Top 29 DevOps Automation Tools for Efficient Workflows

35% of last year’s automation efforts were dedicated to DevOps automation, based on a recent report on IT automation. This reflects the growing need for tools that help development and operations teams automate their development process and efficiently implement DevOps practices.

Compare top DevOps automation tools to start automating your DevOps practices:

Tools		Type	Best For
1.	ActiveBatch	Service orchestration and automation	Unifying disparate DevOps tools and automating complex workflows
2.	RunMyJobs by Redwood	Service orchestration and automation	Orchestrating end-to-end DevOps and business-critical workflows
3.	GitLab CI/CD	CI/CD Platform	Built-in part of the GitLab platform to automate software development
4.	Jenkins	CI/CD Platform	Open-source automation server for building, deploying, and automating projects
5.	CircleCI	CI/CD Platform	Cloud-based CI/CD platform with a focus on speed and ease of use
6.	Azure DevOps	CI/CD Platform	Suite of services for the entire software development lifecycle

1.

ActiveBatch

Service orchestration and automation

Unifying disparate DevOps tools and automating complex workflows

2.

RunMyJobs by Redwood

Service orchestration and automation

Orchestrating end-to-end DevOps and business-critical workflows

3.

GitLab CI/CD

CI/CD Platform

Built-in part of the GitLab platform to automate software development

4.

Jenkins

CI/CD Platform

Open-source automation server for building, deploying, and automating projects

5.

CircleCI

CI/CD Platform

Cloud-based CI/CD platform with a focus on speed and ease of use

6.

Azure DevOps

CI/CD Platform

Suite of services for the entire software development lifecycle

Toolchain integration for end-to-end DevOps automation

Toolchain integration is the practice of connecting various tools used in the DevOps lifecycle to create a seamless, automated workflow. Instead of using a collection of disconnected tools for planning, coding, building, testing, and deployment, a well-integrated toolchain ensures that the output from one tool automatically becomes the input for the next. 

Toolchain integration tools

Toolchain integration is primarily provided by two types of tools: CI/CD platforms and Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAPs).

Service orchestration and automation platforms

WLA tools, also known SOAPs, provide a centralized layer to orchestrate complex, end-to-end workflows that span the entire DevOps toolchain and beyond. They manage dependencies, integrate with disparate systems, and trigger workflows based on real-time events, acting as a control plane for enterprise-wide automation. 

ActiveBatch

ActiveBatch is a powerful Workload Automation solution designed to unify disparate DevOps tools and automate complex workflows. It provides an extensive Integrated Jobs Library that allows developers to build sophisticated automations without scripting, while its Reference Plans promote consistency by enabling reusable, templated workflows for multiple projects.

• Capabilities:
  • End-to-End workflow orchestration: Connects disparate DevOps tools into a single workflow.
  • Reusable templates: Uses reference plans for consistent builds.
  • Automated deployment: Automates provisioning and deployment.
• Integrations:
  • Microsoft ecosystem: Strong integration with tools like Team Foundation Server, SQL Server, and SharePoint.
  • ServiceNow: Explicitly supports orchestrating background jobs and triggering processes.
  • Cloud platforms: Provides cloud provisioning and integration with AWS.

Explore more on ActiveBatch capabilities and its alternatives.

ActiveBatch case studies

Subway (QSR) struggled with slow pipeline changes across environments, and ActiveBatch streamlined DevOps data workflows through centralized orchestration and reusable workflows. The company achieved:

• >60% less time managing environments
• Workflows built/updated 75% faster.¹

Vero Skatt faced complexity managing DevOps automation across multiple environments, and ActiveBatch unified these into one platform with centralized alerts and security features. The Finnish Tax Administration achieved: 

• 6 environments consolidated
• 30+ alert types for real-time monitoring
• Reduced custom scripting and improved compliance.²

RunMyJobs by Redwood

RunMyJobs is a Workload Automation platform that serves as a central hub for orchestrating end-to-end DevOps and business-critical workflows. Its design emphasizes control, with an object-based architecture that enables the creation of reusable, auditable automation across on-premise and multi-cloud environments, ensuring consistency and security.

• Capabilities:
  • CI/CD orchestration: Manages automated delivery pipelines.
  • Configuration management: Versions and audits workflow configurations.
  • Hybrid resource management: Controls resources across on-premise and cloud environments.
• Integrations:
  • ServiceNow: Bi-directional integration for incident and request management.
  • Cloud platforms: Direct connectors for AWS, Google, and Azure.

Check out for more on RunMyJobs.

RunMyJobs case study

Anonymous global energy services company faced challenges migrating DevOps workloads to the cloud and keeping QA/testing and upgrades efficient. RunMyJobs helped by providing SaaS-based orchestration with rapid CI/CD-ready automation. 

