Akuity Platform
Improved daily delivery has streamlined workflows and saved time for developers and operations
What is our primary use case?
Akuity Platform is our main platform for CI/CD, as all deployment and everything is done on Akuity Platform for our whole product.
We use Akuity Platform daily. I am on the software side, but I have also worked with it, mostly observing DevOps people working on Akuity Platform. They configure new features on Akuity Platform, and on a day-to-day basis, whenever there is any change in our product, the CI/CD gets triggered, and that is how we use it daily.
What is most valuable?
In our case, having a great UI on Akuity Platform is something that we love. We have also used the open-source version, but Akuity Platform, the paid version, has a very great UI and user experience through which we can easily do whatever we want to, and that is what I love most about Akuity Platform.
The UI and user experience of Akuity Platform is better than the open-source version because the open-source version has only the bare minimum on the UI, but in Akuity Platform, they have almost all the features that we want. I have seen that on the open-source version, for the source we just give the GitHub link where the Argo CD workflow is specified, but on the UI of Akuity Platform, we connect our organization there, and they give all the options for the projects that we want to tag on, so that is one of the features that I love on Akuity Platform version.
Overall, Akuity Platform has impacted our organization positively as the DevOps team is quite happy because first, they do not have to manage their own Argo CD, and second, it is quite user-friendly for them as well as for the developers, saving time for us. For the DevOps folks using Akuity Platform, they have saved a good amount of time considering they do not have to deploy Argo CD and they just get everything working, so that is quite helpful.
In our case with Akuity Platform, we observed that we required less time due to the DevOps team needing less time to manage things, so for us, it was a time saving.
What needs improvement?
Akuity Platform has most of the features, but I think they should include some more features, such as the feature where we specify the URLs of the Argo CD workflow, which I liked, but it would be good if they include more of those features on the platform.
Integration with Akuity Platform is quite good as they have integrations with almost all the related CI/CD products, but I think in terms of performance, they can improve upon that because sometimes it does get laggy, maybe due to high pressure, and anything can be the reason for that, but they can improve on the performance part.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Akuity Platform for around three years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Akuity Platform is stable for our team. Till now, we have not faced any downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Akuity Platform handles scalability well and can handle growth and changes in our workloads easily.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Akuity Platform is quite good as they are really helpful whenever we get stuck.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using the open-source version earlier, but we found that it was taking quite an amount of time for us to manage, which was a constraint, so we switched to Akuity Platform to avoid management and just use it directly.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think the pricing of Akuity Platform is a bit high, and we have a budget constraint at our company, but I think it was worth the price that we pay to get it working.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Akuity Platform, we evaluated another CI/CD tool called Flux CD, which we found useful, but it was not that helpful in our case, so we just went with Akuity Platform.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate the customer support of Akuity Platform on a scale of one to ten as an eight. Akuity Platform team is really helpful, so there is not much difference there. My overall rating for Akuity Platform is eight.
GitOps workflows have improved deployment visibility and now support confident rollbacks
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Akuity Platform is to monitor Kubernetes deployments, and more specifically, to help with Kubernetes deployment and to learn about CI/CD workflows.
What is most valuable?
In my opinion, the best features of Akuity Platform include the GitOps-first model that makes deployments predictable and auditable, a good UI for visualizing the application state versus the desired state, easy rollback and sync control during deployment, good compatibility with Kubernetes native tooling and manifests, and a strong open-source ecosystem with great documentation.
The impact of Akuity Platform on my organization has been positive, as the UI is excellent, and the pull-based GitOps ecosystem is effective. Using GitHub as the source of truth has made Kubernetes workflows and manifests easier to manage, making it a great tool.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvement for Akuity Platform, I would say that the RBAC and multi-application setup takes time to configure correctly. When errors occur, it is difficult to determine what configuration error happened, requiring detailed analysis to understand what went wrong.
I think detailed log analysis with Akuity Platform, especially regarding configuration failures, should be improved. If this is addressed, I would be pleased to learn about it, as it could significantly enhance the documentation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Akuity Platform for quite some time, close to a year, because I have been using Argo CD and its deployment.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Akuity Platform is to try it out as it is a great platform with excellent tools. Connecting with the maintainers or the developer team can help you navigate the platform better and make it suitable for enterprises needing such solutions. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.
Streamlined AWS workflows have simplified onboarding and removed development bottlenecks
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Akuity Platform involves enjoying all the benefits that it provides from development to everything, and first of all, everything in the AWS marketplace.
A quick specific example of how I use Akuity Platform in my work is that it has helped us resolve many bottlenecks in the process.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Akuity Platform offers include the ease of using it, as everything is available on the AWS marketplace, and basically the user interface, so ease of use, easy user onboarding, and everything.
