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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
17th
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
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of BlueCat Gateway is 2.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 6.0%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation6.0%
BlueCat Gateway2.3%
Other91.7%
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

FG
Developer for DDI Team at Cgi Deutschland KG
Simple to use, straightforward to deploy, and provides good support and documentation
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. Another area for improvement in BlueCat Gateway is the discovery probe, as it doesn't allow you to see all the setup parameters after you've set it up. This may not be a big issue, but it's something my team noticed that may not be good in the solution.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The ability to develop a kiosk-like solution for in-person assistance is crucial."
"Earlier we used to spend a whole day to collect all the information regarding upgrades or patches; when we introduced vRealize, it reduced the time to between 30 minutes and one hour to finish the whole job."
"Overall, VMware is very good, it's very stable, very extensible, but it does have a relatively high learning curve."
"It provides us with rapid deployment and reclamation of servers, has increased the infrastructure agility and application agility, improved time to market, and made it easier for IT to support developers."
"Another valuable feature is the flexible user interface. They can manage all of the servers, the full lifecycle of VMs, on one screen."
"We like the seamless, non-vendor-specific application that we can provide with it."
"It's much more stable than the highest available variant."
"The ROI that we see is that people don't have to work too hard to have something done and therefore they have more time to market."
"We can take a template, spin it up, revise it, save it back off, and be able to have that for other departments, so we can deploy things very quickly and easily instead of manually building systems that would take several hours or a day."
 

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."
"The initial setup is complex. There are too many components to integrate, especially when we integrated with different storage types and backup vendors. All the integration made it more complex."
"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."
"There are a lot of improvements required with regards to vRealize Automation."
"It is not intuitive or user-friendly. It's complicated as heck. We actually hired VMware Professional Services to come in. I understand the newer version, which we're not quite on yet, is easier and that the interface is better. But the product is really a profession unto itself. The user interface could be improved on."
"The GUI is clunky and hard to use."
"The online documentation is lackluster at best."
"It is difficult to set up."
"This appeared by early estimation over engineered and under tested, and lost momentum."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is actually quite favorable based on our negotiations."
"It is an open-source product."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"The pricing is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

Questions from the Community

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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: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.