As organizations scale, the complexity of managing IT infrastructure, ensuring consistency, and streamlining operations increases. Automation and orchestration become essential to handling these tasks efficiently, and Ansible by Red Hat is a popular tool for simplifying IT automation. While Ansible’s Command Line Interface (CLI) is effective for executing specific tasks, the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) provides an enterprise-grade solution that goes beyond the basic capabilities of the CLI.
Numerous studies have demonstrated the significant impact of AAP on organizational performance. According to a Forrester Consulting study, enterprises using AAP achieved:
✔ 94% reduction in staff hours for security incident recovery.
✔ $1.3M in operational savings and $389,707 in software cost reductions over three years.
✔ 66% faster feature deployment, accelerating business responsiveness
In this blog, we'll explore the advantages of using AAP and how CloudMyLab can help you make the most of this powerful tool through its Ansible hands-on labs and Proof of Concept (POC) services.
Ansible Automation Platform is an enterprise-ready framework designed to streamline and enhance infrastructure automation. Released as an advanced solution by Red Hat, it extends the capabilities of the Ansible CLI, offering robust tools for automation at scale.
Ansible CLI is a command-line tool that allows users to execute playbooks, manage configurations, and automate repetitive tasks. It’s lightweight, agentless, and easy to get started with—but it wasn’t built for enterprise-wide automation. For more information, visit the Ansible CLI documentation.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform takes those foundational capabilities and supercharges them for large-scale environments. Instead of managing YAML files scattered across different machines, teams get a structured automation control plane with:
✔ Centralized Automation – Execute, manage, and schedule playbooks from a single, unified platform.
✔ Automation Controller (formerly Ansible Tower) – A web-based interface to control, monitor, and orchestrate workflows.
✔ Ansible Automation Platform API – A RESTful API for integrating automation across ITSM, CI/CD pipelines, and security tools.
✔ Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) – Secure automation workflows with fine-grained permissions, allowing organizations to delegate tasks securely and maintain strict governance. This feature fosters collaborative workflows while safeguarding critical automation tasks from unauthorized access.
✔ Built-In Analytics – Gain visibility into automation performance with logs, dashboards, and reports.
✔ Scalability – Deploy automation across thousands of devices, whether in on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments.
An IDC Analysis (2021) found that organizations using AAP saw a 667% five-year ROI, with payback in just 10 months. They also reported a 76% reduction in unplanned downtime and 30% greater IT security efficiency, highlighting how automation improves both cost efficiency and operational resilience.
Ansible CLI users often manage playbooks locally, which can become difficult to scale and track. The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides a centralized management interface, giving users complete visibility over their automation tasks, from scheduling to execution. This centralized control ensures that all automation efforts are thoroughly documented and auditable, providing comprehensive documentation for ongoing management and governance.
✔ Automation Controller (formerly Ansible Tower) – A single dashboard to schedule, execute, and manage automation workflows.
✔ Real-Time Monitoring – Track playbook execution, view job statuses, and log errors in one place.
✔ Audit & Compliance Tracking – Keep an automated record of what was run, when, and by whom—essential for security and governance.
Ansible Automation Platform incorporates Role-Based Access Control, which enables organizations to securely delegate tasks to different teams or users. With RBAC, you can ensure that only authorized users can access or modify specific automation workflows. This granular control enhances security while promoting collaboration.
🔒 Teams can only execute or modify the playbooks they’re authorized to use.
🔒 Administrators can restrict who can change infrastructure-critical configurations.
🔒 Compliance teams can enforce separation of duties, ensuring sensitive actions require approval.
The Ansible CLI excels at executing individual playbooks, but when automation becomes more complex, workflow orchestration is necessary. Ansible Automation Platform supports multi-step workflows, allowing users to define automation processes that include conditionals, error handling, and integrations with third-party systems.
🔄 Automated Workflows – Chain multiple playbooks together to execute conditionally, ensuring automation runs in a structured sequence.
🛠 Error Handling – Define fallback actions when failures occur, preventing small issues from becoming major incidents.
📡 Third-Party Integrations – Utilize event-driven Ansible to trigger actions based on events from monitoring, ticketing, or CI/CD pipelines.
While the Ansible CLI requires manual tracking of playbook outcomes, the Automation Platform provides built-in analytics. Users can view detailed dashboards and reports, gaining insights into task execution times, success rates, and potential areas for improvement.
📊 Execution Insights – Visualize success rates, job durations, and failure points.
📈 Optimization Data – Identify inefficiencies in playbooks to reduce execution time and resource consumption.
🔍 Compliance & Audit Logs – Prove automation success with detailed reporting on every action taken.
The Ansible CLI works well in small environments, but as organizations grow, scaling becomes a challenge, presenting one of the Ansible Automation Platform advantages demonstrated in CloudMyLab's POC lab offering. The Ansible Automation Platform allows users to scale their automation efforts across large infrastructures, ensuring that thousands of devices or systems can be managed seamlessly.
⚡ Scaling automation across hybrid, on-prem, and multi-cloud environments.
⚡ Managing distributed infrastructure without added complexity.
⚡ Handling thousands of endpoints seamlessly, without performance bottlenecks.
