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BlueCat Gateway vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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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
19th
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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (10th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (27th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of BlueCat Gateway is 2.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 4.0%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation4.0%
BlueCat Gateway2.4%
Other93.6%
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

"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."
"From day 1 that it went into production, we started seeing its benefits."
"Before, it took us two days to provision new machines, and today the whole process is done in about two hours."
"Big-time cost savings on administrative overhead without having to constantly manage virtual machines, spin them up, spin them down, manually."
"Scalability is probably the best part about it, because you can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort."
"I can build machines quickly and deploy them from a central location to whichever worldwide datacenter we need."
"We also use it to pre-install the applications that the people selected when they ordered the machine, so they get a fully functional machine."
"Official documentation and community support are top notch."
"There are a lot of different benefits with this product, because there are a lot of things that we're trying to automate."
 

Cons

"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 most significant concern is that the documentation has problems."
"The flexibility can hurt sometimes, as there are so many ways to accomplish the same task."
"7.5 is not user-friendly, in fact, it's a nightmare. They changed everything on the graphic user interface, the mode where the user interacts with the product."
"Because we're running on the older version, we've actually had a lot of stability issues."
"It has some limitations for scalability, especially for remote data center management. For some components, everything need to be centralized."
"Having an overview and managing all this is a bit difficult in the beginning."
"Improvements in the API. Make it easier because that's where we tend to struggle when we were working with other groups."
"Salt does not support performing remote actions that require a sudo password with Salt SSH (agentless Salt execution)."
"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."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"The solution is free of cost."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"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."
"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

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: September 2026.
914,351 professionals have used our research since 2012.