Nolio Release Automation Reviews

We are currently going through a period of trying to implement CICD, Continuous Integration and Delivery. We've quite a lot of tools in the CI space. Now we want to expand that out to try and allow for automated deployments, so that we can get a more integrated process and workflow, between actually building and creating code, and the actually deploying that into the systems. So that's really what our main focus is of implementing RA. 

The most valuable features for us all revolve around the automated deployments, so it's more around the governance and consistency across all the different technologies that we have. We're just in the process of implementing Release Automation, so I think once we've implemented it, and started to get to grips with the initial functionality that's available, we can start to look a little bit deeper, and see what other functionalities are useful.

We have a lot of CA products within the company and they've all fit our requirements, and I don't see any difference with Release Automation. Its benefits to us are of pulling our project together and making us more efficient. It also allows us to have a repeatable process that enables governance and control.

As we're just in the initial implementation phase, I can't say there's any room for improvement, save for maybe the complexity of it because of all the functionalities. I can see why it was chosen from the POC. Once we've got the initial implementation over and done with, we can then start to look at more of what the tool has to offer.

We haven't actually got as far as configuring the Production Instance. We've only dabbled in the POC. So it's hard to tell at this time.

In terms of actually implementing the tool technically, it's straightforward. The challenge that we've got within our company at the moment is that we're in the process of trying to roll out a cloud. It's trying to understand how Release Automation fits with that because I think it's getting very on-premise focused until now. And that's one of the challenges that we've got.

We ran a POC earlier this year. It basically looked at IBM UrbanCode versus CA Release Automation. They're the two market leaders.

The frictionless end-to-end, automated deployments. Before we did manual deployments working with different parties, we removed those handovers which makes it frictionless. It’s fault-tolerant without human errors; it's agnostic. It’s consolidated on one tool instead of multiple solutions with manual implementations.

Everyone deploys with the same tools – standardization; it makes the exchange of people within a large organization easier. Transparency, risk awareness, and it offers centralized solutions for compliance checks. Delivery to customers is also much faster, whether it’s an internal or external customer.

Stability could be improved. For functionality, it needs versioning.

We push the edges of the tool, so we have a lot of stability issues on a daily basis. The database interface, the users who access that data – when it goes down it affects a lot of clients. It impacts a lot of applications once it breaks up.

There are misinterpretations of data between an application if it’s written in a certain way, fit to use with different databases for examples with the hibernate layer, the layer can wrongly execute.

The RA product itself is able to produce queries which you can easily program, but which translate into taking a huge amount of memory which is not available in a server. If you’re in an ROC you see an overview of all your deployments, maybe 25-50 deployments with the query underneath, which queries everything that hasn’t been run. For several hundred applications that translates into huge overhead and performance problems. We’re working very closely with CA to address these problems.

It’s not scalable; we can never deploy this in an HA environment. We think they have to reprogram the core of the system, but it depends on which environment you’re using the solution in. If you’re using the solution in a less intensive, small business it could be more usable.

They do good work. We’re working closely with them. For our issues we think the solution needs a basic redesign.

Tools from other companies are more focused on Java implementations. We have a lot of off the shelf customers we have to work with, so at that time RA was able to do that. We had a lot of teams already doing work automating their deployments, so we looked for a cohesive approach. We were also deploying Secure Shell, so a mix of agents with Java and non-Java applications.

It was straightforward. It implemented very quickly, it wasn’t an issue. No big issues.

We looked for a solution that was less sales orientated, more roadmap, and had a development culture. That’s something CA can improve. We'd like more support.

We looked at Xebia, UrbanCode, Open Source Jenkins. It was because of use of agents and the ability to deploy non-Java code.

Without stability issues and all those internal escalations, it would be a 7 or 8/10. Organize your culture first, then process, then look at which tool you’re going to use.

Usability – it’s good for developers who are both technical and non-technical. This has been particularly helpful for us.

Helps with a faster ramp-up time. This is the best way in which it has helped us for sure. Otherwise, it's got the standard features for an automation tool.

• More stability and customizations
• Better integration with new open source tools
• Even more stability for the new version

We use two versions – the older version (4.4) is very unstable, while the newer one (5.5) is much better. So we went from many issues to far less.

We are not able to scale it beyond what was initially defined on the infra-bases, so I can't fully answer.

They're helpful for lots of things. Never had issues with them.

We had always used an in-house tool.

It was already setup when I joined.

