We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch Workload Automation and IBM Workload Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: ActiveBatch Workload Automation provides a wide range of valuable features such as versatility, ease of use, prebuilt jobs, real-time scheduling and monitoring, intelligent automation, scalability, REST API adapters, and an exceptional user interface. IBM Workload Automation prioritizes client voting for additional features, triggering jobs in multiple nodes, and batch application tracking.
ActiveBatch Workload Automation has areas that could be improved, such as licensing, user interface, trigger reliability, monitoring dashboard, documentation, support services, and integration capabilities. IBM Workload Automation has faced performance problems in past versions, difficulties with navigation, and limited reporting visibility.
Service and Support: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has been praised for its excellent customer service, particularly its reliable technical support. However, there are concerns about the service model and the availability of the hotline. IBM Workload Automation is highly respected for its support, with customers recommending its lab advocacy program for detailed code support.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for ActiveBatch Workload Automation is straightforward and uncomplicated, without any significant challenges. However, there is a minor requirement for additional documentation during the file import. The initial setup for IBM Workload Automation can be difficult for individuals who are not familiar with IBM tools, however, with help, it becomes relatively easy.
Pricing: ActiveBatch Workload Automation offers a versatile licensing structure that eliminates the need for agents on all servers, whereas IBM Workload Automation's cost is based on the customer's agreement.
ROI: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has received positive feedback for its ability to generate positive results and financial benefits. Users have reported a significant increase in net revenue. There is a lack of specific user reviews and ROI data for IBM Workload Automation. However, it is known for its focus on optimizing workload management processes and enhancing efficiency.
Comparison Results: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is highly recommended over IBM Workload Automation. Users appreciate ActiveBatch's straightforward setup process, adaptability, ease of use, ready-made jobs, intuitive interface, real-time monitoring, scalability, and an extensive collection of prebuilt job steps.
"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."
"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."
"The nice thing about ActiveBatch is once we have created a specific job that can be easily be replicated to another job, then minimal changes will have to be made. This makes things nice. Reduction of coding is substantial in a lot of cases. The replication of one job to another is just doing a few minor tweaks and rolling it into production. This decreases our development costs substantially."
"One of the most valuable features is the job templates. If we need to create an FTP job, we just drag over the FTP template and fill out the requirements using the variables that ActiveBatch uses. And that makes it reusable. We can create a job once but use it for many different clients."
"As far as centralization goes it's nice because we can see all these processes that are tied to this larger process. The commissions, FTP processing, the reporting, the file moves to the business users — all that is right there. It's very easy to read. It's easy to tie it together, visually, and see where each of these steps fits into the bigger picture."
"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."
"ActiveBatch's Self-Service Portal allows our business units to run and monitor their own workloads. They can simply run and review the logs, but they can't modify them. It increases their productivity because they are able to take care of things on their own. It saves us time from having to rerun the scripts, because the business units can just go ahead and log in and and rerun it themselves."
"It is very useful in sending confidential files through FPP servers."
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"One thing I've noticed is that navigation can be difficult unless you are familiar with the structure that we have in place. If someone else had to look at our ActiveBatch console and find a job, they might not know where to find it."
"Providing some detailed training materials could be very helpful for new users who have very limited technical information about the tool."
"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."
"It does have a little bit of a learning curve because it is fairly complex. You have to learn how it does things. I don't know if it's any worse than any other tool would be, just because of the nature of what it does... the learning curve is the hardest part."
"The reporting needs improvement. There is a real need for the ability to generate audit reports on the fly. It needs to be a lot easier than what I can do right now. This is a major item for me."
"A cloud option is not provided as a free feature, making it a costly solution for smaller organizations."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"Except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools."
"Slow down on the releases a bit. I fully understand that IWA functionality is increasing at an amazing rate, but trying to keep up with the upgrades is rough."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked 4th in Workload Automation with 35 reviews while IBM Workload Automation is ranked 13th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews. ActiveBatch by Redwood is rated 9.2, while IBM Workload Automation is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of ActiveBatch by Redwood writes "Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". ActiveBatch by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs and JSCAPE by Redwood, whereas IBM Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and CA JCLCheck Workload Automation (CA JCLCheck). See our ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. IBM Workload Automation report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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