• Migration in 90 days
• 2M processes/month managed by one employee
• Upgrades in 2–5 minutes.⁴

CI/CD Platforms

These are the foundational orchestrators of the software delivery pipeline. They automate the processes of integrating code changes, building applications, and running automated tests before deploying to production.

GitLab CI/CD

GitLab CI/CD is a powerful, built-in part of the GitLab platform that automates the software development lifecycle. By integrating CI/CD directly with the source code repository, it enables developers to create, test, and deploy code from a single, unified interface.

• Capabilities:
  • Unified platform: CI/CD is native to the GitLab platform.
  • Pipeline as code: Defines CI/CD pipelines in a simple YAML file.
  • Container registry: Stores and manages Docker images for deployments.
• Integrations:
  • GitLab ecosystem: Integrates with all GitLab features.
  • Kubernetes: Direct integration for containerized deployments.
  • Security: Integrates with built-in security scanning.

Jenkins

Jenkins is a highly extensible, open-source automation server that provides hundreds of plugins to support building, deploying, and automating any project. It serves as a central hub for CI/CD pipelines, allowing developers to automate tasks and detect integration issues early.

• Capabilities:
  • CI/CD automation: Orchestrates build, test, and deploy pipelines.
  • Extensibility: Offers a vast library of plugins for customization.
  • Distributed builds: Scales across multiple machines to handle large workloads.
• Integrations:
  • Version control: Integrates with Git, SVN, and other systems.
  • Testing: Connects with Selenium, JUnit, and SonarQube.
  • Deployment: Works with Ansible, Docker, and Kubernetes.

CircleCI

CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform that automates the build, test, and deployment process for teams of any size. It focuses on speed and ease of use, providing a clean, consistent environment for every build to help teams release code reliably and with confidence.

• Capabilities:
  • Clean environments: Runs every task in a new container to prevent stale data issues.
  • Automated parallelism: Splits up tests to run jobs concurrently for faster execution.
  • Reusable configurations: Uses “Orbs,” which are reusable packages of configuration, to simplify integrations.
• Integrations:
  • Version control: Integrates with GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab.
  • Cloud platforms: Connects with AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.
  • Testing and reporting: Integrates with tools for test management and analytics.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is Microsoft’s platform that provides a suite of services for the entire software development lifecycle. Its integrated CI/CD component, Azure Pipelines, works with any language, platform, and cloud, offering a flexible and scalable way to automate builds, tests, and deployments.

• Capabilities:
  • End-to-end solution: Includes services for project management, repos, pipelines, and testing.
  • Cross-platform support: Builds and deploys to any cloud (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) and for any platform (Windows, Linux, macOS).
• Integrations:
  • Microsoft ecosystem: Integrates with Azure services and Visual Studio.
  • Third-party: Connects with a wide range of tools like GitHub, ServiceNow, and Jira.
  • Test & monitoring: Integrates with testing and monitoring tools like SonarQube and Datadog.

DevOps automation tools

The DevOps lifecycle integrates development and operations through continuous collaboration, automation, and feedback, spanning planning, coding, building, testing, releasing, deploying, operating, and monitoring. Automation tools are integral to each phase, streamlining workflows and reducing manual intervention.

Operations and monitoring

These tools track system performance, collecting logs, and automatically notify teams of issues. They provide real-time feedback for continuous improvement and maintain operational efficiency and reliability.

Dynatrace

Dynatrace delivers AI-powered observability to optimize application performance monitoring and accelerate issue resolution across enterprise systems.

Capabilities:

• Full-stack monitoring: Tracks metrics, logs, and traces.
• AI-driven analysis: Detects anomalies and identifies root causes.
• User experience monitoring: Provides real-time visibility into customer journeys.

Integrations:

• Kubernetes & Containers: OpenShift, Docker, Amazon EKS
• CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps
• Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams.

PagerDuty

PagerDuty is an incident management platform that leverages specialized tools to detect, escalate, and resolve service disruptions in real time.

Capabilities:

• Incident response: Automates escalation policies and notifications.
• On-call scheduling: Coordinates teams across time zones.
• Automation workflows: Streamlines resolution processes.

Integrations:

• Monitoring tools: Datadog, New Relic, Nagios
• Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom
• ITSM: ServiceNow, Jira Service Management

Datadog

Datadog is a monitoring and analytics platform that provides unified visibility into systems with a focus on cloud infrastructure management and application performance.

Capabilities:

• Infrastructure monitoring: Tracks server health and resource usage.
• Application monitoring: Delivers detailed APM and tracing.
• Log management & security: Centralizes and analyzes logs.

Integrations:

• Cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud
• CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI
• Containers & Orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift.

