Announcing the Top Rated Outstanding IT & Dev Tools for 2019

Alan Cooke, Researcher at TrustRadius
Alan Cooke
July 31, 2019
Awards, IT & Development

Announcing the Top Rated Outstanding IT & Dev Tools for 2019

We are excited to award 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges to a number of outstanding Developer & Administrator tools! Top Rated awards showcase today’s top-of-the-line products in IT based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. These awards make the voice of the market the primary decider into the industry’s best products.

While many software categories have multiple products that earned a 2019 Top Rated badge (find them all on our blog here), this year five IT and development software categories have only one Top Rated winner. These products stand above the rest in each of their respective categories.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) SolutionsJamf Pro

Mobile App Development ToolsZeplin

Identity Management SoftwareOkta Workforce Identity

Build Automation ToolsJenkins

Endpoint Backup SolutionsAcronis Backup

Here’s a closer look at these outstanding IT & Dev tools: 

Jamf Pro

Jamf Pro is an automation-driven mobile device management (MDM) tool for securing mobile Apple products (e.g. iPad, iPhones). Jamf Pro may be used for asset tracking, patching and provisioning, configuration profile management, and for providing user self-service, for which Jamf Pro now supports custom branding if desired. The product features per-device pricing with volume discounting, and additional discounts for educational institutions.

Together, individuals from midsize businesses and enterprises make up a large majority (89%) of Jamf Pro users on TrustRadius. Users report relying on Its users praise the breadth of its automated task management while also mentioning its ability to support “do-it-once” actions (e.g. one-time instant update for a device), or role-based provisioning, updating, and configurations.

“We are using Jamf to manage our fleet of MacOS and iOS devices. This is anywhere from MDM to imaging computers. It is the SCCM of the Apple world. It helps us with inventory, software and policy enforcement, and setup consistency. It helps us do much more without having to hire additional employees… We have been very pleased with Jamf Pro and all that it can do. They perform as the market leader and really enable us to manage our Apple platform at an enterprise level. The other universities we have pulled all use Jamf as well. They are well suited for the higher education market.”


Mark Fitzgerald | Adjunct Professor | Higher Education

Zeplin

Zeplin is used to share information and coordinate app development activities between designers and product engineering teams. Zeplin presents conveniences like app element inspection, reusable code snippets, and a “global styleguide.” The styleguide supports brand consistency by providing guidance and constraints (e.g. on color palettes, text font, and other stylistic elements) to help teammates in different departments work together and remain brand cognizant as they build.

Zeplin is used across industries, and by users from departments involved in app prototyping and design. It is primarily reviewed by users from smaller (45%) and midsize (36%) companies. Users favor Zeplin for its easy sharing of design specs with annotations and comments, its automatic generation of CSS for web design, and its direct integrations with the design tools supporting direct export from them into a Zeplin board.

“We use Zeplin to share design assets with developers… We use this to reduce the communication gap between the teams, specially design and developers. This also lets you get feedback from other stakeholders by sharing the board with them and they can comment there… As a product manager, this has immensely helped me to get feedback, improve the process and make people accountable… It is a great tool if your design and development teams are separate. It is also great for freelancing or remote scenarios. The tool can be taken up by a company of any size, we have used it for 1000+ size companies with ease.”

Prashant Mahajan | Senior Product Manager | Internet

Okta Workforce Identity

Okta’s suite of products for workforce identity management include single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), API and Advanced Server Access, Universal Directory and Lifecycle Management. Okta provides automated lifecycle management for users of enterprise apps, including users inside and outside (e.g. customers, vendors, etc.) the enterprise. For this Okta provides pre-integrated provisioning and identity lifecycle workflow. Its Universal Directory allows you to store an unlimited amount of users and attributes from applications and sources like AD or HR systems, and features a meta-directory via integration with any app or directory source.

On TrustRadius, Okta is the most frequently reviewed identity management product with most reviewers come from large (48%) or midsize (48%) companies. Okta’s reviewers enjoy the combination of easy user provisioning with Active Directory integration, along with streamlined access to apps via SSO and Okta’s flexible MFA capabilities, and describe Okta as the preeminent product for enterprises requiring these in a single suite.

