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OpenText Network Automation 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

OpenText Network Automation
Ranking in Network Automation
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
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
170
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (1st), Configuration Management (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of OpenText Network Automation is 2.5%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 10.3%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1480065 - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows to upload necessary firmware to your device and perform the upgrade
With OpenText Network Automation, firmware can be uploaded for specific devices. If you need to upgrade a device, you can use this tool, though it may not apply to all devices. The software allows you to upload the necessary firmware to your device and perform the upgrade. Additionally, it enables you to check multiple devices for specific configurations and automates the search process and the configuration of multiple devices.
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

"Pushing the network configuration to bulk devices. This saves a considerable amount of time that the engineer spends in pushing the network configuration."
"With OpenText Network Automation, firmware can be uploaded for specific devices. If you need to upgrade a device, you can use this tool, though it may not apply to all devices."
"When compared with SolarWinds, it is more user-friendly, and tasks can be completed more quickly."
"We had a lot of config drift before, and this really helps us keep it on track. Speed to provision is probably our biggest, significant gain."
"value; It has provided my development team a pure self-service portal. We deploy thousands of machines and reclaim. So, their time to business, and their time to market has been improved exponentially."
"The automation part is valuable, especially where vRA integrates with vRO, because it reduces the amount of effort we have to make."
"It's also absolutely easy and intuitive. It uses the same basic layout as the rest of the product suite so it's really easy to navigate, find your way around between the tabs and the areas."
"The most valuable features are that it's multi-tenant and the ability for scale."
"The self service portal: People don't have to come to us to request something. They can just go fill out a form. Within 30 minutes, they have what they requested."
"Today, if I want to provision one VM, it takes me five minutes. Earlier, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes to go and choose everything. Now, I can just do one click and it can provision my whole VM. We also integrated with our Alexa, so even through voice functionality, I can create a VM. One of the guys at VMware, along with our partner, deployed that in our environment. If I say, "Hey, Alexa, I need a VM with four gigs of RAM," it will go and start creating it."
"The extensibility of it and the customization of a lot of the Blueprints, that you can customize, and the community as a whole. There's a ton of community-generated Blueprints that might be (helpful) to set up a design for your automation needs, that you can use as a base and go on from there and make changes to it."
 

Cons

"Level one administration task can be defined in Micro Focus Network Automation but it could be more simplified."
"The tool performs slowly."
"Compatibility of the devices needs to be enhanced, as it seems to be limited."
"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."
"We still struggle a little bit with the configuration as far as making sure that we have all the endpoints where they need to be, because that's not as agile as we'd like in the back-end. We're working towards that with our DevOps teams to make sure that we're touching the right endpoints and getting the right data."
"Our primary challenge is upgrading the product to the latest version. This process requires careful communication with the vendor to mitigate risks."
"The basic support is not there for Google Cloud and Azure. They are unable to provision nor do cost controls. Google is still left out. It is great that they have done AWS, but we are a retailer which means nothing to us because it is a competitor. Azure is good, but Google is where a lot of our development environments are."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"I don't find it to be user-friendly or intuitive because, in my case, when I have to deploy SAP systems, I need to jump between the vRA, the vRO, and the actual vCenter itself. I need to go back and forth to do different things... I wish they could make it just one application, just vRA, that does all that. There might be a way to do it but I haven't figured out how to do it yet."
"VMware should go the way of vROps, with everything in one machine, the ability to scale out, and a more distributed environment instead of having the usual centralized SQL database."
"The connectivity between VMs is easy, but they can be made more effective if we have a single proof point where we can configure all the biggest data at a single point."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is reasonable, but if you compare it with other network Operation Management tools that are available on the market, it's expensive."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Network Automation?
There is a team responsible for network automation to check devices for compliance. I connect to the device, make the necessary configurations, and inform the team that certain rules must be remove...
What advice do you have for others considering Micro Focus Network Automation?
When managing a large number of devices, network automation simplifies the process of locating specific configurations. For example, if you need to find a particular configuration, network automati...
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

Micro Focus Network Automation, HPE Network Automation
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tech Mahindra, Avea, China Merchants Bank, NNIT, Distinctive Software Solutions, Virgin Media, NEC Australia, Osiatis, Hostworks, Retegal, Allianz Shared Infrastructure Services SE (ASIC), State of Kansas Division of Information Services and Communications (DISC)
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Network Automation vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.