Automic Automation Reviews

We have several corporate solutions that need to be integrated with our ITSM products.

Automic facilitates integration to ensure the correct execution of ITIL process workflows. The first was to create service offerings for provisioning virtual machines in both private and public cloud environments.

The creation of virtual machines would have to contemplate the current process of changes, releases, and configurations. Our service catalog should make service offerings available; these involved diverse operating systems, different hardware configurations, and some functioning web services.

An approval process would also be contemplated, where the main steps would be the registration and closing of the change tickets, as well as the registration and deactivation of the generated configuration items.

We have several solutions, but we opted for Automic following the natural evolution of CA Process Automation. The fact that it has native integration with ITSM solutions was also an important factor in the decision. Due to the various possible integrations, all of them need to be in accordance with the ITIL process. This would facilitate the actions that would come in order to implement a DevOps culture in the organization.

The service support is acceptable and response times are fast, whether from the manufacturer itself or from partners.

Due to the fact that we have several solutions to be integrated into the ITSM processes, the possibility of having multiple client areas is important because it favors organizing integrations and automations.

We have other products from Broadcom (CA Technologies) in operation, and integration with these products was very smooth. It integrates easily with CA Service Desk Manager, CA Service Catalog and CA Process Automation, and more.

Adding that to the various packages and plugins available at Marketplace, the learning curve to make automation work was very fast.

We found that some Actions Packs and plugins do not have documentation, are incomplete, or are of poor quality. In most of the packages available, it took time to study and gain knowledge of the features and resources due to poor documentation. This time could be reduced if the documentation was more complete.

If the documentation is not well built, there will always be extra time for testing and some of these generate doubts that turn a simple job into something complex. With the project's schedules in progress, it is difficult to set deadlines, even if they are adjusted for more.

I have been using Automic Workload Automation for two years.

The product demonstrates excellent stability, regardless of whether the installation has high availability or not. We have not seen any problems in this regard.

It is a product that scales easily, but with a short aggregate in its version with high availability.

The most experienced support team is international. Some professionals at the time of implantation are no longer available. The service responds quickly to doubts and so far we have had no difficulties in this regard.

We have also used CA Process Automation, MS System Center Orchestrator, and Control-M.

Complexity only exists when installing high availability. Support from the manufacturer was required.

It was through a Broadcom partner. The team was very experienced in the product, including with use cases in a company in the same area in which our organization operates.

We don't have enough time to calculate ROI yet, but we are optimistic.

There are different licensing fees for cases where high availability is important. There is also a certain complexity in this type of installation.

We only evaluated Broadcom (CA Technologies) products.

Overall, the user experience is extremely good. The monitoring and troubleshooting features are rich and with the dashboards and other features, automation work is made easier.

We have many clients in financial services. We install, implement, and configure this solution for them. They use this solution to automate financial processes.

We have roughly 100 users, using this solution. We expect to increase the number of users of this solution.

There are some monitoring features that could be added. For example, when we have some external dependencies from processes that were run the day before or one week before, these dependencies are always complicated to configure.

Workload Automation should also have better RPA features, too. I think that would definitely improve this solution. Instead of having to have a separate solution for RPA, it would be nice if Workload Automation could handle it, too.

I have been using Automic Workload Automation for more than 10 years.

Both the stability and the scalability of Automic Workload Automation are great.

Usually, we only contact support when we have issues with bugs, etc. I think some users have support for installation and configuration.

I have used plenty of automation solutions. 

I made the move over to Automic Workload Automation as many other solutions weren't compatible with REST APIs. For me, it was a matter of evolution. The new solutions come with more features, more updated technologies that I can use. 

The initial setup, installation, and configuration are very straightforward.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. If they added some additional features for monitoring, I would give it a higher rating.

If you're in need of RPA capabilities, this may not be the solution for you. RPA can be applied for some processes, but not for everything. 

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 simple job scheduling, mainly for SAP. Two to three parts are for SAP, job scheduling, and smaller and larger workflows. It performs well.

Our customers appreciate it mostly because it takes a lot of effort away from them. You can trust the system. If the system works well, the customers are satisfied. 

