Chef vs Digital.ai Agility comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Chef
Ranking in Release Automation
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (15th), Configuration Management (16th)
Digital.ai Agility
Ranking in Release Automation
9th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (12th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (9th), Value Stream Management Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Digital.ai Agility is 0.3%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
Unique Categories:
Build Automation
0.1%
Configuration Management
1.2%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
1.2%
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
1.0%
 

Featured Reviews

Aaron  P - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 18, 2023
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
Chef is like a master chef in a kitchen for computer systems. It's used to create recipes (cookbooks) that specify how servers and apps should be set up. Chef then makes sure these instructions are followed the same way on all computers in a network. The ChefServer is like the recipe book, where…
DB
Jun 28, 2023
The features and capabilities are great and come with excellent customer support
The Excel Release and Excel Deploy is part of the continuous delivery management stack and we use this to plan release automation. We also use it to standardize complex enterprise scale application deployments in complex environments, usually using virtual machines, containers and cloud…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"If you're handy enough with DSL and you can present your own front-facing interface to your developers, then you can actually have a lot more granular control with Chef in operations over what developers can perform and what they can't."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"I wanted to monitor a hybrid cloud environment, one using AWS and Azure. If I have to provision/orchestrate between multiple cloud platforms, I can use Chef as a one-stop solution, to broker between those cloud platforms and orchestrate around them, rather than going directly into each of the cloud-vendors' consoles."
"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."
"Agility is highly flexible. It can do much more than what our client is doing with it. They use it in a defined way. Some at that company have a much broader knowledge of agile and SAFe, but they're given applications and a mandated way to work. We had to work within their parameters and provide an accurate transition so the data would be mapped and pushed through."
"With some of the other tools, you have to buy 20 different plugins to get to the same capability that comes with the basic Agility capability."
"For visualization capabilities, the automation capabilities make it possible to support the different personas. The features and capabilities are excellent and come with excellent support."
"It allows my clients to have one central tool to manage their agile projects."
"It can generate reports showing a burndown chart, burnup chart, and the planned vs actual velocity."
 

Cons

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"Improve how to create and track releases. Currently, I have to create child projects."
"The machine learning features are a new capability but could be improved. This is being worked by Digital.ai currently. Multicolor simulation, specifically, could be improved."
"In my work as a contractor, it's always frustrating when a client has multiple software applications that don't talk to each other and they all perform the same function. That presents a huge challenge between their IT groups."
"The user interface can be improved by adding Save, Edit, Add, Cancel, and Return buttons to the popup windows that are displayed when you click on a child item."
"There is room for improvement in getting the analytics portion of the solution more integrated with the rest of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."
"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."
"Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."
"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."
"You get what you pay for. Don't let your development teams dictate what the portfolio management team should use as the main tool."
"Comparing the pricing to other products, I think this solution is in the middle."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chef?
Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
What needs improvement with Chef?
Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.
What do you like most about Digital.ai Agility?
With some of the other tools, you have to buy 20 different plugins to get to the same capability that comes with the basic Agility capability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Digital.ai Agility?
We pay an annual fee based on a certain number of users and a rate that they gave us based on the number of users. Comparing the pricing to other products, I think this solution is in the middle. W...
What needs improvement with Digital.ai Agility?
There is room for improvement in getting the analytics portion of the solution more integrated with the rest of it. The feature I would like to see is already in their newer licensing structure, an...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
VersionOne Lifecycle, VersionOne, CollabNet VersionOne, Digital.ai Continuum
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Siemens Health Services (HS), Cerner Corporation, Aaron's, Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, Kelley Blue Book, AOL, Axway, Tideworks, bwin Interactive Entertainment, AG, Intergraph, Eos Group, PeopleCube, Liquid Machines
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Digital.ai Agility and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.