Compare 18 Orchestration Tools: 5,000+ Reviews & Features in '24

Orchestration is the automated coordination and management of multiple tasks, systems, and applications to streamline workflows and optimize resource utilization.

Employing orchestration tools is important to enhance efficiency, scalability, and reliability by automating complex processes, ensuring consistency, and facilitating seamless integration across IT infrastructure and operations. In fact, 50% of enterprises are expected to invest in orchestration platforms to manage and coordinate their AI workflows by 2025.¹

AIMultiple lists top orchestration tools according to their major categories and explains their features in detail:

The table above lists the products in alphabetical order, with the exception of the sponsors. The review and score data on the table is extracted from the leading review platforms.

IT orchestration

These platforms are also referred as service orchestration or IT orchestration tools. These tools include all other types of orchestration including workflow, infrastructure and container orchestration. They coordinate the delivery and management of services by managing service interactions, dependencies, and configurations across multiple computer systems. 

Enterprise workload automation and job scheduling tools dominate the service orchestration market. Compare all service orchestration and automation platforms via our comprehensive and constantly updated list.

ActiveBatch

ActiveBatch is a workload automation tool that enables organizations to integrate, automate, orchestrate and monitor their entire technology stack centrally. ActiveBatch offers numerous integrations, enabling IT teams to automate and integrate business processes, data center operations, and real-time infrastructure management tasks. Key capabilities of ActiveBatch include:

• Integrated jobs library to orchestrate processes with prebuilt, platform-neutral functions
• Event-driven automation to prevent delays or bottlenecks in the executions of cloud-based and on-premises workflows
• Job scheduling to deploy triggers such as email, FTP, and message queue triggers, and integrate with popular service management systems
• Automated remediation and alerts for operational excellence
• Advanced date/time scheduling with custom business rules and fiscal calendars
• Seamless DevOps integration to streamline scheduling and orchestration for all types of applications.
• Self-documenting job steps and script lifecycle management to ensure security and transparency.

Check out our deep-dive vendor analysis on ActiveBatch to explore more on its features, strenghts and weaknesses. 

Here is a video showing the ActiveBatch Web Console interface and features: 

RunMyJobs

RunMyJobs is a service orchestration and automation platform that can Centralizes and optimizes IT or business processes by automating tasks and managing dependencies across on-premises, multi-cloud, or hybrid-cloud environments. RunMyJobs allows users to:

• Execute and schedule batch jobs and workflows based on source files, data, events, and messages in real-time
• Process data across ERP, CRM, finance, and big data pipelines
• Integrate to legacy systems, operating systems, apps, and containers
• Improve DevOps with various continuous integration and delivery tools
• Manage cloud infrastructure with load balancing and process prioritization
• Monitor dashboards regarding job status and resource allocation
• Set alerts and SLA notifications
• Standardized processes across software development, test, and deployment.

Read our deep-dive vendor analysis on RunMyJobs to learn more. 

Here is a video, illustrating RunMyJobs architecture:

Fortra’s JAMS

Fortra’s JAMS delivers enterprise job scheduling and workload automation to orchestrate jobs and workflows across platforms, including on-premises and cloud environments. Some of the main capabilities include:

• Cross-platform scheduling to control jobs on all business systems
• Job monitoring of jobs across the environment with dashboards and reports
• Integrations with native connections to leading business applications

Compare Fortra’s Jams alternatives based on capabilities, pros and cons.

Ansible

Ansible is a service orchestration tool that automates configuration management, application deployment, and infrastructure provisioning. It uses YAML-based playbooks for defining automated tasks.

Some of its main capabilities are listed as:

• Built-in orchestration capabilities to automate diverse tools and platforms.
• Automation controller with RESTful API, RBAC, workflows, and CI/CD integrations.
• Task ordering to ensure proper execution of automation efforts.

Container orchestration tools

These tools manage the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications. They automate tasks like scheduling containers, managing container lifecycles, and ensuring high availability. Best container orchestration tools include:

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is mainly a cloud infrastructure provider that offers scalable compute resources, storage, and networking solutions. It offers a container orchestration capability, DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) which can simplify the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications. Some of its major features include:

• Automated Kubernetes cluster provisioning and management for streamlined deployment workflows.
• Built-in monitoring and logging features for real-time visibility into cluster performance.
• Role-based access control (RBAC) for granular control over user permissions and access levels.
• Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines integration for automated application delivery.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

GKE is a container orchestration tool that focuses on simplicity and flexibility. It provides features for scheduling and managing containerized applications, as well as support for mixed workloads including Docker, VMs, and standalone binaries.

KE Autopilot to automatically handle cluster compute management Prebuilt applications to enterprise-ready containerized solutions GPU and TPU support for running specialized workloads benefiting from hardware accelerators

Kubernetes 

Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It provides features such as container scheduling, service discovery, and horizontal scaling.

