Automic Automation Reviews

Primary use case is to automate our SAP job workflows and all the job workflows that we work with. Thus, to get better performance in our company by automating everything that we are working on. So far, it has been working well.

It is easy to learn, but hard to master. If you have been working for years with this product, it is easy to understand the whole product and work with the needs that we have. Therefore, it offers a lot of things that we require. So, it is really good.

Automic is perfect to work with for a lot of job loads. It is perfectly done to combine the needs that we need. Therefore, it is a good solution for our requirements.

We are able to combine job scripting on the server and automation engine on the GUI. Therefore, we are capable to work in SAP and on the servers, then file transfer the whole product line, which Automic offers.

Some of the usual features are now not there, for example: For calendar details, in versions before, you could see it because it was a different color or different letter. Now, it is all similar icons, and some features are marking more objects than just one, which is making it not possible to see anymore. There are some features which were basic and are now gone. I heard that they are coming back. So, I hope it will get better.

I would like the transport case to be in a new feature. This way, you can stage objects to be more flexible and with easy automation. Right now, it is not that easy to transport some things automatically. Thus, it would be nice if these were some of the features which will be offered as part of the critical path which is coming. It would be nice to set our own critical paths, so these workflows can be critical because there are some important workflows running. This is critical for us, but it would also be nice.

Right now, it is decent. The new version is sort of a downgrade because some features that we need are gone. The version before was more stable than the current one because we are having some problems with the performance. Therefore, I hope the next version(s) will be better again. However, right now, it is not as good as it used to be.

Scalability is good for us. We are growing, so this is perfect for us. It is easy to scale. So, it is good.

We work with a partner who offers technical support.

If the company is big, use Automic because you are able to automate things more easily. 

If the company is smaller, use Control-M. The understanding of it is easier than Automic, because it offers more. So, if you are smaller and don't need such overload, use something else, like Control-M.

The version before was overloaded because if opened various windows, it was not easy to understand if you were new to the product. The newest version is easier to understand. However, right now, the performance is not as good as it used to be and some features are gone. There are still improvements needed. It is decent, and there are good ideas, but there are still improvements needed. 

The production controls the test environment and test batches. The performance is very good.

Our key feature is that we have different clients for different environments. We can manage all our environments using a transport case as a name of a feature. It is very helpful to have the same setup in each environment.

The new user interface needs improvement. The previous version was good and stable. Now, we have to check the new one before using a web browser. It is not stable.

We have been waiting 11 years for release management, which will be in the next release.

Stability is okay.

The scalability is good because you can add on as many services and processes as you want.

We used the technical support in the beginning, who were easy to work with.

In the last couple of years, there was no need for it.

We had a couple of solutions in place starting from Windows, Unix crontab, and other batch controlling software (like Control-M, Redwood, etc.).

Batches interact with all applications, so the batch structure is more complex and using different tools was not a solution. Therefore, we needed to have one single workflow as a solution for us, and we made the decision to have one tool in place. Then, we did an evaluation, and the winner was CA.

The initial setup was straightforward. With outsourcing, it made it simple.

We have received a lot of time and cost efficiencies from using the product.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The tool is more important than the vendor.

• Look how comfortable the tool is. 
• How it has performed. 
• The vendor name or costs are just a second point of the evaluation.

Work Automation is a worldwide product which has a lot of utilities. It can be very helpful for use with customers' data, and it is very quick with utilizations, customizations, etc, so we can meet the customers' needs.

Customers save a lot of money when they use this product, because of things like the scheduling tool. I know several companies which are not using it. Overall, it seems more expensive, because Workload Automation can save a lot of time and human resources.

It does give our customers a competitive advantage in their space.

Its stability.

From Workload Automation, which is missing for me personally, is a workload portion. I can see dependencies of the job directly in the graphical view, therefore I would not have to use the search button to search for every object every time that I needed to see if it was a predecessor.  

For the user interface of version 12.1, I cannot find a lot of utilities and objects from previous versions, making me change my habits. This is not good.

