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it_user779097 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT System Analyst Senior at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dependable, enables our developers to execute their critical processes day after day

What is our primary use case?

CA 7 Edition supplies our mainframe scheduling workflow. Automation.

It's performed well over the years. Obviously we've had CA 7 Edition for decades. It just performs its job day in, day out. Very little of having to remediate any issues with 7. Obviously there are issues with jobs eventually, but those are always developer issues, with how they've coded their JCL. But, otherwise it performs well and executes as scheduled.

What is most valuable?

  • Dependability
  • Delivering on the execution of the jobs
  • Zero downtime 

All the above are definitely important.

How has it helped my organization?

Day to day it actually allows the developers to execute their critical processes for the business, running the business. I can see that expanding in the future.

What needs improvement?

It's hard to tell what needs to be improved. That's kind of why I'm here at the CA World conference, to see what options are out there that may help our developers fulfill their needs in the future. I'm trying to get a feel for what other tool sets may be available to help them do their jobs better.

I can see the analysis piece and the web client being critical parts, going into the future. Especially with the aging population, the baby boomers going out. We're very top heavy at this point within the company. As those people age out and retire, they're taking a lot of business knowledge with them. 

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AutoSys Workload Automation
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about AutoSys Workload Automation. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is very good. Like I said before, very little remediation needed, close to zero. We probably have two or three tickets with CA in a year.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Obviously, scalability is dependent on the mainframe MIPS. If you need more to run the jobs, once it's running jobs, it's out of CA 7's control. We haven't any performance issues, any time recently, of it not being able to get jobs into the cues.

How are customer service and support?

Customer service with CA 7 has been very good. They've helped us through several upgrades, with tickets around those. Whenever we've had issues, they've been able to point out where to look to see what potentially is affecting 7 itself.

What other advice do I have?

For us, when considering vendors, a lot of it's going to depend on their 

  • roadmap
  • ability to service and respond to customers needs
  • long term durability, are they going to be there a year from now, two years from now, 20 years from now? 

Vendors go out of business. You don't want to be in a situation where you're forced into doing a product migration to something else.

Make sure you know what the requirements of your business are, and whether it's going to meet the needs of those that are going to be using and depending on the product.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Executive Director at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Mature, reliable, scalable, and helpful for orchestrating jobs
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very valuable for us when we are trying to arrange or orchestrate jobs into a system. It is helpful for triggering jobs for a scheduled task."
  • "We are trying to see if we can use this from a cloud perspective with AWS, Azure, and other clouds, but it seems that there is no cloud integration in this product. We would like to see cloud integration. We are very pleased with this solution, but we are moving our application to the cloud, and we found out that it doesn't support any cloud features. So, we are trying to find a replacement."

What is our primary use case?

We use AutoSys to run our scheduled jobs. In terms of the version, I am probably using version 14.

How has it helped my organization?

This type of tool is essential for a data group in terms of how we pick up data from different things and vendors, and how we set up the workflows to do all the jobs. Without it, we can't imagine how we would run all the jobs. If we need something to run on a daily basis, we can use AutoSys to fully automate it. We don't need to have a dedicated resource to look at a job and ensure that it is completed. AutoSys simplifies our life.

What is most valuable?

It is very valuable for us when we are trying to arrange or orchestrate jobs into a system. It is helpful for triggering jobs for a scheduled task.

What needs improvement?

We are trying to see if we can use this from a cloud perspective with AWS, Azure, and other clouds, but it seems that there is no cloud integration in this product. We would like to see cloud integration. We are very pleased with this solution, but we are moving our application to the cloud, and we found out that it doesn't support any cloud features. So, we are trying to find a replacement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for more than 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is quite mature. It is pretty good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are using AutoSys for very large-scale deployment, and it is very scalable. It is capable of handling 10,000 jobs on a daily basis. It is very good.

