Top Ansible Companies
Browse 1 vetted companies specializing in Ansible. Expert Cloud & Infrastructure providers with proven Ansible expertise. Compare ratings, portfolios, and reviews to find the perfect partner.
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Quick Stats
- Companies listed
- 1
Ansible is Red Hat's open-source IT automation platform used by hundreds of thousands of organizations worldwide to automate server provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, and network automation. Its agentless, YAML-based approach makes it approachable for teams new to infrastructure automation while remaining powerful enough for the most complex enterprise environments.
Many organizations adopt Ansible independently but quickly discover that building scalable, maintainable, and secure playbooks at enterprise scale requires specialized expertise - poorly written Ansible can create technical debt that is harder to manage than the manual processes it replaced.
Ansible - By the Numbers
- 20 million+ - Estimated Ansible users worldwide, making it the most widely adopted IT automation tool as of 2025.
- Ansible Core 2.17+ - The latest stable release series (2025), with improved performance, collection dependency management, and Python 3.10+ minimum support.
- Agentless - Unlike Chef or Puppet, Ansible requires no persistent agents on managed nodes - it communicates via SSH (Linux) or WinRM (Windows), reducing attack surface and operational overhead.
- 10,000+ - Ansible Galaxy collection roles and modules contributed by the community, covering everything from Kubernetes to Cisco network devices to cloud providers.
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform - The enterprise product layer above open-source Ansible, adding Automation Controller (formerly AWX/Tower), automation analytics, and Red Hat support subscriptions starting at $14,000/yr for 100 nodes.
- Top 3 - Ansible consistently ranks among the three most-used configuration management and IaC tools in DevOps surveys alongside Terraform and Puppet.
What Ansible Companies Do
Ansible Playbook Development and Automation Architecture
The core service offered by Ansible specialists is designing and implementing playbook libraries that automate repetitive infrastructure tasks. This includes writing idempotent roles, structuring inventories for multi-environment deployments (dev, staging, production), implementing variable hierarchies with Ansible Vault for secrets, and organizing code following Ansible best practices like the official directory layout and Galaxy role structure.
Infrastructure Configuration Management
Ansible companies help organizations achieve consistent, auditable server configuration at scale - ensuring hundreds or thousands of servers maintain a declared desired state. This covers OS hardening (CIS benchmarks, STIG compliance), package management, user and SSH key management, firewall rules, and filesystem configurations, all tracked in version-controlled playbooks.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Implementation
For enterprises moving beyond ad-hoc Ansible usage, specialist partners design and implement Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) including Automation Controller (AWX), Automation Hub for private collections, Event-Driven Ansible for reactive automation, and integration with ServiceNow, Jira, Splunk, and other enterprise platforms. Many of these partners hold Red Hat Advanced Business Partner status.
Network Automation
Ansible has strong support for network device automation via modules for Cisco IOS/NXOS/IOS-XE, Arista EOS, Juniper JunOS, and F5 BIG-IP, among others. Network automation specialists use Ansible to automate VLAN configuration, BGP/OSPF updates, ACL management, and compliance checks across large network estates without vendor-specific scripting.
Cloud Provisioning and Hybrid Automation
Ansible integrates with AWS, Azure, GCP, and VMware to automate cloud resource provisioning alongside configuration management. While Terraform is often preferred for pure infrastructure provisioning, many organizations use Ansible for post-provisioning configuration, tying Ansible playbooks into Terraform outputs or running them as user data / cloud-init scripts.
CI/CD Pipeline Integration
Ansible companies integrate playbook execution into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) to automate application deployments, environment setup, and rollback procedures. This includes building deployment pipelines with blue-green or rolling deployment strategies orchestrated via Ansible, and setting up automated testing of playbooks using Molecule with Docker or Podman drivers.
Ansible Costs and Pricing
Ansible consulting and implementation pricing in 2025-2026 varies by scope, team expertise, and engagement model. Key reference points:
- Ansible assessment and roadmap (discovery engagement): $5,000 - $20,000 for a structured review of existing automation maturity and a prioritized implementation plan.
- Small automation project (10-50 servers, 5-15 playbooks): $15,000 - $50,000 over 4-10 weeks with an experienced DevOps consultancy.
- Enterprise automation platform buildout: $75,000 - $400,000+ for full AAP implementation, custom collections, ITSM integration, and team enablement over 3-9 months.
- Network automation project: $25,000 - $150,000 depending on device variety, network complexity, and number of automated workflows.
- Hourly rates - North America: $150 - $250/hr for senior Ansible architects and Red Hat Certified Engineers.