The easy to use feature is the main feature of Akuity Platform because a new person comes in and that person can be easily onboarded and trained on that.
Akuity Platform has impacted my organization positively through ease of onboarding and ease of use; we do not have to rely on difficult trainings for new joiners.
What needs improvement?
I think everything is right on point with Akuity Platform, and I just wish for good updates to keep on providing us with.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Akuity Platform for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Akuity Platform is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Akuity Platform's scalability is rated nine out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Akuity Platform is rated nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I never used any other solution before choosing Akuity Platform.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup and configuration of Akuity Platform for my team was in the middle.
What was our ROI?
After implementing Akuity Platform, I did not see a return on investment, as it was easy, but I cannot share the metrics.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Akuity Platform is to focus on the ease of use. I give this review a rating of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
GitOps platform has transformed our deployments and now delivers thousands of apps in hours
What is our primary use case?
Akuity Platform provides us with an enterprise-grade delivery platform with a single control plane and helps us to scale up using a GitOps strategy, which is why we use it inside our infrastructure.
In our daily work, we specifically use Akuity Platform because we have a lot of nodes and pods for our system, and it helps us to maintain GitOps infrastructure within the EKS cluster, reducing the onboarding time from days to just an hour for our thousands of applications. This helps us achieve secure, consistent GitOps at scale with lowered operational overhead.
Our main use case for Akuity Platform was to implement GitOps in our deployment strategy to make the operational overhead seamless, and it is doing a wonderful job for us.
How has it helped my organization?
Akuity Platform has positively impacted our organization by helping us reduce the overall onboarding time from days to hours for thousands of applications, achieving secure, consistent GitOps at scale. It is also excellent for multi-cluster and multi-application delivery at an enterprise scale, which is a feature we are still implementing, but the performance it shows is really great.
I have seen from the impact of Akuity Platform that I used to take a lot of time to deploy the latest applications earlier, but now I am able to deploy applications within seconds. My overall SLA has been reduced significantly, so by onboarding Akuity Platform, I achieved a lot.
What is most valuable?
The best features Akuity Platform offers in my experience are simplicity, which we loved, along with scalability and being completely centralized. The governance and compliance features are really cool compared to other platforms, and due to the simplicity, I can easily onboard and deliver the product to the client really quickly.
The centralized control and compliance features of Akuity Platform have helped our team greatly because we have one control plane which can handle thousands of applications spanning across multiple clusters, reducing the operational overhead. This is one of the main constraints that Argo CD instances provide. Centralized governance is available because logging, auditing, metric history, and promotional workflows can be solved by GitOps, helping us fulfill compliance accordingly. The simplicity is minimalistic with not too much eye-exhausting dashboards, which helped us reduce traffic by eighty percent, making it a great product.
What needs improvement?
Akuity Platform can be improved by needing a bit more maturity on multi-environment strategies, and we are currently configuring it while facing some difficulties with the documentation. From a perspective of support feedback, it is a bit slow, so I would like them to fix that and make it more seamless. They need to work on making the documentation regarding deploying Terraform templates seem less outdated.
Regarding the needed improvements of documentation for Akuity Platform, I think it needs to be much more like how HashiCorp Terraform specifies the documentation, with a simplified structure and minimalistic approach, giving example solutions and clearly outlining how to integrate using Terraform, especially with multi-environment strategies. This should be more detailed compared to the current documentation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Akuity Platform for the last one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Akuity Platform is definitely stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Akuity Platform is really great because I am able to manage it on EKS.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Akuity Platform is a bit slow, and they need to improve on that.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously managed our deployments using Helm charts, which sometimes became clumsy as the developers faced continuous issues while deploying. Switching to Akuity Platform was a decent upgrade.
How was the initial setup?
I chose eight out of ten for Akuity Platform because there was a bit of slack off on customer support and documentation, which is why I did not go for ten out of ten. If those areas improve, I may give ten out of ten in the future. The product is solid and deserves at least eight.
What about the implementation team?
I purchased Akuity Platform through the AWS Marketplace.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Akuity Platform as it helped me save operational overhead, which resulted in cost savings on my manpower. It was definitely worth the investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Akuity Platform was that it was a bit expensive, but overall, I felt that was acceptable. If it can be reduced, that would be great.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Akuity Platform, I did not evaluate other options, as I found Akuity Platform at KubeCon India, loved it, and had discussions with them before starting to utilize it.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Akuity Platform is to take a proof of concept and test it out. I think you will love it. I gave this review a rating of eight out of ten.