• Horizontal and vertical pod autoscaling to automatically adjusts the number of pod replicas based on resource utilization.
• Self-healing to automatically restarts containers that fail or become unresponsive.
• Service discovery and load balancing to automatically discover and route requests to containers.
• Resource quotas and limitations to control the amount of CPU, memory, and other resources each container can use.

OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift is a container orchestration platform built on top of Kubernetes, leveraging its orchestration capabilities. The platform also adds additional features for application development, deployment, and management, including developer tools and integrated CI/CD pipelines, such as:

• Operator framework to automate application deployment, scaling, and management through custom operators
• Containerized infrastructure to run containerized applications on-premises or in the cloud
• Built-in security features such as role-based access control (RBAC) and network policy enforcement.

Infrastructure orchestration tools

These tools delivers automated infrastructure management and configuration, such as virtual machines, networks, storage, and other cloud services. 

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation is an infrastructure orchestration service for provisioning and managing AWS resources using templates. It allows users to:

• Define infrastructure as code to automate the deployment process, enabling efficient scaling and management of AWS infrastructure
• Automate provisioning, updating, and deleting stacks as a single unit
• Express functions, APIs, databases, and event source mappings using shorthand syntax in YAML, which is transformed into CloudFormation syntax during deployment
• Resource Management to orchestrate the deployment and management of AWS resources, ensuring consistency and reliability.

Azure ARM

Azure ARM (Azure Resource Manager) is a service for managing and orchestrating Azure resources. It allows users to: 

• Define infrastructure templates using JSON and automate the deployment and management of Azure resources
• Manage and visualize application resources within resource groups
• Identify resource dependencies and categorize resources using tags for management and billing.

Puppet

Puppet is an infrastructure orchestration platform that automates the configuration and management of IT infrastructure. It provides features for defining infrastructure as code, enforcing desired state configurations, and managing infrastructure at scale, such as:

• Compliance automation to automatically run compliance checks and enforce regulatory standards across infrastructure.
• Configuration management to define and maintain desired system configurations consistently across environments.
• Code delivery to facilitate continuous delivery pipelines for deploying infrastructure changes as code.
• Vulnerability management to identify and remediate vulnerabilities in system configurations and software packages.
• Patching & upgrades to automatically manage patch processes and ensure systems are up-to-date and secure.

Terraform

Terraform is an infrastructure orchestration tool that enables users to define, provision, and manage infrastructure resources across multiple cloud providers and on-premises environments. It features a declarative configuration language and supports a wide range of providers.

• Declarative configuration language to define infrastructure resources for consistent deployments.
• Multi-cloud provisioning to orchestrate infrastructure across multiple cloud providers and on-premises environments
• Infrastructure as Code to enable infrastructure management through code

LLM orchestration

Large Language Models (LLMs) are AI systems trained on vast datasets to understand and generate human-like text. LLM orchestration refers to frameworks designed to manage and coordinate the interaction of these models with other AI components and data sources.

LLM orchestration help efficient integration, scalability, and enhanced functionality when deploying LLMs in complex applications or enterprise environments. Here is a list of LLM orchestration tools and their GitHub scores, sorted in alphabetical order:

Other orchestration tools

There are various orchestration tools that can be placed under the 4 major categories explained above, such as:

Process orchestration tools

Business process orchestration tools automate and coordinate workflows and processes across various systems and applications. They enable the efficient execution and management of complex business processes.

Pipefy

Pipefy is a workflow orchestration platform to standardize and manage complex processes and workflows without technical resources. Pipefy users can scheduling and monitoring workflows as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). It provides features for task dependency management and workflow visualization, such as:

• Integrations to connect with other applications via open API or Zapier
• Pre-configured metrics to monitor process performance KPIs like productivity, lead time, and flow
• Visual management to track process stages, responsibilities, deadlines, action statuses and SLAs
• Automated alerts and real-time performance analytics
• Internal and external portals to access more intelligent solutions and improve data and process control.

Here is an example of Pipefy analytics dashboard:

Process Street

Process Street is a business process management platform, designed to streamline operations and automate tasks. It offers a variety of features, including:

• Task dependencies to manage task dependencies
• Dynamic workflow updates to modify workflows without disrupting ongoing processes
• Automated workflow execution to Automate task execution to align with business cadence
• Data security controls to manage who has access to sensitive information within workflows
• Compliance and accountability to improve compliance with single or sequential approvals
• AI-Powered workflows to create step-by-step processes.

Cloud orchestration tools

Cloud orchestration tools automate the provisioning, configuration, and management of cloud resources and services across various cloud environments. They streamline tasks such as deploying virtual machines, managing networking, and scaling infrastructure in the cloud.

Cloud orchestration can be considered as part of container or infrastructure orchestration.

