What is the Automation Controller, and what was it called before?

The central, web-based control system for enterprise automation in the Ansible Automation Platform. It was formerly called Red Hat Ansible Tower.

Running ansible-playbook from a laptop is fine for one admin, but an enterprise needs more. The automation controller provides:

• a web UI to configure and launch automation jobs,
• a REST API, so other systems such as a CI/CD pipeline or a ticketing system can trigger jobs,
• central handling of credentials, schedules, job history and access control (who may run which playbook against which hosts).

The open-source upstream project of the controller is AWX.

Go deeper:

• Automation controller (Red Hat) — web UI, API, RBAC and the rename from Ansible Tower.
• ansible/awx on GitHub — the open-source upstream: web UI, REST API and task engine built on Ansible.