I am working with Workload Automation for more than ten years, when it was named UC4, then renamed again, etc. We have never had big problems with stability of this product.

The performance is very good. If there are problems, they will be caused by somebody doing something wrong. Usually the product does not have a lot of problems, and we did recognize when the application has failed due to errors.

You can do a lot of customization and build your architecture and hierarchy as you want it.

Since you are able to save resources and costs, you can grow your business.

We do not contact support very often. Most answers are in the documentation.

When we install the version 12.0 and 12.1, AVI caused some problems, but after opened a ticket to technical support, they responded quickly with a great answer.

I would recommend to definitely try the product.

Our customers use it to control executions of jobs on different platforms, systems, applications, and technologies. There is a huge variety.

• It reduces operational costs and increases quality.
• The problem handling is much easier than doing it manually.
• It improves the visibility of what is going on on the system. If I have a problem, it is easy to identify, understand dependencies, and identifying the root causes than just running through scripts and searching through applications or servers.

• Reliability
• Transparency
• Its processes are repeatable.
• Easy to manage.

These are the most important features.

The versioning and support for the lifecycle of Automic's developed solution is what we were missing. However, this is coming in version 12.2, so I am looking forward to seeing how it works.

If you implemented with Service Pack 4 or 5, then its fine. The first version tends to be rather unstable.

The product has huge potential. I never sold its huge potential for scalability.

If the issue is a repeatable issue known to the support team, then you can expect a prompt answer. The problem with the support is if the issue is new, then it is challenging for them.

The application is straightforward to setup. What is sometimes challenging is making the application fit into the customers' environment. They may have some restrictions and restraints that we need to consider and also need to understand how to prepare. Therefore, it is rather an organizational challenge rather than a technical one.

Our customers' environments are not manageable without Automic. Their environments are so big and complex without automating them, they would not be able to run their businesses at all.

Our customers also evaluated Tivoli and BMC. 

Definitely go for Automic.

Most important criteria when our customers are selecting a vendor: One of the outside most important features versus competitors, we are able to orchestrate control. 

We use it for scheduling of our production and development.

It helps us manage production and provides an overview of production along with a review of past performance.

The most important thing is having no downtime. We do not have any downtime for support or release changes.

It is easy to manage and customize the system. It performs well.

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.

It is 100% stable. We have no downtime. We have 24/7 production throughout the year.

It has a good source code that we administrate. We can expand the system.

It has endless scalably. We can add new Clients from zero to 9,999, and we only use 10 Clients. We can add agents up to 500,000. We can also add RAM, disk space, and CPUs. 

In the early years, when using the product, we had many phone calls with technical support. Sometimes those calls were good, sometimes they were bad. It has been getting better.

In the past, we had CA-7. CA built this mainframe schedule. Then, we have canceled the contract to CA, and decided to go with UC4. Now, UC4 is a part of CA, and now we have a contract with CA again.

Sometimes it was simple, and other times, it was very difficult. However, we had good technical support from Automic designing our system.

We had an employee from Atomic design the system for us.

I would recommend Automic with some restrictions.

Currently, we build self-service for our customers. This means they come to us and ask for special solutions, then we build a generic self-service which can be used for this customer. This solution is like the action pack from the Atomic marketplace.

Currently, we can implement business flows versus workflows where the customer does not have the manpower to implement it. We use it with automation, getting more speed to solve business processes. It is also possible to eliminate median breaks. 

Most valuable is the script language that we use. There is also the opportunity to use the database information inside of the automation engine and current existing objects that you can stack against it.

I use this automation solution, because it is very flexible. This automation solution supports a lot of computer platforms. Also, a lot of operating systems are supported other than automation solutions. 

The one big advantage is the Bose-Bose implementation methods. One is with the graphical use interface, where you can use small items, and it is possible to implement via programming language, but mostly this is not the case. 

Mostly from my point of view, I need to isolate what is the use case of the customer, and what needs to be done. This is not technical.

I need better stability.

I have worked a long time with this product. Formally, it was previously known as UC4. In the past, it was more stable than now. 

