ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Automic Workload Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 12, 2023
 

Categories and Ranking

ActiveBatch by Redwood
Ranking in Workload Automation
4th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (7th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (5th)
Automic Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Workload Automation category, the market share of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.6% and it increased by 33.7% compared to the previous year. The market share of Automic Workload Automation is 8.1% and it increased by 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
Unique Categories:
Process Automation
0.6%
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
1.9%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

MaheshKumar6 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 9, 2023
Easy to integrate with a helpful job scheduling feature and reduce manual labor
We send out requests to leaders for the inputs, and the inputs are either shared via emails or uploaded on SharePoint. Then, we download that data process them, and convert them to consumable format in Excel, the excel files then get uploaded onto SQL servers which are connected to visualization…
Harby Maranan - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 2, 2020
It is scalable and stable, but it is expensive and needs a better dashboard
The Zero Upgrade feature is the most valuable.  Its dashboard can be improved. In version 12, they have already moved to a web-based interface from a UI. We are looking into this feature now. We are also looking for available APIs that we can use to interface the engine into our other systems.…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Error Handling is one of the best standout features of ActiveBatch."
"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."
"I found ActiveBatch Workload Automation to be a very good scheduling tool. What I like best about it is that it has very less downtime when managing many complex scheduling workflows, so I'm very impressed with ActiveBatch Workload Automation."
"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."
"What ActiveBatch allows you to do is develop a more efficient process. It gave me visibility into all my jobs so I could choose which jobs to run in parallel. This is much easier than when I have to try to do it through cron for Windows XP, where you really can't do things in parallel and know what is going on."
"The most valuable feature is its stability. We've only had very minor issues and generally they have happened because someone has applied a patch on a Windows operating system and it has caused some grief. We've actually been able to resolve those issues quite quickly with ActiveBatch. In all the time that I've had use of ActiveBatch, it hasn't failed completely once. Uptime is almost 100 percent."
"It can connect to a number of third-party/legacy systems."
"The automation feature is a very valuable feature as the associates do not have to worry about performing repetitive tasks (i.e. endpoint security scans on a daily basis) that would take several hours to complete on a daily basis."
"We have seen a cost improvement from it."
"It is flexible. We can do additional scripting in Automic script, in combination with JSL language."
"We use it with automation, getting more speed to solve business processes."
"It helps our efficiency because it is a batch processing tool which works without a menu."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the scheduler."
"Our customers appreciate it mostly because it takes a lot of effort away from them."
"The modulation of some of the things, like how the things are connected and disconnected. You have different login objects that you can quickly put to other different objects and other objects that you create, which makes transporting things very easy from one environment to the next."
"It works. It does not fail. If something fails, it is not Automic."
 

Cons

"Any product is going to have some room for improvement, no matter what. I see the company has already ventured into AWS and they're constantly trying to improve the managed file transfer which they have recently improvised. I think they bought a software called JSCAPE and they're trying to improve it, which is good. I am not sure if JSCAPE would be part of the base product but currently, you have to buy a separate license for it, which doesn't make sense. If it was Microsoft, ServiceNow, or integrating with other software vendors, I would understand but JSCAPE is now in-house and I'm not sure if they can justify having a separate license for JSCAPE. I would probably expect them to be packaging JSCAPE into the base product. They did switch over from a perpetual license model to a subscription model, which hurt the company a little bit. Nobody is offering the perpetual model anymore. As long as the transition is fair for both the companies, I think it should be fine and not burn us out."
"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."
"ActiveBatch is a little complex."
"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."
"Between version 10 and version 12 there was a change. In version 10, they had each object in its own folder. But on the back end, they saw it at the root level. So when we moved over to version 12, everything was in the same area mixed together. It was incredibly difficult and we actually had to create our own folders and move those objects—like schedules, jobs, user accounts—and manually put those into folders, whereas the previous version already had it."
"I have faced struggles to understand, set up the tool, and implement it in my early days as a new user."
"Setting up the software was hard."
"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."
"Some of the usual features, like calendar details, are now not there."
"I would like more training on workload automation, because I do not have a complete insight of the product yet."
"The direction in which the UI is going is concerning to me. It does not offer the security context we would need to implement future versions. While I see benefit in the Web UI, the security it would lack in separating a user's experience from an administrator's experience is an issue for us. MFA functionality is required since we're dealing with connectivity to the POS and for PCI/SOX compliance."
"We would like to have some features with the AWI with the founding technique, which cannot currently be delivered."
"This solution's out-of-box automation sets could be improved. They could be industry standardized out-of-box, or even runbook automation processes could be useful—just some plug-and-play automation processes out-of-box. It has many integration capabilities, from APIs to databases, but if the customer sees some out-of-box automation processes in it, it could be useful."
"In most of the packages available, it took time to study and gain knowledge of the features and resources due to poor documentation."
"They need to handle cross datacenter failover. They have a really good High Availability solution that works well within a single sysplex, but in our environment, since we have two main datacenter locations, we have two separate sysplex."
"Today, we use a rich client for this product. In the future, or for the next release, they will be using a web interface. This web interface is not as scalable as the rich client for us. The web client is not 100 percent programmed as we need it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."
"I don't think we've ever had a problem with the pricing or licensing. Even the maintenance fees are very much in line. They are not excessive. I think for the support that you get, you get a good value for your money. It's the best value on the market."
"ActiveBatch is currently redesigning themselves. In the past, they were a low cost solution for automation. They had a nice tool that was very inexpensive. With their five-year plan, they will be more enhancement-driven, so they're trying to improve their software, customer service, and the way that their customers get information from them. In doing that, they're raising the price of their base system. They changed from one pricing model to another, which has caused some friction between ActiveBatch and us. We're working through that right now with them. That's one of the reasons why we're why we were evaluating other software packages."
"It allows for lower operational overhead."
"I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way."
"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"The pricing was fair. There are additional costs for the plugins. We have the standard licensing fees for different pieces, then we have the plugins which were add-ons. However, we expected that."
"Do your own proof of concept. Make sure you know what you want. Be clear about what you want the product to do for you. Go out and meet with the vendor, then test it."
"We came to a very good deal, but it took us three years to finalize."
"I'm not sure about licensing costs, but I know the base price is about $3,000, and you can get some kind of discount per node."
"It costs to scale. While, it is scalable, the add-ons are expensive."
"We cannot use all the functions because they are too expensive."
"You do not need any humans to start jobs, so you can save a lot of money."
"We have received a lot of time and cost efficiencies from using the product."
"It costs too much. That's why we are now looking at other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
I'd advise users to start by knowing what the actual requirement is and thoroughly assess the automation needs. New users should take advantage of the demos and trial versions so they get an idea o...
What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referrin...
What do you like most about Automic Workload Automation?
It is easy to manage complex workloads and use electronic workflow automation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automic Workload Automation?
The solution was flexible in terms of pricing. We're moving away from it, not due to price, but rather based on our requirements. They did provide us with an unlimited license that matched our budget.
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
The AI capabilities and predictive modeling aren't very good. I don't see a future for that. It's very basic. That's part of the reason we moved to Stonebranch. They have more analytic capabilities...
 

Also Known As

ActiveBatch
Automic Dollar Universe
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital
ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Automic Workload Automation and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.