Top 10 Best IT Automation Software Tools [2023 Review]

Read this Review of the Most Popular IT Automation Tools With Features, Pricing and Comparison To Select the Best IT Automation Software for your Business:

IT Process Automation Software is an application that has functionalities to develop, manage, and monitor automated processes for IT enterprise. Because IT processes are scattered across multiple environments, tools, and technologies, this is a difficult task to manage. IT Automation Tools will help you to manage them easily.

Process automation software is used for automating repetitive tasks and manual processes so that there will be cost savings and reduced human errors. These tools have features to monitor and manage distributed IT environments.

Fact Check: According to EMA research, IT automation addresses at least four of the top eight technology-related initiatives supporting digital transformation. Yet, 44% of organizations are struggling with homegrown tools or no tools available to effectively automate IT.

See the below image for details:

Pro Tip: IT Automation Software could be expected to run for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and it also needs to be worked across environments. Considering these factors, the tool should be stable, flexible, and should possess the capacity to work across environments.

Some other factors that need to be considered while selecting the tool are ease of use & availability of training, scalability for workload & extensive nature of the organization, the capacity to work across environments, and reporting & alerting features.

What is IT Automation?

IT Automation is a process of automating jobs, batch processes, and workflows across the IT. It includes a wide variety of tools, practices, and capabilities. It can be used for a variety of use cases. It is the quickly evolving field and incorporates new technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence.

IT Automation tools are created to integrate a variety of digital tools through workflow automation from multiple sources. There is a huge list of such tools like Workload Automation, Batch Process automation, Big Data Automation, Business Process Automation, Digital Process Automation, Enterprise Automation, Robotic Process Automation, etc.

• Usage: IT Automation is used for automating and scheduling repetitive, time-consuming, and error-prone tasks. For Example, daily completion of batch processes and large data transfers. These tools help with developing versatile and scalable architectures.
• Benefits: It will save a lot of time, reduce operating costs, and will increase efficiency.
• Challenges faced by organizations in adopting IT Automation: Lack of executive support, lack of tools, lack of processes, homegrown tools that are difficult to change, budget, etc.

How is IT Automation software different from Workload Automation software?

IT Automation is a branch of processes that can be automated using Workload Automation Software.

Workload Automation software is an intelligent tool and provides endless integrations. It will help you to build, monitor, and manage end-to-end processes. There will be centralized orchestration with the help of these tools. These tools will help you with Business Process Automation, Data Center, Infrastructure Automation, and Secure File Transfers.

Benefits of IT Automation Software:

IT Automation tools will let you build and automate workflows without scripting and almost half time. It reduces operating costs and will increase efficiency. You will get Security-Driven Automation. It will make you enable to do in-time provisioning of resources.

The below image will show you the business values delivered by IT Automation:

These tools will give intelligent analytics. You can monitor workflows in-depth. This in-depth monitoring of workflows will ensure that there will be a significant reduction in job failures.

Some tools provide a no-code workflow designer which will help you to integrate directly with popular tools like Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, etc. It can also provide you with a lot of platform-agnostic integrations that can be drag-and-drop to build, automate, and orchestrate workflows.

Workload execution and SLAs will get improved through high customization of alerts. Leveraging Machine learning and AI can optimize resources and workload placement and hence reduces bottlenecks and slack time.

Orchestration hub will let you coordinate and consolidate a variety of solutions like Process Automation Solution, Business Process Management, Business Applications, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Back Office, etc.

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Here is the list of the best tools:

1. ActiveBatch
2. Redwood RunMyJobs
3. NinjaOne
4. Atera
5. Jira Service Management
6. SysAid
7. BMC Control-M
8. Broadcom CA Automic
9. Broadcom CA IT Process Automation Manager
10. SMA OpCon
11. Microsoft System Center
12. Chef
13. Puppet
14. Ansible
15. Jenkins

Comparison of Best IT Automation Software

Review of Top Vendors:

Best for orchestrating your automated processes. It is suitable for medium to large businesses.

ActiveBatch IT Process Automation Software is to integrate, automate, and orchestrate your entire IT landscape. It has a powerful IT process automation capabilities. For the seamless integration and coordination of a wide array of IT and Business Process Automation (BPA) tasks, ActiveBatch provides a low-code workflow automation and enterprise job scheduler.

