AWA vs ASO

[patve03]

Hello,

 

I am curious to know the difference between AWA and ASO. I somehow didn't find much difference between them as there UI looks almost similar and the objects present are almost same. I have been working on AWA for automating things and I believe the same can be done with ASO through workflows. Could you please tell me the advantages of ASO over AWA.

 

Thanks,

SRujan.

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi.

 

I don't know ASO, so I can't tell you anything about functionality.

 

But you should also consider the product roadmap before deciding on any one product.

 

CA has bought Automic, and CA has other products that have functional overlaps with Automic (ASO may be one of them). At least some of the Automic dediders have publicly stated at "official" Automic events that Automic is the way of the future with CA's automation business. This may (or may not) have implications for the product life cycle of competing in-house products.

 

So you may want to inquire with someone like a Sales Rep or Key Accounter what the long-term support plan from CA is before settling on any product.

 

Out of curiosity: Judging by your forum designation, do you work for CA? Then you should have better access to product roadmaps than most of us?

 

Best regards,

Carsten

 

edit: it may also be noteworthy that www.ca.com/aso, which is given in some whitepaper I googled, now appears to redirect to "CA API Management", making it look like ASO is a discontinued product. But again, if you work for CA, maybe you can get more insights into this?

 

edit (2): If you do look up Service Orchestration on ca.com, you'll end up here, which lists "Automic Service Orchestration". This has a video which appears to show AWA, and a whitepaper also only listing Automic products. This confirms my hunch that AWA may have fully replaced ASO. Also, it seems the ASO community has not had a post since 02/2017, and the product blog ends in 2015, so there's that. I would not be surprised if you couldn't even buy ASO if you wanted to.

[patve03]

Thanks Carsten_Schmitz. This info is really helpful. We feel glad that we are using AWA from a very long time.

 

Regards,

Srujan.

[Michael Pirson]

If I remember correctly I believe ASO just leverages the Request Manager and maybe a few more plugins that are all packaged and licensed together.

 

In terms of an 'ASO' product, I dont think that actually exists. In theory you could install any of these ARA or ASO offerings directly in your existing AWA environment.

[patve03]

Oh really, sounds good then. So how can I have those offerings from ARA and ASO in our existing AWA environment.

 

Thanks,

Srujan.

[Michael Pirson]

For ASO: I would refer to the Request Management documentation. This requires Tomcat for the web interface and a DB for the backend. Essentially, this is used as a self service interface with the AE(AWA) providing the requested services:

 

Request Management

 

For ARA: Again I would refer to the documentation. This will require IIS for the web interface and a DB for the backend. Again the AE(AWA) is going to drive all the processing that is requested in ARA.

 

ARA

 

This has changed a little with V12 as they use AWI plugins that can communicate directly with ARA and ASO via APIs so there should now be one central interface. Prior to V12 ARA an Request management had their own web interface.

 

Hope this helps.

[Robert Thullner]

Hi, 

 

I hope that I can clarify the question here a little bit. 

 

AWA is our product when the customer has use cases around workload automation. What you get is basically the automation engine and the required agents

 

ASO is our product when the customer use cases are around any kind of (user-triggered) services which should be automated - like VM provisioning, employee/user onboarding, database provisioning, etc. What you get with ASO is the automation engine, all required agents, Request Management, ServiceNow Connector and all action packs which are available on our marketplace. The action packs are targeted to have the use cases implemented very quickly. Request Management acts as a self-service portal for all user requests, which also includes easy ways for modelling approvals. 

 

Of course, you can argue that you can build all uses cases with AWA as well. However, you will not have access to all supported actions and the other components. 

 

Please also bear in mind that AWA and ASO are licensed differently to address the different use cases. 

 

I hope this anwsers your question.

[Carsten Schmitz]

Hi thuro03,

 

Thanks for your clarification.

 

If ASO is an active and distinct product (eventhough comprised of an AE plus "add-on"), I humbly suggest CA publish some public and more visible information about it. As I outlined above, the product is next to impossible to research.

 

Furthermore, why does www.ca.com/aso redirect to a product called CA API Management if ASO is an active product?

 

Thanks!

Carsten