We have more than a hundred users, and it is being used at the corporate level. We are trying to use something like this in the cloud. I don't think we are going to expand the usage of AutoSys because we are thinking of moving to the cloud. We are trying to see which solutions provide similar functionality but support the cloud environment.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is very standardized. The application has been out there for quite a long time, and the skillset is generally available in the market.

It is a very mature product, and we require very little support. I don't remember ever contacting their customer support or client support team for any major issues or downtimes.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have been using this solution from day one in this organization.

How was the initial setup?

It depends on the experience. For me, it is very straightforward. In a simple setup, you set up a server, a database, and an agent, and you are ready to go. In a complicated setup, you have to set up high availability, virtual machines clusters, etc.

We have a dedicated group to handle all top-level applications. This is relatively straightforward for them. From planning to implementation and getting it into the production environment, it takes a month or two.

What about the implementation team?

We did it ourselves. To get it rolling and to maintain it, we have a very small team with less than five people. They are just regular developers.

What other advice do I have?

This product has been bought by Broadcom, and Broadcom does not have enough dedicated resources to further develop this product. I don't see any major features, versions, or functions being added to this product in the future. I don't think the vendors would be willing to spend resources on top of it.

I would rate it a nine out of 10. We really like the product and its functions. It works, and we like its stability, scalability, and robustness. It is a very reliable product, but it lacks future enhancements. We haven't heard of any cloud initiative for this product.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
AutoSys Workload Automation
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about AutoSys Workload Automation. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sr IT Infrastructure Analyst at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Flexibility of scheduling jobs in PDS members, not a database, gives so many more options
Pros and Cons
  • "The customized views that each individual can create, and views that can be made free-form, makes this very popular with the programmers."
  • "It gives us flexibility when doing releases. We can make changes for one day in a PDS member, since we stage our jobs by date, and the next day the normal job definitions are run."
  • "The GUI/Workstation is weak and needs to be improved. CA is working on this right now."

What is our primary use case?

We needed to replace Allen Systems Zeke/Zebb back in 2000, since the product was not being updated anymore. ESP met our needs.

How has it helped my organization?

It gives us flexibility when doing releases. We can make changes for one day in a PDS member, since we stage our jobs by date, and the next day the normal job definitions are run.

What is most valuable?

Flexibility of scheduling jobs in PDS members, and not a database, gives you so many more options. ESP is a solid product and works extremely well, it's very reliable. Enhancements are always being added with new features.

You can add jobs/applications/agents in ESP very quickly; it just takes minutes to do.

What needs improvement?

The GUI/Workstation is weak and needs to be improved. CA is working on this right now; the web based GUI is in beta mode at this time.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

ESP is rock solid. It is as reliable as it gets.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support, when it was Cybermation, was much more solid. Now that it's CA, at times the support is excellent and other times it’s not as good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Allen Systems Zeke/Zebb had issues, and was being sold to different companies at the time. The product did not move forward.

How was the initial setup?

We had Cybermation come in-house to work with us, in doing the conversion back in 2001. It took about one year to convert all of our systems.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

CA ESP is a solid product and very easy to use. It allows you to be very creative in what you do. It is well liked here and is very easy to learn. The customized views that each individual can create, and ones that can be made free-form, makes this very popular with the programmers.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user351537 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The reporting facility of the product helps me to identify problematic jobs in the environment. The graphical interface is not 24/7 for us.

Valuable Features

It provides us with reliable scheduling of various business workloads. There are various service-level agreements, such as payroll, that need to be met at a certain period of time and if they're not met, there's going to be trouble. The reporting facility of the product helps me to identify problematic jobs in the environment.

Room for Improvement

The reliability issues need to be resolved. We have some patches that need to be applied and that's our next step to trying to get this thing resolved. In particular, one of the issues is licensing, so that could become a real problem for you if you're in a very large environment. It could get very costly if you want to scale this product out. It will scale, technically, but licensing may prevent that from happening.