As we have seen, the latest version that we checked out at our customers was Version 12. This version needs to be more stable. 

The first version and service pack, we could not use at our customers because it had special bugs and issues, and we decide to wait. 

From my point of view, the current product needs more stability.

The scalability works fine. My impression is on the implementation at the customer. If the hardware and the base implementation were implemented carefully, it scales fine because you need to take care of the database on a lower level. On the network infrastructure, if you start a lot of server nodes, then it works fine.

If I work with a customer (as a consultant), they do not want a straightforward setup. Therefore, I have not seen an out-of-the-box setup, because I have not seen a normal implementation.

We spare costs because we can realize possibilities which are not implemented in case of missing manpower. It is also possible to eliminate manpower costs in other cases, like service level support, which may no longer be necessary because of this machine. We do not need a call center because we can use machines. We can raise cases, then we do not need to pinpoint exact causes nor assign the exact responsible business unit because the machine can decide itself.

Our customers also evaluated Redwood Software. However, they do not have the same flexibility as CA.

I would recommend Automic.

Most important criteria for our customers when selecting a vendor: 

• Flexibility
• A supportive platform
• The licensing costs.

Our primary use case is the SAP area, but we do provide Workload Automation services for other applications as well.

The solution is integrated across all applications and platforms in our company. We can provide everything from the very first data source to the data target in one immense code.  With the automation, we are able to provide background services. It is very economical and not possible to do manually. 

It is part of our IT service. Without this solution, we are not competitive.

The most valuable feature is the combination of normal job management with file transfer and scripting, so we have everything onboard.

I would like to see the following in future releases:

• Workload Automation in a cloud
• Solutions for the smaller applications.

It runs stably. However, after a version upgrade, the stability should be better.

There are too many bugs to be solved after a version upgrade. We are working on the limits of an architecture with 16,000 platforms. It is impossible to test everything out in the software lab of CA. I wish it would be improved.

The scalability in the SAP area is very good. We are able to provide hundreds of different services and system incidences. 

I see a huge possibility in cloud solutions. We are looking to offer future services out of the cloud.

We have had good experiences using their technical support.

I have offered other companies to come view the solution at our company and see how it works. Most companies have been happy to do.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

1. Functionality
2. Solution needs to be economic.

We use it for assisted process change, and we are using it for basic operating system-level UPROCs or jobs, and there are certain jobs that it runs for the net backup.

The solution has been here for the past ten years, there is a definite business value-add; the batch/shell scripts running in the environment can be controlled centrally, SAP Processing; Backup Jobs and many more with no or minimal interventions.

In general, in any environment where there are more than 500 or 600 servers, each server will have settings and scripts doing their jobs, moving files, etc. There may be a bunch of scripts that run in a workflow. If you don't have a centralized tool for workload automation, it becomes problematic down the line because, as the environment grows, as IT grows in any organization, the number of scripts grows accordingly. If you have a centralized workload automation tool, you can completely control such jobs, or file transfers, or any job that is critical to a specific application/server. So it provides ease in handling scripts.

Also, it helps with manpower. If you have server admins to take care of those scripts, you need more admins, of course. But if you have one such workload automation tool, a single person can control, monitor, and see the behavior of the scripts in the environment: How well they are running and, if they are failing, which scripts are failing. That's the business value-add that I see in having any workload automation tool, like CA Dollar Universe, which is the one we have here.

The most valuable feature is the one for SAP batch processing. It's not just ordinary job processing. There are certain other mid-level workload automation tools which can handle the OS level, but SAP is something which is really very critical. Automic stands out from the ordinary tools because handling SAP processes is absolutely easy with it. Integrating SAP applications with Dollar U is very easy. It's just a few considerations and there you go. You can initiate your processing.

We are currently at version 6.7.41. One improvement area that I can see would be a centralized licensing part. I've heard that has been already taken care of in the latest version. I'm not sure how true that is, but that's one thing that should be there: centralized licensing.