Security automation (DevSecOps)

These are specialized DevOps automation tools that integrate security practices into CI/CD pipelines, automating vulnerability scanning, dependency updates, and compliance monitoring. The aim is to “shift left” security, embedding it from the earliest development stages.

Copado

Copado is a Salesforce DevOps platform that enables organizations to manage cloud infrastructure securely, embedding compliance and automation into the release cycle.

Capabilities:

• Automated CI/CD: Streamlines deployment pipelines.
• Security scanning: Identifies vulnerabilities in code and metadata.
• Compliance reporting: Provides audit-ready governance.

Integrations:

• Salesforce ecosystem: Salesforce DX, Metadata API
• Version control: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket
• Testing tools: Selenium, Provar.

Snyk

Snyk is a security tool that helps developers find and fix vulnerabilities in their code, dependencies, and containers. By integrating directly into the development workflow, it “shifts left” security, ensuring that vulnerabilities are caught and remediated early, before deployment.

• Capabilities:
  • Vulnerability scanning: Scans code and dependencies for known vulnerabilities.
  • License compliance: Monitors open-source licenses.
  • Remediation: Provides fix advice and automated pull requests.
• Integrations:
  • Code repositories: Connects with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket.
  • CI/CD: Integrates with Jenkins and CircleCI.
  • Containers: Scans Docker images and Kubernetes clusters.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

These tools define and provision cloud resources through code templates, ensuring consistent and repeatable environments. They enable organizations to manage cloud infrastructure at scale and accelerate deployments by automating resource creation and updates.

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation provisions resources through infrastructure as code to simplify infrastructure provisioning and improve cloud infrastructure management.

Capabilities:

• Template-driven deployments: Automates resource creation.
• Change management: Detects drift and manages updates.
• Scalability: Enables consistent environments across AWS accounts.

Integrations:

• AWS services: EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda
• CI/CD: AWS CodePipeline, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD
• Infrastructure tools: Terraform (via interoperability), Ansible

Configuration Management

Configuration management tools focus on enforcing and maintaining system states after infrastructure is provisioned. They allow organizations to manage infrastructure consistently across servers, applications, and services, reducing drift and enabling compliance.

Ansible

Ansible is an open-source automation platform that helps DevOps teams streamline configuration and orchestration by automating repetitive tasks across diverse environments.

Capabilities:

• Configuration management: Ensures consistency across systems.
• Provisioning: Automates server setup and patching.
• Orchestration: Manages multi-tier deployments and workflows.

Integrations:

• CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps
• Cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud
• ITSM: ServiceNow.

Chef

Chef is an automation framework that enables organizations to manage infrastructure at scale with policy-driven code, helping development teams improve consistency and improve code quality.

Capabilities:

• Infrastructure automation: Uses declarative “recipes” for repeatable deployments.
• Compliance enforcement: Applies policy-based rules across environments.
• Deployment management: Simplifies application rollout.

Integrations:

• Cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud
• CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Bamboo
• Version control: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket.

Testing automation

These are essential DevOps automation tools for reducing manual intervention and enabling frequent, rapid error detection across the SDLC. They identify and fix bugs early, improving software quality and reducing defect resolution costs. Key tools include: 

SonarQube

SonarQube is an open-source platform that continuously inspects code quality and security. It provides a static analysis engine to identify bugs, code smells, and security vulnerabilities, giving developers real-time feedback and preventing issues from reaching production.

• Capabilities:
  • Code quality analysis: Detects bugs and code smells.
  • Security scanning: Identifies security vulnerabilities.
  • Quality gates: Sets thresholds to block code from being deployed.
• Integrations:
  • CI/CD: Integrates with Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and Azure DevOps.
  • Version control: Links to GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket
  • IDE: Provides plugins for Eclipse, Visual Studio, and IntelliJ.

Planning and code management 

In the initial planning phase, tools like Jira, Trello, and Asana are used for task planning and tracking, aligning project activities with business goals. For code management, tools such as Git, GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket are crucial for version control and code collaboration.

While these are general DevOps tools that facilitate human-centric processes like strategizing and versioning, they also serve as foundational enablers, often triggering automated CI/CD pipelines upon code commits.

GitHub

GitHub is a leading platform for code hosting and collaboration, built around the Git version control system. It allows developers to work together on projects from anywhere, providing a central repository for code, issue tracking, and a foundation for automated workflows.

• Capabilities:
  • Version control: Manages code changes and history.
  • Code collaboration: Supports pull requests and code reviews.
  • Issue tracking: Links code changes directly to bugs and features.
• Integrations:
  • CI/CD: Native integration with GitHub Actions.
  • Project management: Links with Jira and Trello.

What is DevOps automation?