We also looked at Atlassian, but CA has been there for a long time and we've just kept with them, especially since they integrate with everything and other CA tools. We also look at the integration focus of new tools.

The product provides readily-available actions to use in the deployment process. The external connectors are made available to integrate the tool with other SCM applications.

This is purely an automation tool which has helped us to move from traditional manual deployments to zero-touch deployments.

This product lacks proper documentation with illustrated examples.

I've used it for three years.

5/10 - CA has bought this product recently from Nolio and does not have much expertise available to answer our queries.

Be ready to struggle for documentations and tutorials. You have to do this based on your previous knowledge.

The dashboard is the most valuable feature as it allows you to monitor all agents installed on all app servers.

We did a pilot - a POC – during which were able to make some progress with the product; it was a previous client, and they were trying to use this product but we couldn’t get it to work properly in the development environment.

It could use more plug-ins – at least in v2. Mostly it would have been nice to see it integrated with Jenkins and JIRA to create the tickets, and to be a plug-in for Quality Center.

I've used it for six months.

We wanted to set up the automation continuous integration build process, and then we wanted to create a failure mode so it would automatically create a ticket in some defect management system. We couldn’t get the support, and we weren’t able to achieve our goals, and there were no other plug-ins available for JIRA or Jenkins.

It was in the development environment, but we didn't see anything.

We didn’t use it.

We couldn’t reach out to support because the product didn’t have the appropriate plug-ins.

We used a home-grown product on the IBM side. We wanted to enable faster continuous integration dev-ops methodology.

The initial setup was easy and straightforward.

It was a combination of our team and CA engineers.

It was expensive. In the latest version they have a lot of plug-ins so it would be worth it to invest in that version rather than what we used.

We didn't evaluate other options.

I would suggest v3.0 with all the plug-ins, which provides a lot more depth in using the product. There’s also a lot of technical support, customer service, and other online support options with that release.

1. Manifest driven
2. Multi-tier release automation
3. Comprehensive set of action packs and plug-ins to achieve business requirements

1. The number of errors have been reduced
2. A higher quality process has been achieved for application releases
3. Release Automation's significance and capability led to the formation of a new vertical team called DevOps in my organization
4. DevOps is being implemented on all the projects in my organization, to enhance customer experience

Zero down time during production deployment. Currently we use the 'Bank' concept for scalability.

I've used it for four years.

Yes, but that was later fixed by the CA team in the later versions of the product.

If more than 150 nodes are connected to the execution/NAC server, then we observe slowness in the execution of the processes. This then leads to time-outs, and the deployment fails on some of the nodes.

No issues encountered.

7/10.

7/10.

We used to do the deployment manually, which lasted for hours, and it didn't usually work in one go. So to automate the deployments we started using Release Automation.

With the help of a CA team, the initial setup was simple.

We implemented it through a CA team.

We also looked at IBM u Deploy.

It is a very good product and can help the organizations in the long run, which will lead to higher customer satisfaction.

The software deployment tool.

It's a lot easier to deploy software through CA than using a manual process or through GPOs. Packaging and client's hardware/software information recovery are handy features, as is the feedback on license management.

Maybe the user interface. We always can do something simpler, even for professionals.

I've been using it for six months.

None that I remember.

It was reliable.

I've not had experience with customer service.

I've not had experience with technical support.

I used Numara Software by BMC, but it wasn't a switch, though; it only was another customer.

Overall, it's a great product, but not that user friendly concerning the deployment server configuration/management.

Most importantly, it provides an agile solution that is based on DevOps concepts. This is very good for DevOps teams, and I can say that it is a very helpful feature. Some other features which are used by our organization, includes the migration of process design for the Release Operations Center (ROC), the ability to share components across an enterprise, and integration with Chef Tool.

We were facing a problem to release our code at the decided time. The development team were busy writing the code and then they prepared the build. After this process, the testing team started testing the build. So the whole process was taking a lot of time, then we heard about this tool.

It’s an enterprise-class continuous delivery solution that takes release automation to the next level, providing an agile and collaborative application delivery chain. Now, the situation is that the Release Automation tool tests released script. The Development team spend so much time in developing code and, at the same time, the testing team can test the build. As a result, Release Automation has been able to save us time

It does not support integration with Jenkins for .Net

We have been using CA Release Automation since last year.

A little bit, but after troubleshooting it was solved.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

8/10.

8/10.

No solution in place, and we were doing everything manually.

It was a little complex.

We used a vendor team who were 9/10.

It's 8/10.

No other options were evaluated.