I'd also like better reporting and a better UI.

Stability Issues

It has issues and is not entirely stable. For example, the graphical interface is not 24/7 for us.

Scalability Issues

Just 8-10 people are using it as we're not a big shop.

Customer Service and Technical Support

I have some of the other team members handle technical issues as it takes a lot of time to diagnose stuff. If I can't get past an issue, I turn it over to one of the other guys and let them work on it. But, no, I have not dealt with CA in their support infrastructure.

Initial Setup

I was not involved in the setup. I'm relatively new with the company, but have a lot of experience with scheduling.

Other Solutions Considered

For the most part it compares similarly to IBM and they each have their pluses and minuses. They both scale out and they're both found in very large environments.

Other Advice

One piece of advice I can give is training. You need to have some sort of a background in this in order to use this product effectively. If you're not trained up, you're not going to be successful with it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user289056 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user289056Enterprise IT Management Consultant with 51-200 employees
Vendor

A somewhat surprising review...

CA WAAE will easily scale up to 50,000 jobs a day per single instance and more if the jobs starts are relatively evenly distributed in time. The vendor claim and a quarter of a million with the recent service pack3 improvements (not verified) which introduce new threads for handling agent communications.
The UI (WCC) is relatively poor but will scale up to tens of concurrent users and hundreds of defined views (we have over 300 defined users and over 100 jobflow views per instance). A lot of development effort has been spent by the vendor to improve the UI and this is still on-going. The UI is 24/7, the issues are elsewhere.
Bear in mind that the strength of of CA WAAE (Autosys) is its relative simplicity, which enables both administrators and end users to get up to speed with it quickly and start getting value from it in a matter of days. Therefore it is logical the that UI is always going to be somewhat less rich than some more complex and feature rich products.
As far as stability, yes there are some issues: not so with the UI though but with the application server. Also the security module (EEM) cluster failover seems somewhat unreliable and prone to corruption (for instance if you run out of disk space the settings will get corrupt as some xml settings file get clobbered).
The built-in application cluster is old fashion and a bit slow to fail over. More modern technologies should be considered for resilience.
Re. SLA and deadline monitoring, the base product does lack functionality although the reviewer suggests otherwise. Some useful improvements are in the road map but more importantly this aspect if very well covered by complementary products such as iDash or JAWS.
Lastly on the licencing aspect, this is obviously a matter between the vendor and one's organisation but be informed that there is nothing in the product that will block or preempt any functionality based on licence (expiration or limit etc.), except for some of the advanced agents plugins which do not come out of the box and need to be purchased separately.

I hope this helps

it_user611985 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Offers the ability to code schedules to run jobs in both the mainframe and distributed environments.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ease of coding up schedules to run jobs in both the mainframe and distributed environments.

Prior to installing ESP, we had to use two products: one for mainframe and one for distributed.

How has it helped my organization?

It allowed us to consolidate our monitoring down to one particular console in one particular environment.

What needs improvement?

We need the ability to be able to have Windows user passwords changed periodically and automatically.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for 6 and 1/2 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

When we first installed ESP, we had a few issues with the ability of jobs to have their status reported across sysplexes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not encountered any issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is 7 out of 10, with 10 being exceptional.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously had Maestro for scheduling the distributed environment and CA7 for scheduling the mainframe environment.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was not too terribly complex, but it did take some time to learn all the complexities of the product.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Well, the product is part of our ELA with CA, but we do have a specific number of licenses we can use for the distributed agents we deploy, so you have to be careful as to what limit you set for number of agents, so you have room to grow in your environment.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated BMC Control-M.

What other advice do I have?

Take the time to learn how to use the GUI and learn how to code the schedules. There are a lot of different ways to code schedules.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Batch Scheduling Specialist at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Video Review
Real User
Helps us watch for data set triggers.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are helping to schedule jobs and helping to watch for data set triggers.

How has it helped my organization?