DevOps automation refers to systematic automation of manual tasks across the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and IT operations to enhance efficiency, reliability, and speed in software delivery. Built on continuous integration, delivery, and pervasive automation, it accelerates releases, improves quality, minimizes human error, and boosts productivity.

Which DevOps processes to automate? 

The specific DevOps processes that are ripe for automation are also the primary use cases for DevOps automation. They include:

Planning, coding, building, and testing

This stage involves managing projects, writing code, compiling, and verifying functionality. Manual practices are slow and error-prone. DevOps automation standardizes builds, runs checks automatically, and streamlines workflows, which reduces errors and accelerates development.

Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

CI/CD integrates and deploys code. Manual handling often causes delays and failures. DevOps automation triggers builds and tests on every commit, then deploys tested code automatically, enabling frequent, stable releases.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & provisioning

Provisioning sets up servers and cloud environments. Manual setup is complex and inconsistent. DevOps automation with IaC defines infrastructure in code, allowing environments to be provisioned and scaled consistently with minimal human intervention.

Configuration management

This ensures systems remain consistent across environments. Manual configuration is error-prone and leads to downtime. DevOps automation continuously enforces the desired state, improving reliability and reducing security risks.

Software testing

Testing validates software quality and uncovers bugs. Manual testing is slow and limited. DevOps automation integrates testing into the pipeline, running suites automatically and frequently to ensure quick feedback and higher quality.

Explore software testing best practices to implement them in your automation projects.

Monitoring and logging

Monitoring tracks system health through metrics and logs. Manual analysis is reactive and slow. DevOps automation collects, analyzes, and alerts in real time, enabling teams to detect and resolve issues proactively before users are affected.

DevOps orchestration vs automation

DevOps orchestration is the process of linking and managing individual automation tasks in a coordinated workflow, while DevOps automation is the execution of a single task without manual intervention.

Orchestration takes automation a step further. It creates a cohesive, end-to-end workflow by coordinating multiple, automated tasks. Orchestration platforms, such as SOAPs, manage complex dependencies across diverse tools and teams, ensuring a smooth, continuous pipeline from development to deployment.

The core differences between DevOps orchestration vs DevOps automation include:

DevOps automation benefits

DevOps automation offers numerous strategic benefits, impacting key business outcomes:

Accelerating software delivery speed

DevOps automation accelerates software delivery by streamlining workflows:

• Faster time to market: Reduces code-to-deployment time, enabling rapid feature delivery and market responsiveness. 
• Increased deployment frequency: Automating CI/CD allows more frequent, smaller releases, indicating an agile process.
• Reduced lead time for changes: Minimizes time from code change to production, with automated builds and tests enabling quick deployment.

Enhancing system reliability

Automation enhances system reliability by minimizing errors and enabling rapid recovery:

• Consistency: Ensures uniform task execution, reducing human errors and leading to dependable systems.
• Reduced change failure rate: Automated testing and consistent IaC environments significantly lower production defects.
• Reduced MTTR: Automated monitoring, alerting, and recovery processes enable quicker issue identification and service restoration. Self-healing capabilities also ensure application uptime.

Improving operational efficiency

DevOps automation improves operational efficiency by optimizing resource use and enabling focus on high-value tasks:

• Reduced operational overhead: Automating routine tasks frees teams for strategic, value-adding activities, minimizing costs.
• Scalability & resource optimization: Rapid provisioning/deprovisioning of resources manages changing demands, optimizing computing resource use.
• Automated environment provisioning: Streamlines consistent environment setup, reducing preparation time and accelerating development.
• Enhanced collaboration: Automated workflows break down silos, fostering integrated problem-solving and faster decision-making.

DevOps automation KPIs

Organizations should track key metrics to evaluate DevOps automation impact:

• Deployment frequency: How often code is deployed to production.
• Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR): Average time to restore service after an incident.
• Change failure rate: Percentage of production changes causing degraded service or rollback.
• Infrastructure automation rate: Proportion of automated infrastructure tasks.
• Percent of defects found in automation: Success rate of automation tools in catching early defects.
• Operational overhead: Quantified reduction in manual effort and resource use due to automation.[1] Monitoring these metrics provides clear visibility for continuous improvement.

FAQs

Further reading

Check out other relevant tools and solutions:

• Top 10 Process Orchestration Tools: Pros & Cons
• Compare Top 15 Data Orchestration Tools
• Top 40+ LLMOps Tools & Compare them to MLOPs

External Links

• 1. ActiveBatch Case Studies - VeroSkatt .
• 2. ActiveBatch Case Studies - VeroSkatt .
• 3. ActiveBatch by Redwood. ActiveBatch by Redwood
• 4. Redwood Case Study
• 5. Real-Time Process Automation.
• 6. Copado | 100% Salesforce Native DevOps Platform.
• 7. What is Chef? DevOps Tool for Configuration Management.