It has features and capabilities that will help you to monitor and manage distributed IT environments. ActiveBatch tools will be helpful to innovate and drive digital transformation efforts. It can work as an orchestration hub.

Features:

• ActiveBatch has an event-driven architecture and hence a wide range of event triggers like an email, FTP file events, message queues are supported.
• You will be able to run workflows when needed, by scheduling a business day.
• You will be able to monitor the workflows in depth.
• It has the features of process modeling that will be helpful to developers for optimizing and testing workflows before going to production.
• ActiveBatch has Intelligent Automation Tools that uses Machine Learning and AI.

Verdict: You will get low-code workflow automation and an enterprise job scheduler platform through ActiveBatch. It will let you customize the alerts and help you with improving the workload execution and service level agreements. With its integrated Jobs Library, you will be able to streamline development and automate faster.

Price: Demo and a 30-day free trial. Its pricing is usage-based.

Best for enterprises that have complex IT environments.

Redwood RunMyJobs workload automation platform has the capabilities for accelerating digital transformation. It provides functionalities for creating processes, delivering real-time results, proactive monitoring, and reducing manual intervention.

Features:

• Redwood RunMyJobs centralizes the orchestration of automation for SAP, Oracle, etc.
• It offers functionalities for the coordination and management of data pipelines to Hadoop, Redshift, etc.
• Simple API wizards will help you with incorporating REST or SOAP web services quickly.
• You will be able to publish automated processes as microservices or interactive service endpoints.

Verdict: Redwood RunMyJobs can be used to automate anything. It has all the connectors included. It offers the features and functionalities for automating the processes over on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments. It provides uncompromising security and simple pricing plans.

Price: You can get a quote for pricing details. A free trial is available on request.

Best for Endpoint Management Automation.

NinjaOne is a powerful automation software that allows you to simplify time-consuming tasks. The software allows you to run automation on schedule, on-demand, or in direct response to performance thresholds and changes. This policy-based ability of NinjaOne ensures you are only running automation when it is absolutely necessary.

Features:

• Automate Anti-Virus and Backup Management
• Features a powerful scripting engine that supports multiple programming languages.
• Gain granular control on when, where, and what to run automations on.
• Drive encryption automation

Verdict: Boasting a powerful scripting engine, NinjaOne allows your technicians to automate just about any task across all your endpoints. This, along with the added benefit of granular control, makes this tool a must-have for technicians who seek to simplify tasks with robust automation across all Mac and Windows operating systems.

Price: Contact for a custom quote.

Best for IT Automation and Scripting for MSPs and IT service providers.

Atera arms its users with a plethora of IT automation tools that completely streamline your work and service. Atera allows you to design and implement powerful IT automation rules that will make the life of you and your staff easier. It will help your business create and apply IT automation profiles to company servers either per device or per workstation.

These IT automation profiles can be used to delete temp files, create system restore point, reboot or shut down your system, delete internet history, run scripts, defragment disks, and much more. With Atera, you can also choose to run scripts manually per device or schedule them automatically as part of created tasks and IT automation profiles.

Features:

• Robust Scripting, you can upload your own scripts or opt for ones that are written by a professional, which is present in Atera’s shared script library.
• Patch security vulnerabilities, eradicate bugs, increase performance, and improve usability.
• Leverage Microsoft’s PowerShell from inside Atera.
• Easily create and implement IT Automation rules.

Verdict: Atera comes packed with a ton of IT automation tools that together serve to streamline, automate, and simplify routine tasks of your business. Atera can be used to create and implement rules that allow you to execute redundant processes on a scheduled basis. It further increases your automation and simplifies your tasks with robust scripting. As such, it has our highest recommendation.

Price:

Pro – Monthly Plan: $119 per month per technician, Growth Plan – $149 per month per technician, Power Plan – $199 per month per technician.
Annual Plan: $99 per month per technician, Growth Plan – $129 per month per technician, Power Plan – $169 per month per technician.

Best for Optimized IT Service Management.

Jira Service Management allows IT operation teams to employ the best ITSM practices to deliver an excellent customer service experience. This single platform can be used by IT teams across departments to assist both customers and employees as quickly as possible. The platform is also ideal for rapidly responding to reported incidents.

Jira Service Management can be used by IT operations teams to minimize the risk associated with identified incidents via robust root-cause analysis and record workarounds. Jira also excels at automated risk assessment. It can automatically determine whether to deploy a change or not based on the degree of risk.

