What’s top of mind for Ansible users: Insights from the summit floor

This year’s Red Hat Summit once again brought together thousands of automation experts, enterprise IT leaders and open source enthusiasts to exchange ideas, showcase solutions and explore the future of IT automation. We hosted interactive polls at our booth, shared insights during our breakout session, and gathered some insightful learnings about where automation is headed.

Here are two insights that stood out.

63% have already adopted AAP due to the need for scalable automation

Which Ansible do you use? We asked this question to attendees at our booth—and here’s what we learnt:

• 63% use Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)

• 17% rely on AWX

• 6% use Ansible Tower

• 6% stick with the open source CLI

• 8% do not yet use Ansible, but plan to do so

The high adoption of AAP shows that more and more teams are looking for scalable, enterprise-ready automation.

But what does this shift look like in practice?

Let’s take the example of a Fortune 100 global financial institution that faced the challenge of migrating thousands of legacy playbooks to AAP 2.4, while also upgrading from Ansible 2.9 to 2.15. These playbooks, developed over nearly a decade, were inconsistent, outdated and difficult to maintain, especially across globally distributed teams. To speed up the migration, they turned to Steampunk Spotter.

With Spotter’s automated analysis and rewrite feature, the bank was able to:

• Detect over 132,000 issues in legacy playbooks

• Automatically resolve around 128,000 fixes in seconds

• Save 17,000 hours of manual effort—equivalent to 9 years of work saved

• Achieve a 413% ROI

This case shows how automation combined with enterprise platforms like AAP can not only modernize but also deliver significant efficiency gains. Read the full case study here: Streamlining Ansible Playbook Migration and Upgrade for One of the Top Global FSIs with Steampunk Spotter.

Security and compliance are the top priority for 53% of Ansible users

Another important question we asked: What is your top priority when it comes to automating Ansible Playbooks?

This is what the community told us:

• 53% focus on security and compliance

• 24% aim for standardization

• 16% focus on upgrades and empowering junior engineers

• 7% are still in the process of migrating to AAP

In our Community Breakout Session “Modernizing your Ansible Playbooks to achieve secure, standardized and scalable Ansible automation“, Matt Millard from Principal Financial Group shared how Principal tackled the complex task of modernizing their automation workflows, moving from Ansible 2.9 and Tower to AAP and Ansible 2.15. The financial services organization needed secure, compliant and scalable automation without slowing down teams or taking manual risks.

That’s how they approached it:

• Used Steampunk Spotter to scan playbooks for vulnerabilities, deprecated syntax, and non-compliant modules

• Embedded security and compliance policies directly into the development process

• Created a repeatable, validated automation framework that empowered junior engineers to contribute with confidence

In numbers:

• Over 7,000 scan results

• Over 3,000 automated task rewrites

• 550+ hours saved

More importantly, the company now has a continuous automation pipeline that improves both speed and security, allowing engineers to focus on innovation rather to day to day problems.

Final thoughts

The insights we gained at Red Hat Summit 2025 show a clear shift in the way organizations are approaching automation: It’s not just about doing more; it’s about doing better.

With 63% of users already using Ansible Automation Platform, it’s clear that teams are prioritizing scalable, enterprise-grade solutions for managing increasingly complex environments. At the same time, 53% of respondents said that security and compliance are top priorities when automating Ansible Playbooks—showing a strong push toward automation that is not only efficient, but also secure and reliable.

What ties these priorities together is a common desire to reduce manual effort, speed up delivery, and enable teams, regardless of their skill level, to contribute with confidence. Whether it’s migrating existing automation solutions at scale or integrating compliance directly into development workflows, the focus is on building smart, future-proof systems.