Most of our issues are related to the system, not the job scheduling, such as, bugs and unexpected downtime of the application or database.

Content of file transfers cannot be searched by the system, but has to be done by the user interface. This is not good, as it has been erased often.

One of the previous bug fix issues created new bugs, which was not good. 

The main part of it is stable, though.

It is scalable. We can grow it out.

We use the technical support often. 

Our recent experience with technical support has not been good, because it took a couple of months to get feedback. Traces and reports were sent, but were not analyzed for at least two months before providing feedback, and they did not give the right traces. This took two months to find out, so that was not too good.

We primarily use it for job scheduling and business automation.

It is the automation. Saving time and money is the key. We automate everything. 

We are able to use notifications for escalation, so if there is a problem, we can find out about it quickly.

The workflow allows us to integrate multiple applications into one flow and come up with a business result.

The one big issue that we have is around passwords and not being able to update passwords through a different tool. This is not available yet. It is packed in there with 12.2 and the login objects, but not with the connection object, which is a big thing for us to allow us same password updates without having to manually update them.

We have had no big production issues in the five years that we have had this product. So, it is really stable.

It is scalable. Though, it costs to scale. While, it is scalable, the add-ons are expensive.

Technical support has been good. Though sometimes it varies from time to time, where it transitions from good to bad. We have not had to use them so much recently, because we almost know enough about the product at this stage to support it ourselves. For the critical issues they are very good, but for the the lower priority stuff over the phone it is a bit difficult to engage them sometimes.

We were replacing AutoSys. We saw Automic as a better version of it, which it definitely has been. We replaced that an existing solution because it was no longer fit for its purpose.

It was straightforward. We made it difficult on ourselves at the time. We have recently changed and made it simpler. As regards to a mixed environment, it was fine.

We have seen big improvements in automation and automated tasks allowing our people to work on more important things for the company, as well as getting financial data quicker. It also provides us time savings from a company point of view.

There were a couple other vendors.

I would definitely recommend the product.

The main use case at the moment is to automate workloads. We have more than one automation tool, but the workload automation tool was chosen to do automatic manual workloads. That is why it is called workload automation. 

We are automating very manual, robust tasks, which are very time consuming and not error-free. This is our first main use case, and we do this also to glue some holes. For example, we orchestrate backups, where we take one system down to start a backup, etc. In addition, we are processing big data from the Hadoop platform and Informatica systems, and we orchestrate using scripts. We call it simple scheduling services, where we simply schedule batch jobs from scripts.

For our organization, this was a very big project. The issue of automation is a hot topic now, and that is where workload automation fits in.

It provides time savings on manual tasks. For example, imagine an operator is getting a task, but it would take him three to four hours. Therefore, he is slow to even pick up this task. Now, when we automate these task, it is just one click for the user, or sometimes it is even triggered on its own. Then, this task is already solves the problem. 

Also, we impose some standards for backup and restore operations. We have some standard naming conventions, where previously the operator would have to restart a VM. When he did, he would have to remember about setting a specific name. Therefore, we imposed this standardization. Our three main valuable features that we have imposed through automation:

• Standardization
• Error-free
• Time consuming.

The most valuable feature is the automation. There is the possibility to understand its different components. It is very open, where you can run different scripts or program scripts in PowerShell or Bash. Thus, it is open for various languages, and not closed to Java, where some other tools might be.

I do not think it is as valued as it should be because it is not user-friendly. There could be a better user interface for end users. They should make it more intuitive, not based on Java.

They should also fix all the bugs.

We do use technical support. Unfortunately, that is the bad side about working with Automic. With every new version, things that would previously work, Automic breaks them. So, we have to report the new bugs. Therefore, every time when we patch the system, there is usually a new bug or a feature that was working, then it stops working.

In general, the technical support's response is very quick. Maybe we are just a new customer, and we are on special care. However, if there is a major issue in production, then we simply get a call within five to 10 minutes, a call, not an email. They call directly to my desk.

We were previously doing manual work. There was an initiative coming from the senior management to automate more things, which is how this came about. When I joined the project, this product was already selected. I had no real say about the product. I had to learn it, because I was given CA Automic Workload Automation, and told this is what you are going to implement. 