Features:

• Asset Management
• Change Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Configuration Management

Verdict: If you are looking for software that can handle almost all ITSM capabilities like incident, problem, change, request management, etc. in an automated fashion, then Jira Service Management is for your team.

Price: Jira Service Management is free for up to 3 agents. Its premium plan starts at $47 per agent. A custom enterprise plan is also available.

Best for AI-driven IT service management.

SysAid is an AI-driven IT service management tool that has earned quite a reputation for itself, thanks to its ability to automate several aspects of an organization’s IT service system. This is a tool you can use to get real-time visibility into your company’s IT assets across departments.

The software facilitates task automation by automating redundant tasks that an IT team is responsible for handling. It is also incredible at automating password resets and facilitating one-click issue submission to make sure issues raised by customers find their way to the right desk and are resolved immediately.

Features:

• Automated Reporting
• Automated One-click issue submission
• Workflow digitization and designing
• Ticket Automation

Verdict: SysAid is a software we cannot recommend enough to automate elements pertaining to IT service management. This is a tool you can use to smoothen your help desk system and deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Price: The software offers 3 pricing plans. You’ll need to contact their representative to get a clear quote. A free trial is also offered.

#7) BMC Control-M

Best for medium to large businesses.

Control-M is a workload automation software by BMC. It will help you with streamlining the orchestration of business applications. Native AWS and Azure integrations will simplify workflows across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Features:

• You will be able to deliver better apps faster by embedding workflow orchestration into your CI/CD pipeline.
• It follows the Jobs-as-Code approach and hence extends Dev and Ops collaboration.
• You will be able to deliver data-driven outcomes faster and manage big data workflows in a scalable way.
• It gives you control of your file transfer operations through intelligent file movement and enhanced visibility.

Verdict: Control-M will simplify the application workflow orchestration. It improves SLAs and will make it easier to define, schedule, manage, and monitor workflows.

Price: A free trial is available. You can get a quote for pricing details.

Website: BMC Control-M

#8) Broadcom CA Automic

Best for medium to large size businesses.

Broadcom provides a digital business automation platform. It has capabilities for Workload Automation, Self-service Automation, Big Data Automation, SAP Automation, and Workload Automation for Oracle Technologies.

This is an open API automation platform and can integrate your applications and tools across the enterprise. This API-driven feature will give you a single comprehensive automation strategy. It can be used for automation policies across dev/test/prod environments.

Features:

• Broadcom CA Automic is a massively scalable platform. It can scale up to 100K agents and 100M jobs per instance.
• It provides the features for Infrastructure management.
• It supports automation as a code and enables developers to directly code automation artifacts.
• It supports mainframe, distributed, virtual, and cloud environments.
• It guarantees zero downtime upgrades.

Verdict: Broadcom CA Automic will eliminate up to 90% of manual errors and improves efficiency. The maintenance window will not be required and there will not be any downtime during the installation of new versions or patches.

Price: You can get a quote for pricing details.

Website: Broadcom CA

#9) Broadcom CA IT Process Automation Manager

Best for medium to large size businesses.

IT Process Automation Manager is a tool to speed the delivery of IT services. It will define, automate, and orchestrate processes across the organization. You will be able to automate IT processes spanning multiple organizations and systems. By using this tool, the time to deliver services will get reduced. It will enforce standards and compliance policies across departments.

Features:

• IT Process Automation Manager will speed service delivery.
• It will enforce standards and improve policies.
• Time to provide business services, applications and infrastructure will get reduced.
• There will be fewer manual errors.

Verdict: By automating the IT processes with IT Process Automation Manager, you will reduce operational expenses, increase staff productivity, speed IT service delivery, improve service quality, and enforce compliance policies.

Price: You can get a quote for pricing details.

Website: Broadcom CA IT Process Automation Manager

#10) SMA OpCon

Best for small to large businesses.

SMA Technologies provides a workload automation platform called OpCon to accelerate digital transformation. OpCon will help you to automate repetitive tasks. You will be able to create repeatable & reliable workflows. It will be easier to manage workflows from a single platform. The entire enterprise will get united under a single automation platform.

Features:

• SMA Technologies OpCon removes complexity and integrates globally.
• You will be able to manage users through ADS or OpenLDAP. You can designate role-based privileges, secure data, and save all actions in audit trails.
• You can completely automate disaster recovery.
• It will scale the business and simplify auditing & reporting.