Another issue is that at times there are certain jobs that are triggered one after another. It would be helpful to have a more user-friendly way of seeing how those jobs are connecting from one server to another. Suppose there is a workflow that is running between ten and 15 servers. It's always challenging to figure out which job is connected to which job on which server, for a newbie, if you haven't designed it. That has to be more user-friendly where you can see the complete workflow of a process or a job.

I haven't seen any issues regarding stability.

It's very scalable. It's easy. You just add on the resources and you are there. The management server doesn't get loaded up, it doesn't have to process anything. That makes it cheaper as well. Scalability is pretty easy.

On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being highest, I would rate technical support a nine. So far, I haven't gone unanswered for any of the queries, except one. Their response time is pretty fast. It depends on how severe the case is. If it's just a general query, they respond within a day. If it's really critical, where your business is impacted, they respond within half-an-hour or an hour. I have had a really good experience with the tech support.

I have been an admin on other tools as well. I was a contributor to and implemented BMC Control-M.

I haven't done the initial setup, but I think it's pretty straightforward from what I have seen in the documents. My feeling is it should not take more than an hour or two to get it up and running. If everything is ready, your database is there, and you have the right amount of resources on the server, it shouldn't take more than an hour or two hours.

In terms of an implementation strategy: 

1. You should have a database. 
2. You need to figure out what components you're going to go for.
3. You need an estimation of the number of jobs you are looking for to plan out the resources on the server. 
4. Finally, you need to think about how you will roll out access to the users: a thick client or a web console. 

Those are the things that need to be factored in before beginning the installation. The accessibility part can be dealt with later, but the resourcing of the database on the server and the management server have to be spec'd out before.

I understand that AWA is cheaper than Control-M, but I'm not certain about the numbers.

What makes it stand out from the competitors I have seen is it has distributed architecture. If you look at BMC Control-M vs Automic Workload Automation, the brain is the central, enterprise management server. That's where all the jobs reside. Every day, a new set of jobs loads onto the agent, and then the agent executes. If the central server is down, there will be no jobs executing across the environment.

However, when it comes to CA Automic, it has a distributed architecture which means all the logic, all the jobs, reside on the agent itself. Irrespective of whether the management server is running or not, your jobs will execute in a timely way. The only challenge could be that you will not be able to see their outcome. You will not be able to monitor them. That could be a challenge. But again, at least the jobs are executing in a timely fashion, as they're supposed to, in your environment.

It's the same for any end tool we implement: Be clear with the requirements. Apart from that, everything is pretty smooth and straightforward. You can look at the tool and understand where things are going. There is no rocket science that you need to be worried about. But you do need to be aware of what you're doing.

Regarding the number of staff for maintenance, it depends on how exactly you want to maintain it. We always keep all the UPROCS, all the jobs that we have in an environment, on a centralised server as a backup. The maintenance is up to the individual organization, how robust or how limited they want it to be on the day of a crisis.

In our organization, we have a team of nine people handling the tool. We have more than 12,000 tasks that are scheduled to run each day, and more than 100,000 job iterations happen every day. It's actually a really big environment. We have more than 1,400 nodes connected to it, and we are bringing in 300 more. At each of those additional nodes we are expecting four to five jobs. So that will add about 1,500 tasks. The number of iterations expected is still unknown.

Right now, we execute jobs in three regions: Europe, Asia-Pacific, and America. We are only using AWA in the European region. We are taking it into Asia as well. That's the next expansion of the tool.

The admin roles include handling new requests for creation of the tasks and sessions, as well as the changes to existing jobs, including notification, and daily scheduling. In addition, there is the daily maintenance part. We check for jobs that are failing every day, why they are failing, and we will try to mitigate the problem. It could be the agent needs to be purged, or the agent is not running, or the credentials that were given for a specific job are not there anymore. Those are the sorts of checks we do on a daily basis to keep it healthy.

I rate Automic Workload Automation at eight out of ten. What comes to mind when I consider that rating is the distributed licensing, that every server has to be licensed individually. The second is the workflow of jobs connected on multiple servers.