to expand the scope and scale of their automation more rapidly to achieve higher efficiency and improved productivity.”

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• Ansible Content Collections, a new packaging format that streamlines the management, distribution and consumption of Ansible content
• Automation Hub, a repository for certified content via Ansible Content Collections
• Automation Analytics for improving automation efficiencies across Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform deployments

Ansible Content Collections
Ansible is one of the largest open source automation communities in the world with content continually created by Red Hat, independent contributors and partners. Ansible Content Collections organizes Ansible content including modules, plugins, roles and playbooks, making it easier for customers and contributors to distribute, share and consume content independent of Ansible release cycles.

Ansible Content Collections lowers the barrier of entry to automation, shortens the time to value, and improves the efficiency of maintaining and consuming automation with the use of certified content collections that contain pre-built automation.

Automation Hub
Automation Hub is the centralized repository for Red Hat and its partners to publish content, and for customers to discover certified, supported Ansible Content Collections. Ansible Certified Content provides users with content that has been tested and is backed by Red Hat. At launch, Cisco, F5, Google Cloud, Microsoft, NetApp and many more Ansible Partners plan to have certified, supported Collections available through the Automation Hub for users to quickly deploy their tailored solutions for Ansible.

Automation Analytics
The launch of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform also marks the introduction of Automation Analytics which enables users to see how specific automation actions perform in detail. This includes statistics and data around modules and resources that are used most often, the health of automation and how an automation environment is performing. Red Hat customers can assess their automation efforts across and between their internal groups. Additionally, customers will be able to benchmark their automation efforts against industry peer groups by opting-in to share anonymized automation metrics with Red Hat.

Red Hat Ansible Tower Updates
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform also adds the latest capabilities and features available in Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.6, including:

• The ability to run Ansible Playbooks that use Ansible Content Collections through Red Hat Ansible Tower
• Webhook integration with GitLab and GitHub to automatically run automation or launch deployments based on source code pushes or other source control events
• Support for pause and approval at any step in a Red Hat Ansible Tower workflow
• Scalable execution and increased runtime capacity through Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, available in tech preview

Availability
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is scheduled to be available early November 2019. Current Red Hat Ansible Tower customers can update to the latest version and gain access to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform at no additional cost.

Supporting Quote
Joe Fitzgerald, vice president, Management, Red Hat
“Automation has become a top priority for organizations due to the increased speed, scale and complexity of their hybrid and multicloud environments. Enterprises not only need the ability to easily create automation, but they also need to be able to share and reuse automation across projects and teams with the right level of governance and control. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is the industry’s first enterprise automation platform that combines the simplicity and composability of Ansible, together with the ability to scalably and more securely share automation. The Platform will enable enterprises to expand the scope and scale of their automation more rapidly to achieve higher efficiency and improved productivity.”