- Hourly rates - Eastern Europe / India: $40 - $85/hr for qualified Ansible engineers with enterprise automation experience.
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform licensing: Starts at approximately $14,000/year for 100 managed nodes (standard subscription); enterprise pricing is negotiated.
How to Choose an Ansible Company
The quality gap between basic Ansible practitioners and true automation architects is significant. Use these criteria to identify firms with the depth your project requires:
- Check Red Hat partnership and certifications: Red Hat Advanced Business Partners with Ansible-certified engineers demonstrate a verified commitment to the technology. Look for Red Hat Certified Specialists in Ansible Automation (EX407 or newer EX294) among their team members.
- Evaluate playbook quality standards: Ask to review sample playbooks or role structures. Quality Ansible code is idempotent, uses proper variable precedence, avoids shell/command modules when native modules exist, and structures roles according to Galaxy conventions.
- Ask about Molecule testing: Serious Ansible shops test roles with Molecule before deploying to production. If the team does not use Molecule or an equivalent testing framework, they are likely not following best practices.
- Assess secrets management approach: Proper use of Ansible Vault, integration with HashiCorp Vault, or AWS Secrets Manager is critical for security. Never work with a firm that stores credentials in plaintext in playbooks or inventories.
- Understand their version control and change management practices: All playbooks should live in Git with meaningful commit history, pull request reviews, and ideally automated syntax checking (ansible-lint) and Molecule tests in CI.
- Confirm knowledge transfer and documentation deliverables: Automation only delivers lasting value if your team understands and can maintain it. Ensure the engagement includes documentation, runbooks, and training sessions tailored to your team's skill level.
Ansible - Frequently Asked Questions
How does Ansible compare to Terraform, Chef, and Puppet?▼
Ansible, Terraform, Chef, and Puppet each solve different problems. Terraform excels at infrastructure provisioning (creating cloud resources) using a declarative HCL language and state files. Ansible is stronger at configuration management and application deployment on existing infrastructure, using procedural YAML playbooks without persistent agents. Chef and Puppet use agent-based models with more powerful policy language but higher operational complexity. Many organizations use Terraform and Ansible together: Terraform provisions the infrastructure, Ansible configures it. Chef and Puppet see declining adoption compared to Ansible and Terraform in new deployments.
Do I need Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, or is open-source Ansible enough?▼
Open-source Ansible (ansible-core + community collections) is free and sufficient for teams comfortable running automation from the command line, managing a Git repository of playbooks, and scheduling jobs with basic tools. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform adds a web UI for running and scheduling jobs (Automation Controller/AWX), role-based access control, audit logging, a private automation hub, Event-Driven Ansible for reactive automation, and Red Hat support. Organizations with 50+ nodes, compliance requirements, or multiple teams sharing playbooks typically find AAP's operational and governance benefits justify the licensing cost.
How difficult is Ansible to learn for a team new to automation?▼
Ansible has one of the gentlest learning curves among automation tools. Sysadmins with Linux command-line experience typically write their first working playbooks within a few days. YAML syntax is readable, the documentation is excellent, and the agentless architecture means there is no complex infrastructure to set up before you can start. The learning curve steepens when building complex role hierarchies, managing dynamic inventories across cloud providers, or integrating with external secrets managers and ITSM tools. Engaging an Ansible specialist to establish architecture and coding standards early helps teams avoid common pitfalls that lead to unmaintainable playbook sprawl.
Can Ansible automate Windows servers, not just Linux?▼
Yes, Ansible supports Windows automation using WinRM (Windows Remote Management) or SSH (supported from Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10 onwards). Windows-specific modules cover tasks like managing Windows features, registry keys, services, IIS configuration, Active Directory objects, and PowerShell script execution. Windows automation with Ansible requires a control node running Linux (Ansible cannot run natively on Windows as a control machine), and WinRM setup on managed nodes requires some initial configuration. Ansible companies with mixed-environment experience can design automation architectures that manage both Linux and Windows fleets from the same playbook infrastructure.
What is Event-Driven Ansible and when should I use it?▼
Event-Driven Ansible (EDA), introduced in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.4+, allows automation to be triggered by external events rather than scheduled or manually executed. Rulebooks define event sources (monitoring alerts from Prometheus, Dynatrace, or Splunk; webhooks from Git repositories; ServiceNow tickets; Kafka messages) and the automation actions to run in response. Common use cases include auto-remediation of infrastructure alerts (restart a failed service when a monitoring event fires), triggering deployments from Git push webhooks, and automatically opening ITSM tickets and running diagnostics when performance thresholds are breached. EDA is particularly valuable for organizations wanting to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) for recurring operational incidents.