The Ansible Automation Platform integrates with popular enterprise tools like ticketing systems, CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring platforms. These integrations help streamline processes across IT and development teams. In contrast, the Ansible CLI typically requires custom scripts to achieve this level of integration.
A real-world example of AAP’s impact comes from Asian Development Bank (2022). By automating database cloning, ADB reduced manual workloads by 100 days per year, cutting task execution time from 8 hours per session to just 3 hours per week. Their patching and recovery processes also improved, saving 20 days per month and 2 hours per security incident.
🔗 Pre-Built Connectors for CI/CD, ITSM, monitoring, and security tools.
🔧 Ansible Automation Platform API to integrate with existing workflows.
⚙ Network Automation Support – Use Ansible with CloudMyLab’s POC labs to test real-world automation across Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and more.
CloudMyLab is an industry leader in providing lab environments for Proof of Concept (POC) and training in networking and automation technologies. When it comes to the Ansible Automation Platform, CloudMyLab offers highly customizable labs for enterprises and individuals looking to simulate real-world environments and test complex automation scenarios.
Comprehensive Lab Environment: CloudMyLab provides access to environments that mimic enterprise infrastructure, including data centers, routers, switches, and virtual machines.
POC for Enterprise Automation: CloudMyLab supports POCs for evaluating automation at scale. Whether it’s testing new workflows, building integrations with other platforms, or automating complex networking scenarios, their labs are designed to offer a controlled environment where teams can experiment and validate their solutions.
Pre-Built Ansible Automation Templates: CloudMyLab also provides pre-configured templates and use cases that users can easily adopt and customize. These templates shorten the learning curve and enable faster deployment of automation strategies.
Support for Advanced Networking and Security Automation: CloudMyLab's offerings include lab setups that involve routers, switches, firewalls, and more.
Hands-On Labs: CloudMyLab offers hands-on labs for professionals seeking to master the Ansible Automation Platform.
Automation is only as good as the environment it runs in. CloudMyLab bridges the gap between learning, testing, and real-world deployment by providing fully interactive Ansible lab environments designed for enterprises, IT teams, and individual professionals.
Most Ansible training resources rely on theoretical exercises that fail to capture the complexity of real-world IT environments. CloudMyLab changes that by offering:
✔ Fully interactive lab environments that simulate enterprise infrastructure—routers, switches, virtual machines, and cloud-native environments.
✔ Pre-configured Ansible playbooks designed for network automation, security enforcement, and configuration management.
✔ Ansible Automation Platform labs that let users test automation in realistic conditions before applying them in production.
Automation isn’t a solo effort—it requires collaboration across IT, DevOps, and security teams. CloudMyLab provides a secure, always-available lab environment with:
🔒 24/7 Managed Hosted Emulator Access – Secure cloud-hosted environments where teams can work on Ansible automation without setting up local infrastructure.
🤝 Multi-User Collaboration – Teams can work together on shared automation projects, with role-based access control ensuring secure workflow management.
🛠 Zero-Risk Testing – Experiment with Ansible Automation Platform without the risk of breaking live production environments.
Building an on-premise automation lab is expensive and resource-intensive. CloudMyLab eliminates these barriers by offering:
💰 No expensive hardware required – Everything runs in the cloud, meaning no upfront investment in servers or network equipment.
📈 Scalable, subscription-based lab access – Whether you need a small setup for individual learning or a fully-managed enterprise lab, CloudMyLab scales with your needsIT Lab as a Service Ma….
⚙ Enterprise-Grade Infrastructure – CloudMyLab provides a high-performance, IT Lab-as-a-Service environment with dedicated networking, security, and computing resources.
The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is more than just an automation tool—it’s an enterprise-grade solution designed to centralize, secure, and scale IT automation across an organization. With RBAC, workflow automation, orchestration, analytics, and deep integrations, AAP eliminates manual inefficiencies and operational bottlenecks, making it a strategic necessity for modern IT teams.
But automation shouldn’t be trial and error in a live production environment. This is where CloudMyLab bridges the gap, providing:
✔ Hands-on lab environments to test Ansible Automation Platform in real-world conditions.
✔ Proof of Concept labs to validate automation workflows before deployment.
✔ Enterprise-ready scalability without the need for costly on-premise infrastructure.
💡 Why risk automation errors in production when you can test in a safe, enterprise-grade sandbox?
🔹 Start your automation journey today with CloudMyLab’s Ansible lab environments.
🔹 Sign up for a free trial and take your automation strategies from theory to reality.
Ansible is a powerful toolset that simplifies and streamlines the process of IT automation. According to a 2022 Red Hat survey, 86% of IT leaders reported improved efficiency after implementing Ansible. By utilizing a simple language without the need for agents, Ansible allows IT professionals to automate tasks across a variety of systems. It uses a simple, human-readable YAML language to define automation workflows, known as playbooks. This approach reduces the complexity often associated with scripting, enabling IT teams to develop and execute automated tasks swiftly and error-free. A study by Forrester in 2021 found that organizations using Ansible reduced their configuration management time by 75%. Through its agentless architecture, Ansible connects directly to your systems, leveraging native utilities like SSH for seamless communication. This not only decreases overhead but also enhances security. It’s versatile enough to handle a vast array of tasks, from deploying applications to managing system configurations, as evidenced by its adoption in over 40% of Fortune 500 companies.