“We recently deployed Okta for the entire organization to simplify the login process for the applications we use, both on-premise and in the cloud. It also solves the problem of single sign-on and mainly saves a lot of implementation time, deployment, and maintenance cost for hardware and software. It solves the issue of simplifying security and authentication in the whole organization… It is suited everywhere due to the number of cyber attacks and malicious attempts to steal identities or information. The additional layer of security and integration with corporate apps leaves no room for hackers. It helps to track devices where the user logs in and simplifies the security audit procedure.”

Verified User | Consultant in Information Technology | Utilities Company

Jenkins

Jenkins is an open source automation server which provides continuous integration and is highly extensible via its plugin architecture. Plugins may provide additional build testing (e.g. load testing), source code management, UI and workflow management, event messaging (e.g. email or push notifications), dependency management, and other administrative features.

Jenkins is used by engineers and software developers across industries as a build and deploy pipeline, and in aggregate is the most frequently reviewed build tool, with a preponderance of ratings and reviews coming from enterprise users (50%). Jenkins’ reviewers enjoy its power for continuous integration and automating integration testing, and suitability for managing near any development pipeline due to its ease of setup combined with the sheer volume of plugins and integrations, as well as its familiarity to a large and helpful community of developers who use it and are willing to contribute to public knowledge.

“Jenkins is our standardized build tool for all our software teams. It has allowed us to move to a standardized continuous integration development cycle rather than the ad-hoc build and deploy structure that was used in the past. Having the ability to manage all our builds from a single web platform has been great for the management of our build process. We now have the ability to easily pull build logs and to determine where individual builds we’re deployed. Jenkins has been highly beneficial for our company… Jenkins is well suited to be used in any build use case. I consider Jenkins to be the gold standard for build tools and should be the primary choice for any build unless there are mitigating circumstances that require another tool.”

Mark Carpenter | Engineer 3 | Transportation

Acronis Backup

Acronis Backup is used by businesses to backup and protect data in case of disaster, or to provide continuous availability of local data. Acronis provides complete images of file systems and also protects cloud apps and virtual machines, as well as endpoints. Acronis Backup boasts compliant remote storage of backed up data as well as fast restoration and security against end-user mistakes (e.g. accidental deletion), as well as cyber threats. Endpoint backups can be stored to local drives or tape, or to the Acronis Cloud.

TrustRadius reviewers of Acronis come from all industries and companies of all sizes, with half of all reviewers describing their experience with Acronis in a small business environment. Acronis Backup users enjoy a flexible automated backup solution competitively priced for small business, with reliable backup to multiple locations including cloud and disk in a single implementation, a highly configurable backup schedule, and an easy workstation recovery process if it should be needed.

“We use Acronis Backup to backup all of our physical workstations and servers daily for the entire organization. It is a perfect backup solution. You can schedule backups to any day of the week and any week of the month with a specific time. You get notifications via email for completed and failed backups… Very easy to use. Requires very little continued administration once properly set up. Restoring backups, when necessary is simple as well…  We have used this to recover a folder that was accidentally deleted by a user. Brilliant and works fast too.”

Verified User | Professional in Information Technology | Entertainment Company

Congratulations to the winners of the Outstanding IT & Dev Tools Award!

Top Rated Criteria

Products included in the 2019 Top Rated Outstanding IT & Dev Tools list must have been in the top tier of their respective category TrustMap as of July 1st, 2019. To qualify for the Outstanding IT & Dev Tools Top Rated Award, products must have at least 10 reviews written within the past year, a TRScore of at least 7.5 out of 10, and must receive at least 1.5% of the traffic in their category.  Every reviewer is verified and every review is vetted before publication. Products are plotted on the TrustMap based on end-user data, including users’ likelihood to recommend scores as well as buyer research patterns. To learn more about TrustMaps and Top Rated methodology, check out this page.

About the Author

Alan Cooke, Researcher at TrustRadius
Alan Cooke
Alan attended the University College Dublin where he received his BA and MA in English Literature and Philosophy and he received his MBA from HEC Paris. He has held many roles at various companies including Director of Product Management at HP, Dazel, Inquisite, and Convio. His research interests both at work and outside of work include complex, technical topics (ironically).

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