A2 is an IT automation tool. It can do job scheduling, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates.
A2's main goals are simplicity and ease-of-use. It also has a strong focus on security and reliability, featuring a minimum of moving parts, usage of OpenSSH for transport (with other transports like WinRM and pull modes as alternatives), and a language that is designed around auditability by humans-even those not familiar with the program.
We believe simplicity is relevant to all sizes of environments, so we design for busy users of all types: developers, sysadmins, release engineers, QA engineers, IT managers, and everyone in between. A2 is appropriate for all environments, from small setups with a handful of instances to enterprise environments with many thousands of instances.
A2 manages application and processes in an agent-less manner. There is never a question of how to upgrade remote daemons or the problem of not being able to manage systems because daemons are uninstalled. Because OpenSSH is one of the most peer-reviewed open source components, security exposure is greatly reduced. A2 is decentralized-it relies on your existing OS credentials to control access to remote machines.
Atgen releases a new major release of A2 approximately three to four times per year. The core application evolves somewhat conservatively, valuing simplicity in language design and setup. However, the community around new attributes and features being developed and contributed moves very quickly, adding many new features in each release.