I was responsible to design and build the system. The project was an agile project, which was a pilot, because our company was not very agile. 

While we are a public institution, we are very old school. This was a first attempt at doing new things. I was the only technical resource that had the proper knowledge and skills. Therefore, I was the one who designed the system and build it.

The initial setup was complex, because of our specific requirements.

The installer that had been given to us by Automic (now CA) was installing too many things that our security would not like. So, we went through a manual procedure, which was very hard and complex. What we did was, I wrote a script that ran through all the procedures. Then, at the end of installation, where it took me three weeks to write the script, the installation took only five minutes. 

I love it, and I am happy working with it. Though, it was hard to comprehend at the beginning.

Do not be scared with the user interface. It is not that hard. If you like to script, this is the tool for you.

You gain a lot of time and effort because you can automatize many things. Repetitive tasks costs us, so we can reduce them to zero effort and minimal costs by using the product.

The most valuable parts are the scalability and flexibility, where you can do whatever you think, then you can realize it in the product and have many ways to do it. So, there is not one road you can take, but many roads.

There is one missing part in the product concerning recurring tasks. You can schedule a recurring task by a context action, and run it as recurrent, but it creates a time container which can be quit and disappears. So, it doesn't remain in the system. I would like there to be some time container objects which exist and remain in objects which you can also handle and add. For example, inside the schedule to be able to schedule recurring tasks.

This is a very stable product. When it comes to a new release, you sometimes have to be a bit more careful. For the rest, it is very stable. Over the years, it has also become more stable.

It is very scalable. You can use it for a small or big company, so it works in both cases, and also with little or big development teams.

The technical support is very available and competent. They have a lot of know-how, which they are willing to share. If you have big issues, they will quickly help you.

In the beginning, we used a banking solution which was running on one platform. It was AS/400 at the time. We were changing the banking platform so it moved to a new platform. The old scheduler did not exist for the new platform. 

Additionally, the new banking solution needed an adapter, so we also needed a solution which could interact with this banking solution. We had more satellite systems, so we also had to handle the planning between different systems and the old scheduler, which was one platform based and it could not handle it. That was the initiative to choose a new scheduler.

Implementing the solution in 2009, the setup was easy (straightforward).

Other parts, meaning implementation of all the processes, this was very complex. We had to think about steps, like name conventions, standards to introduce, common objects the users should use, and the training that users should receive about how to use the product.

I would rate it as a nine out of 10, not the best one. It gets a minus one because of the new web interface, because it is not so easy to handle nor is it intuitive to use like the old one. As for the rest, you can do everything you want. It is scalable, flexible, and it does what you want it to do.

Our objective is to sell this product in the name of CA, as we are a CA partner. We are trying to develop this new solution and provide it to our customers.

It will increase all delivery due to an impact on efficiency, in terms of time and faster resources.

Time is improved because somebody does not need to tell you that they are finished for you to start. In terms of personnel, you can use less manpower resources, and this is good for the business from a cost perspective.

The most valuable feature is that it can be installed on any type of application on every kind of operating system and the agent can use it on these applications and systems.

I would like more training on workload automation, because I do not have a complete insight of the product yet.

The user interface could be a little more user-friendly, as it is not the best out there.

It is very stable. I have set up a personal environment on some virtual machines, and it was very smooth and fast. Thus, the performance is very good.

It has zero downtime, which is very good. This is impressive for anyone who wants to use this solution.

I have not tested scalability. From what I read, it has a very high scalability without downtime. 

The techncial support is very good, because I had a problem with an agent not being updated, and it was not starting. Therefore, I was having some problems, and the technical support immediately understood the problem, and helped me to resolve it.

The initial setup was quite simple because they have a manual which tells you in a simple way of how to install it step-by-step. Therefore, I didn't have any problems. You do need to have a background in operating systems, then it is not so difficult to install.

I did the initial setup myself.

CA was the only vendor on our shortlist.

We are a partner of CA technology. They let us know that they wanted us to invest in this product, particularly in Italy, because they work in Italy. That is why I started to learn this product.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. The brand.
2. Ease of use.