A benefit of the solution is scheduling multiple jobs. We run 5,000 jobs a day, so it helps us to keep all of that in order; keep all the dependencies, everything, flowing in the right direction; any kind of events, getting all those alerts and anything that could help with making things faster; not keeping anything behind.

What needs improvement?

  • Maybe just new ways to schedule things
  • Maybe a little bit more options for scheduling
  • More keywords

Things like that. That would help.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very reliable. I haven't had a lot of problems with it; working through the schedule; making changes; simulating; making things work.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've had a couple problems and we've written in to them or called in to them, and they have been very responsive, helping us solve the problems. It might take a day or two, or a week, but they're always very helpful.

Recently, we had a problem with our WOBTRIGs failing because the servers and different things were having updates to them, and it would be pulled away from workload automation.

Kiki actually helped us to put some more information in to restart the WOBTRIGs more than just once and that was all we were doing. Since we've put that into our product, we have not had any more abends with this.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We knew it was time to invest in a new solution because we were having multiple abends every day. We were having like 5-10 abends every day, and we would have to restart them continuously. We talked to CA support, and they were telling us that that's not right and that we needed to add some new parameters to help with this process. We thought it was something on our side, and we did check with our guys on our floors with the different windows, the different agents. It turned out it was just something that could be fixed in ESP.

How was the initial setup?

Anything new is a little bit complex. It's a great tool, now that I've learned it; just at first, just the learning curve of learning the tool; doing some things wrong, but it is a great tool and it has helped us; a lot better than our previous scheduler.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The management went out and looked at different tools and brought them in, and we looked at different things because we were wanting to run across multiple platforms. TWS couldn't do that. It was mainly a mainframe and when we were really branching out to the different distributed platforms, we needed a tool that would cover all of them and ESP was that.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to others depends on what they're looking for, too, in a tool. If they need something like we did to go across multiple platforms, I think it's great, but I have nothing to compare it to except TWS. But I think this is a great tool, and I think it solves the problem for us anyway. It's a great tool.

It's a great tool. I really like working with it. Now that we've got it and had it, it's very easy to use. I think it's easy for other people to use, too, because we had to work a lot of kinks out at first. A lot of our stuff came straight from TWS over to CA, and we just did a transition of straight over. We didn't rework the whole schedule, so we did have to work out some problems with it just to begin with. Now that we've got things smoothed out, it's great.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Autosys Admin at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
I prefer it for its ease of use, ease of understanding, and getting people to understand how the tool works
Pros and Cons
  • "​We run millions of jobs through it every day using it for financial transactions, banking, credit cards, PeopleSoft, payroll, etc."
  • "I prefer AutoSys over the other ones out there for ease of use, ease of understanding, and getting people to understand how the tool works."
  • "​CA installation processes are never anything but complex.​"

What is our primary use case?

We run millions of jobs through it every day using it for financial transactions, banking, credit cards, PeopleSoft, payroll, etc. We use it for everything.

How has it helped my organization?

It has just been in use in this organization for many years. It is just a standard go-to tool for scheduling.

What is most valuable?

It works.

What needs improvement?

I do not have any features that I need to see, but there is a lot of stuff coming out and the tools that attach to AutoSys. That will be very helpful in making it easier for our customers to view and see how their jobs are performing. 

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are huge, so it is very scalable. We are probably one of their biggest customers.

How is customer service and technical support?

The issues that we do have, they solve very quickly. Right now, we do not have any outstanding ones that I am aware of. Support from them has always been fantastic.

How was the initial setup?

CA installation processes are never anything but complex.

What other advice do I have?

It has been my go-to tool for 28 something years, and it has not failed me yet. There are all kinds of schools of thought as to what is the best scheduler to choose. I am an AutoSys proponent. I prefer AutoSys over the other ones out there for ease of use, ease of understanding, and getting people to understand how the tool works. Other schedulers do things differently than AutoSys. So, it really depends on what it is you need your scheduler to do in order for you to be able to choose which one to use.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user572841 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Video Review
Vendor
It allows us to manage and control our ERP systems, and things like Informatica and Hadoop.