Microsoft Azure Logic Apps

Microsoft Azure Logic Apps is a cloud platform to create and run automated workflows and integrate systems and services. It offers a visual designer for building workflows and supports a wide range of connectors and triggers. With Azure platform, users can fully control their workflows, including invoking other services, handling messages, and managing the flow with scopes, conditions, switch cases, and loopings. Azure logic apps capabilities include:

• Automated and integrated communication via messaging, EDI and B2B integration.
• Data wrangling 
• Hybrid and cloud-native integration for enterprise application integration (EAI)
• Integration to AI services.

Here is an illustration of Azure logic apps’ integration to various connectors:

AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions is a visual workflow service designed to coordinate distributed applications, automate processes, orchestrate microservices, and construct data and machine learning pipelines using AWS services. Users can benefit from functionalities like:

• Orchestration and automation of extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes
• Direct integration with over 220 AWS services and 10,000+ APIs
• Built-in state management, error handling, and workflow progress tracking
• Real-time and auditable workflow execution history with monitoring and logging
• Serverless solutions that automatically scale to accommodate changing workloads
• High-volume orchestration for event processing workflows such as IoT and data ingestion.
• Visual operator dashboard for monitoring and troubleshooting workflow executions.

There are also orchestration tools that can overlap with more than one category like:

Data orchestration tools

Data orchestration tools are used for managing and automating workflows related to data processing, integration, and movement. They ensure efficient handling of data across different systems and environments.

Data orchestration tools primarily fall under IT orchestration as they focus on automating and coordinating data-related processes.

Google Dataflow

Google Dataflow is a serverless, unified data processing platform designed for stream and batch processing. Its key features include:

• Automated resource management for a fully managed service with automated provisioning and horizontal/vertical autoscaling
• Real-Time insights and AI for predictive analytics and real-time personalization with the support of NVIDIA GPUs
• Dynamic work rebalancing for constant adjustment of adjusts resource allocation
• Machine learning pipelines to train, deploy, and manage complete ML pipelines for both batch and streaming data
• Monitoring and observability to diagnose issues and track data at each step with tools.

Prefect

Prefect is a workflow orchestration platform that deploys, monitors and manages data workflows with features like:

1. Log retention and debugging for enhanced data traceability and troubleshooting
2. Service accounts and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for secure workflow management
3. Event-driven workflows that integrate with external systems for comprehensive stack visibility
4. Automated flow runs initiation, deployment pausing, and custom notifications sending.

• Cluster management tools: Cluster management tools can automate the deployment, scaling, and management of clusters of computing resources, such as containers or virtual machines. They aim to provide efficient resource utilization and high availability of applications. A cluster management tool can be considered as infrastructure orchestration.
• DevOps orchestration tools: DevOps orchestration tools automate and streamline the software development lifecycle, from code commit to deployment and operations. They facilitate continuous integration, continuous deployment, and collaboration between development and operations teams. DevOps orchestration tools can span across workflow orchestration and infrastructure orchestration categories, as they involve automating workflows related to software development and deployment processes.
• Workflow orchestration: These tools manage the automation and coordination of workflows or processes across different systems or applications. They help in defining, scheduling, and executing complex workflows involving multiple tasks, dependencies, and conditions. Users can create workflows across multiple systems.

Disclaimers

AIMultiple recognizes that certain tools may fall into multiple categories and that there is overlap between categories. However, to maintain precision and clarity in our analysis, AIMultiple has streamlined the categorization process and assigned each vendor to a single category only.

For open-source tools, AIMultiple choose the frameworks with the highest GitHub score.

Transparency statement

AIMultiple partners with multiple companies such as ActiveBatch, RunMyJobs, and Fortra’s Jams.

Further reading

Explore more on orchestration tools by checking out our comprehensive articles and benchmarks:

• Top 10 Process Orchestration Tools based on 5,200 Reviews
• Process Orchestration: Top 5 Tools & Best Practices

External sources

• 1. McHugh, B. (February 2024). “Gartner’s IT Automation Trends for 2023 – Did they happen?” ActiveBatch. Accessed at April 19, 2024.
• 2. “Monitoring.” DigitalOcean. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 3. “GKE View observability metrics.” Google Cloud. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 4. “Kubernetes | Production-Grade Container Orchestration.” CozySystems. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 5. Handy, A(2020). “OpenShift 4.3: Dashboard refinements and the new Project dashboard.” RedHat. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 6. “CloudFormation.” AWS. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 7. “AZM Overiew.” Microsoft. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 8. “Puppet Enterprise.” Puppet. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 9. “Register.” Terraform. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 10. “Dashboards.” Pipefy. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 11.  Wiggers, S. (February 28th, 2024). “Azure Logic Apps Life Cycle – The Big Picture.” Turbo360. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 12. “AWS Step Functions.” AWS. Accessed April 19, 2024.
• 13. “Prefect Product.” Prefect. Accessed April 19, 2024.