Verdict: OpCon will accelerate digital transformation by integrating systems, applications, and people across the enterprise. From tools to applications and legacy systems to cloud can be operated through OpCon. As per reviews, it has a steep learning curve.

Price: You can request for a demo and get a quote.

Website: SMA OpCon

#11) Microsoft System Center

Best for small to large businesses.

Microsoft System Center will make the data center management easier. There are two editions of System Center, Data Center Edition and Standard Edition. Data Center Edition is for managing virtual servers and Standard Edition is for managing physical servers.

Features:

• Microsoft System Center provides endpoint protection.
• You will get an orchestrator and service manager.
• It contains Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager.

Verdict: The solution will make it easier to manage a large number of workstations or servers. As per customer reviews, it has a robust set of features and the best solution for Patch Management.

Price: System Center has two pricing editions, Datacenter Edition ($3607) and Standard Edition ($1323).

Website: Microsoft System Center

#12) Chef

Best for small to large businesses.

Chef INFRA is a platform for automating the infrastructure configuration. It will ensure every system is configured correctly and consistently. With this platform, infrastructure is defined as a code. Automatic correction of configuration drift and universal application of configuration changes will be ensured by Chef INFRA. To ensure this, Chef INFRA continuously evaluates the servers for the desired state.

Features:

• Chef INFRA’s Infrastructure Automation functionalities will make infrastructure configurations testable, portable, and auditable.
• Patch Management will automate the validation and configuration of your infrastructure.
• It will continuously configure the systems against the desired state and ensure that every system is configured correctly and consistently.

Verdict: Chef INFRA will make sure that the configuration policy is flexible, versionable, testable, and human-readable. It has good customer reviews for configuration management functionalities.

Price: Chef has flexible pricing options, Chef Desktop, Chef Compliance, and Chef Product Suites. You can contact the Sales to get a quote.

Website: Chef

#13) Puppet

Best for small to large businesses.

Relay by Puppet will help you through the event-driven automation. It can connect the cloud providers, DevOps tools, and other APIs. According to the signals from your existing DevOps tools, Relay triggers the workflow to orchestrate actions on downstream services. You will be able to build the right workflow by choosing the steps from an ever-growing library of steps.

All the workflows will be stored in the cloud and hence available to all authorized team members. Puppet Enterprise is the platform to automate all the things across your multi-cloud infrastructure at scale. In a single platform, it provides agentless and agent-based automation.

Features:

• Puppet Relay contains the features of event-based triggers, connections, and modular steps.
• It will let you add an approval step to your workflow.
• Relay will give you a bird’s eye view of all operations.
• Delegate Authority features will let you assign roles to team members from view only to operator to approver.
• Puppet Enterprise provides predefined workflows to build, test, and deploy infrastructure.

Verdict: Relay is a platform for all your cloud automation use cases. It will let you customize and extend workflows through YAML-based configuration. It has an integration library which makes it easier to add steps. With Puppet Enterprise you can deliver and manage any cloud, infrastructure, or service. As per reviews, it is best as a configuration management tool.

Price: You can get a quote for pricing. A demo is also available on request.

Website: Puppet

#14) Ansible

Best for small to large businesses.

Ansible is an IT Automation platform that provides the simplest way to automate apps and IT infrastructure. It can be used for Application Deployment, Configuration Management, and Continuous Delivery. It is designed for multi-tire deployments.

Ansible has an efficient architecture. It will connect to your nodes and push out small programs called “Ansible Modules” to them. These programs will be the resource models of the desired state of the system. These modules will be executed by the Ansible and will remove them when finished. No servers, daemons, or databases will be required.

Features:

• The platform will help you with scaling automation, managing complex deployments, and speeding up productivity.
• It can be used across entire IT teams.
• It is a simple and agentless IT automation platform.
• Ansible can be used by anyone.

Verdict: Ansible will help you with automating Infrastructure, Applications, Networks, Containers, Security, and Cloud. As per customer reviews, the product is easy to use and good for CI/CD, orchestration, and workflow automation.

Price: A free trial is available for Ansible. It is available in two editions, Standard and Premium. You can contact the company for the pricing details.

Website: Ansible

#15) Jenkins

Best for small to large businesses and freelancers.

Jenkins is the open-source automation server. It is a leading tool and offers several plugins to support building, deploying, and automating any project. It is a self-contained Java-based program. It is ready to run out-of-the-box. It supports Windows, Mac, and other UNIX like operating systems.