What is most valuable?

What we really like is that it's an enterprise solution and it really allows us to do the "normal work," the different operating systems and platforms, but it also allows us to manage and control our ERP systems, and things like Informatica and Hadoop, and all those good things that are coming down the line, in the way of big data and things like that.

How has it helped my organization?

The really nice thing is that, as the business grows, we're not seeing the infrastructure grow. Regardless of how much new business we keep on, the team is pretty stable. We have a dedicated team of eight people. We maintain today nine instances of DE: three production and six pre-production. We're probably going to add a couple more in 2017, but we don't anticipate having to grow the infrastructure. We'll be able to keep serving the customers the same way we have historically and we'll be able to do that into the future, without seeing any degradation in service.

What needs improvement?

We would like to see good improvement on the historical reporting capabilities. It's always been, I think, a bit of a weak point. Currently, if you know a SQL programmer, he should become your best friend, but I'd like to see it get to the point where somebody with really basic skills – where they understand the information they want – can easily extract it. That's really the big area with room for improvement.

The development team has been really good about keeping up with not only our requests but the user community as a whole. We're pretty happy about it, but that's the one exception.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's extremely stable. We put in the Canadian systems about three years ago, and we have not had an incident in the three years that has kept us down for more than a couple of hours.

Support has been really good. If we need to call somebody, generally they're on the line in a few minutes, and we get right into the diagnostics and we're set to go again. Extremely stable; the agents are perfect. They never give us a problem at all. The servers are getting awfully close.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's our impression that we're probably one of the larger installations in the world. We have two instances controlling our Canada operation; it’s really Canada and the rest of the world. It was suggested that we spin up the second instance, but we really haven't seen a good reason for doing that, other than we keep some of the competing lines of business separated. Other than that, it seems to scale really well and we can keep going with it.

How is customer service and technical support?

Tech support, as I’ve mentioned, has been great. I know that CA has kept some people in support for a very long time, so they're very comfortable with the product. They know how the thing works. They know if it ever makes a particular hiccup, what's exactly causing that. We actually are on the Platinum support program, so we have a dedicated support resource. Historically, that person has been outstanding. He's always just a phone call away. He's knowledgeable not only about the product but our environment. Based on that, he can do a really, really good job for us.

How was the initial setup?

Before I came to my current job, I was actually an independent consultant. The last job I worked before I came to work here was converting all the material into the system. I've been there since day one. Initial setup has always been really, really straightforward. Architecturally, the solution make sense. There's a very good separation of functions and features. The security is outstanding and because the solution is English language-based, we don't really need to go out and put in a lot of infrastructure support to do the normal stuff. Basically, if you want a job to run on Tuesday, you simply tell it, run on Tuesday, and it miraculously works.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were in a situation where we had one of everything and we really went out to do a consolidation in the solutions that we were using. We really saw the CA solution as something that would give us the reliability and the scalability to move us forward in the future. We really didn't see that from a lot of the other solutions in the industry, so we chose them.

When we are selecting a vendor, the support is really the first and foremost criteria, and then I guess support going forward, so, the development organization: How are they addressing changes in the industry, changes in the solution? That sort of thing.

What other advice do I have?

Look really hard at what your requirements are today. Know that you're going to have a solution that you're going to be able to stick with for as long as you care to stick with it; also, something that can address audit requirements, address things like scalability, and usability. If you have to become an expert on how to make the product work and use it, then it's probably not as usable as you need it to be. Look for something that you can talk to, like you were talking to your little brother, and move forward from there.

The reasons for my rating are usability, reliability, and scalability of the solution.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Updated: November 2024
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Workload Automation
Buyer's Guide
Download our free AutoSys Workload Automation Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.