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Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] vs Chef comparison

Broadcom and Progress Software are both solutions in the Release Automation category. Additionally, 86% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.
Chef
Read 19 Chef reviews
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  • 231 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
 

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Executive Summary
We performed a comparison between Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] and Chef based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Release Automation
April 2025
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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Automic Continuous Delivery...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (20th), Release Automation (11th), Configuration Management (18th)
 

Featured Reviews

MJ
The main benefit is you can deploy everything with it, but everybody has to need to use this tool in the organization
The main benefit is you can deploy everything with it, but everybody has to need to use this tool in the organization. If some organizations have their own tool, it is hard to make it clear that ARA would be better if everyone used it, because it provides a benefit when you can monitor all the users.
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Aaron P - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.
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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The metrics gathered after deployment, for example, the rate of success versus the rate of failure."
"I think on a day-to-day basis, it has increased the capacity to deploy. We don't have to wait for someone to do something."
"I would say our headwind, or our time to market, is reduced considerably. We get more consistent results out of it, because you write one time and once it's automated you expect it to behave the same way every time. And it cut down a lot of re-work for us."
"The main benefit is you can deploy everything with it."
"It is an umbrella system that allows us to integrate many different systems into our heterogeneous environment."
"The capability to provide visibility to the stakeholders, to management, is the biggest piece that showcases what the solution is about."
"It can support very complex environments and dependencies."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to see which problems have been resolved from deployment."
More Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] pros
"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."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."
"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."
"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."
More Chef pros
 

Cons

"I would like to see more support for WebSphere."
"At the moment, the version that we are using (version 12.0), the environment is complex with multiple installations. Therefore, the monitoring is not scalable, but this should be improved in 12.1 and 12.2."
"There needs to be better error handling and error descriptions. It should be more clear what the errors are and what we can do to fix them."
"The dashboard should allow you to see the current state of packages in each environment, not only on an individual application basis, but across the entire application platform."
"The stability of the solution can be improved."
"key thing is support for cloud-based deployment. That is lacking."
"One of the biggest features I've been asked by my team to put in there is opening more scripting languages to be part of the platform. There is a little bit of a learning curve in learning how to code some of the workflows in Automic at this time. If widely used languages like Perl and Python were integrated, on top of what's already there, the proprietary language, it would make it easier to on-board new resources."
"Not a perfect ten because the user interface is brand new and it needs improvement."
More Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] cons
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"It is an old technology."
More Chef cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Customers often complain about the price."
"If you have a fixed contract, it has limits to spreading out. If you have a flexible enterprise license contract, then you have a lot of scalability for this tool."
"I can save time and money more quickly."
"We increased our quality and reduced our time costs."
"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."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
More Chef pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
17%
University
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?
Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.
See all answers
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.
See all answers
 

Comparisons

No data available
BigFix vs Chef Logo
BigFix vs Chef
Compared 33% of the time
AWS Systems Manager vs Chef Logo
AWS Systems Manager vs Chef
Compared 15% of the time
Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef Logo
Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef
Compared 11% of the time
VMware Aria Automation vs Chef Logo
VMware Aria Automation vs Chef
Compared 11% of the time
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef Logo
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef
Compared 9% of the time
More Chef Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL]
April 2025
Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] reportDownload Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] product report
Buyer's Guide
Chef
April 2025
Chef reportDownload Chef product report
 

Also Known As

CA Continuous Delivery Automation, Automic Release Automation, Automic ONE Automation, UC4 Automation Platform
No data available
 

Overview

Deliver apps at pace with agile development and let customer satisfaction soar. 

Today, the pressure is on to transform how you deliver applications to market. Get release agility and speed without compromising quality and stability with CA Continuous Delivery Automation. Deliver apps reliably on demand from development through production—mobile to mainframe. Agilely scale as the cadence, volume and complexity of your apps grow. It’s DevOps-ready release management and automation for your dynamic enterprise.

Broadcom

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software
 

Sample Customers

BET365, Charter Communications, TASC
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Buyer's Guide
Release Automation
April 2025
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