Richard Henshall

Author Archives: Richard Henshall

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Product Status Update

The Red Hat Ansible Product Team wanted to provide an update on the status and progress of Ansible’s foundational role as it pertains to the product, specifically as a deliverable for implementing automation as a language. That is, Ansible as provided by aggregated low-level command line binary executables leveraging Python, with a YAML-based user abstraction. Specifically, the packaged deliverable is currently named Ansible Base, but will soon be named Ansible Core later this year. When people often generally refer to “Ansible,” this largely describes what people use directly as part of their day-to-day development efforts.

As an Ansible Automation Platform user, you may have noticed changes over the last year and a half to the Ansible open source project and downstream product in order to provide targeted solutions for each customer persona, focusing on enhancements to packaging, release cadence, and content development.

We’ve seen the community and enterprise user bases of Ansible continue to grow as different groups adopt Ansible due to its strengths and its ability to automate a broad set of IT domains (such as Linux, Windows, network, cloud, security, storage, etc.).  But with this success it became apparent that there is no one size Continue reading

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Product Status Update

The Red Hat Ansible Product Team wanted to provide an update on the status and progress of Ansible’s foundational role as it pertains to the product, specifically as a deliverable for implementing automation as a language. That is, Ansible as provided by aggregated low-level command line binary executables leveraging Python, with a YAML-based user abstraction. Specifically, the packaged deliverable is currently named Ansible Base, but will soon be named Ansible Core later this year. When people often generally refer to “Ansible,” this largely describes what people use directly as part of their day-to-day development efforts.

As an Ansible Automation Platform user, you may have noticed changes over the last year and a half to the Ansible open source project and downstream product in order to provide targeted solutions for each customer persona, focusing on enhancements to packaging, release cadence, and content development.

We’ve seen the community and enterprise user bases of Ansible continue to grow as different groups adopt Ansible due to its strengths and its ability to automate a broad set of IT domains (such as Linux, Windows, network, cloud, security, storage, etc.).  But with this success it became apparent that there is no one size Continue reading

Ansible Automates 2020

Today, the operational role of IT is obvious. The rapid developments enabled by automation create genuine business value. The results that can be achieved by automation have a direct link to a company’s business goals. 

As a CTO or CIO, sometimes you need help articulating this to stakeholders. Translating IT departments’ performance into business prioritized KPIs. Most see efficiency gains, cost and risk reductions, for example. Automation is clearly an executive-level issue.

At first, Ansible was a classical tool that was  utilized for specific automation. Ansible helps your team automate routine tasks, so that they can instead focus on what you want to do. The platform enables you to structure work by automating your processes.

 

Automation is a journey - start yours at Ansible Automates 2020

The global, all-day digital event – Ansible Automates 2020 – takes place on June 10. The event provides inspiration as to how the automation journey can be accelerated and taken to the next level. And no, we’re not going to discuss functionality and technology all day. We want to highlight the cultural and behavioral changes that are linked to the trend towards greater automation. 

For organizations to achieve the best results, Continue reading

The latest in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform – Using automation to effectively change your day to day

Last year, we made some significant changes to Red Hat Ansible Automation, including what is offered with it and alongside it, to bring you the first version of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. That change allowed users to harness the power of Ansible automation under one roof, one subscription - one platform.

Today, we are pleased to announce updates to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, the latest version of our enterprise-grade solution for building and operating automation at scale. The next time you log in to cloud.redhat.com, you can start utilizing the powerful new tools at your disposal. We’ve put in place the automation services catalog, a venue for developers and business users to manage, provision and retire resources. Customers told us this was a necessity and we agreed, with the automation services catalog now giving you a much deeper insight into how automation is improving efficiencies.  It also gives you visibility into redundant processes that may be costing you time and resources that you may want to sunset. Accentuate what is working and eliminate what is not. More information about automation services catalog can be found here.

Another enhancement we rolled out with the Continue reading

Introducing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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We are excited to introduce Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, a new offering that combines the simple and powerful Ansible solutions with new capabilities for cross-team collaboration, governance and analytics, resulting in a platform for building and operating automation at scale. 

Over the past several years, we’ve listened closely to the community, customers and partners and their needs. We’ve also looked carefully at how the market is changing and where we see automation headed. One of the most common requests we’ve heard from customers is the need to bring together separate teams using automation. Today’s organizations are often automating different areas of their business (such as on-premises IT vs. cloud services vs. networks) each with their own set of Ansible Playbooks and little collaboration between the different domains. While this may still get the task accomplished, it can be a barrier to realizing the full value of automation. 

 

We’ve also found that even within a single organization, teams are often at different stages of automation maturity. Organizations are often recreating the wheel - automating processes that have already been done.

 

Organizations need a solution they can use across teams and domains, and a solution they can Continue reading