You can set up and configure the Jenkins through its web-interface. On-the-fly error checks and built-in help are also included in this, which make the configuration easy.

Features:

• Jenkins can be used for Continuous Delivery.
• Jenkins is useful to drive builds, tests, and deployments across multiple platforms.
• It can be integrated with almost every tool in CI/CD toolchain through hundreds of plugins.
• It is an extensible solution.

Verdict: Jenkins is the platform to build great things at any scale. It is an extensible platform and provides nearly infinite possibilities.

Price: Jenkins is available for free to download.

Website: Jenkins

#16) Favro

Best for SaaS & Live Games companies to plan collaboratively.

Favro is an app for planning and organizing work. The solution comes with four easily learnable building blocks, Cards, Boards, Collections, and Relations. Cards can be used to perform various tasks such as content creation, goals, etc. Favro will let the managers view the status of the work without interfering with the team’s work.

Features:

• Cards will let you describe the tasks for multiple teams with their workflows.
• A card can be on multiple boards and through which it provides cross-team collaboration.
• You can view cards on the board in multiple ways such as Kanban, Timeline, etc.
• You can view all the boards aggregated on a single screen through Favro Collections.
• Through Favro Relations, everyone in the organization can understand the actual interaction and navigation between the horizontal teams and vertical levels.

Verdict: Favro is the most agile tool and an all-in-one solution for planning and organizing the work. It lets you give feedback in real-time and has the capabilities of real-time collaboration. It can be used by newbies, team leaders as well as CEOs.

Price: Favro offers the solution with monthly as well as annual billing plans. It has three pricing plans, Lite ($25.5 per month), Standard ($34 per month), and Enterprise ($63.75 per month). All these prices are for annual billing. You can try the platform for free for 14 days.

#17) Microsoft Power Apps

Best for business process automation and low-code enterprise app development.

Microsoft Power Apps is an intelligent cloud platform that helps companies build automation software 2-3x faster and reduce implementation costs by up to 74%. Developers often use Power Apps in combination with Power Automate, another Microsoft product ideal for fine-tuning automation scenarios.

The software suite enables building apps and web portals that automate business workflows of any complexity (e.g., financial reporting, cost control, asset management).

Known for its vast toolset and remarkable ease of use, Power Apps is leveraged by 86% of Fortune 500 companies. The product consistently earns praise from Gartner and Forrester Wave as a leading low-code development platform.

Features:

• A point-and-click cloud flow designer with hundreds of pre-built actions to create tailored process automation flows.
• Easy integration with 280+ data sources, including Microsoft products and 3rd party services, and a possibility to create custom connectors.
• Multiple premade and custom AI models for object detection, sentiment analysis, document processing, and more.
• Robotic process automation capabilities to automate even legacy processes without APIs by recording and playing back actions.
• Intelligent process advisor helping to discover enterprise-wide opportunities for workflow automation.
• Centralized flow management and detailed run logs reporting.
• A fully managed scalable data platform with Dataverse allowing for secure data storage and management within out-of-the-box and custom tables.
• Compliance with region- and industry-specific regulations, including GDPR, SOX, HIPAA.

Verdict: Microsoft Power Apps is a powerful platform able to significantly reduce IT teams’ workload when it comes to building and managing custom apps and portals for business workflow automation. To get the full potential of Power Apps, reach out to a seasoned platform consultant such as ScienceSoft.

A Microsoft Solution Partner, ScienceSoft builds robust automation solutions on Power Apps and provides professional guidance on the platform usage.

Price: Power Apps and Power Automate can be explored for free for 30 and 90 days respectively. The products offer flexible subscription and pay-as-you-go plans. To choose the most cost-effective payment model for your case, consult independent Power Apps experts such as ScienceSoft.

Conclusion

Ease of use, stability, scalability, reporting & alerting features, and the capacity to work across environments are the significant factors of IT Automation Software.

From the research, ActiveBatch is our top recommended tool.

The other good options are BMC Control-M, Broadcom CA Automic, Broadcom CA IT Process Automation Manager, and SMA OpCon. Almost all the tools are commercial tools except Jenkins. Jenkins is a free and open-source tool.

We hope this article will make it easier to choose the IT Automation tool for your business.

Research Process:

• Time taken to research and write this article: 24 Hours
• Total tools researched online: 13
• Top tools shortlisted for review: 10

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