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BlueCat Gateway vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

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

BlueCat Gateway
Ranking in Network Automation
9th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Network Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd), Configuration Management (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (16th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of BlueCat Gateway is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 8.8%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation8.8%
BlueCat Gateway0.8%
Other90.4%
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

David Muscat - PeerSpot reviewer
Is priced well, provides good visibility, and easily integrates
What I dislike is that there are limitations on how the data is viewed within BlueCat IPAM. As a result, we need to examine it from two different perspectives. While observing the tool's operation in Cloud Discovery visibility within its environment, we can witness it extracting the data and showing us the data's origin and location in the cloud – all of which is quite informative. However, upon importing this data into BlueCat for actual analysis, many of these informative components seem to be absent. We are hopeful version ten of BlueCat IPAM might resolve this matter. Currently, the data present there, when I inspect, let's say, a newly arrived or discovered device, I can see that device. Nevertheless, we lack a method to determine its location. For instance, if another person were to access that device aside from me, they wouldn't find information regarding its location. Although we can view the device itself and its configurations, its Azure-based location is not provided. Regrettably, certain essential flags are not transferred. I am presently engaged in an ongoing discussion with BlueCat's senior leadership regarding this matter. I am collaborating closely with them on resolving this issue, and they are acknowledging the problems. Given the complexities of our extensive presence in Azure, they also comprehend the rationale behind our configuration choices in CDNV. Consequently, we are also considering potential adjustments in IPAM to better align with the required data presentation. The biggest issue is the visibility of cloud discovery in the IPAM database and how it structures data. This is currently a significant hindrance.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to develop a kiosk-like solution for in-person assistance is crucial."
"We found IP and Network Discovery the most valuable features of BlueCat Gateway. Our team found it very easy to build, verify, and validate APIs in BlueCat Gateway, mainly if the users have a background in development and APIs. Our team found that BlueCat Gateway answers our needs well."
"usability; Ease of use, the GUI, is probably the best feature, so that really anybody can use it. You don't have to be technical to be able to deploy a VM. I find it to be intuitive and user-friendly. Regarding some of the files that you feed it, you don't have to do a ton of development. You can feed it pretty standard configuration files. You don't have to be a developer, you don't have to know C# or Java or the like to get it going."
"Our speed of provisioning has improved. We used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day. Nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template... and it takes about 20 minutes."
"VMware Aria Automation is a very scalable solution because it integrates well with a couple of leading products in the industry. For products that are not already integrated, there are plugins or adapters that can be used with customization."
"The whole VMR ecosystem allows us to serve multiple customers, multiple organizations and also multiple units per customer. We can cover every level without using the whole VRA and the rest of the ecosystem. We don't need to use a separate product to provide separate functionalities for the customer. We can cover all the use cases using only one product on our side which is really helpful. T"
"To manage when VM's aren't being used, we have it set up so that it will auto-destroy them after a certain amount of time, obviously with permission from the user who owns it."
"Valuable features include integration with Infoblox, for IP management; and three-tier app deployment as one unified Blueprint."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"Another valuable feature is the flexible user interface. They can manage all of the servers, the full lifecycle of VMs, on one screen."
 

Cons

"My most significant concern is that the documentation has problems."
"One area for improvement in BlueCat Gateway is the time it takes to fill in the dropdown in the UI of the solution because the speed with which the data loads isn't that fast. It would be better if you didn't have to wait for old items to load before seeing the first data."
"My impression of its stability is "middle of the road." We've had some issues where it seems to be a little bit sensitive, where deployments fail and we don't really know a specific reason why. We'll dig through logs and try and figure out what's going on, but it's not always apparent as to why it failed. And you can kick it off again and it'll succeed. So stability could be better."
"Most of the time the upgrade experience has been good but sometimes things break after upgrading. For example, some API codes stopped working."
"Automation or scripting should be simplified so that administrators who are not experts can have a better grasp of automation."
"It's not cheap."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"The integration is a bit tight. I need the right package to use it properly. The new automation processes for VMware are messy, and support could be better."
"I would like to see more integration to do things like DR, from a court perspective. Today, for us, SRM doesn't scale because each of our customers has a local vCenter environment as well as the vCenter in our environment. So we can't get SRM to scale to the point to which we need. From an integration perspective, DR inside of that would be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is actually quite favorable based on our negotiations."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"It is an open-source product."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BlueCat Gateway?
We found IP and Network Discovery the most valuable features of BlueCat Gateway. Our team found it very easy to build, verify, and validate APIs in BlueCat Gateway, mainly if the users have a back...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BlueCat Gateway?
I have no information on BlueCat Gateway pricing, as the management team handles that area.
What needs improvement with BlueCat Gateway?
One area for improvement in BlueCat Gateway is the time it takes to fill in the dropdown in the UI of the solution because the speed with which the data loads isn't that fast. It would be better if...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

BlueCat Network Automation
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

US Department of Energy, Swisslos, DXC, Edeka SouthWest
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about BlueCat Gateway vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,019 professionals have used our research since 2012.