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it_user558330 - PeerSpot reviewer
ESP Administrator at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
As part of getting rid of our mainframe, it's allowed us to use a distributive scheduling package. It can tie into audit systems and gives you workload visibility.

What is most valuable?

CA Workload Automation automates across multiple platforms. We're actually getting rid of our mainframe; so it's allowed us to use a distributive scheduling package. Getting rid of our mainframe is a big deal to my company.

It enables you to tie into audit systems, gives you a lot of visibility as far as workload goes, and allows you to automate it as well.

What needs improvement?

On the mainframe version of ESP, there was a scheduling parameter called NOTWITH. If you placed this parameter on two jobs you didn’t want running at the same time, ESP would recognize that one was running and the other wouldn’t run, even if its scheduling requirements had been met. This allowed our company to combat contention issues without creating extra or false predecessor/successor relationships. The D-series, ESP-DE, doesn’t have this parameter. Once we realized how much we were leveraging this feature on the mainframe version, and that we wouldn’t have it on ESP-DE, we were a little disappointed. I’m not sure how much of an undertaking it would be to have it added to ESP-DE, but it would be very beneficial to us, as well as other DE clients that I spoke with at Ca World. Hopefully this could be added to the next release of DE and we could get it in before we go totally live in production with DE early this summer.

The secure SimLib/password feature from Autosys I was referencing gave us the ability to hide/secure environment variables by storing them on a totally different server in which security could be controlled. Once the job ran that used the environment variable, or database password, a developer or operator couldn’t see the environment variable/database password resolved in the spool file. Basically what we’re looking for is the ability to store database passwords or environment variables, on or in ESP, without them being seen by a developer or operator. We don’t want anyone to see the resolved environment variables in the spool file or to have to store them on the server. Currently we’re having to store these environment variables on the server, which isn’t a permanent solution according to our Security Admins.


What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It seems stable, as far as I know. It's been around for awhile, so it's a good product. From our testing, it's been fine. We have a failover situation as well that we've tested; so it's worked fine for us.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We don't have any problems with scalability either. That seems to be fine for us.

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.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was fairly straightforward. Well, the biggest thing was that we were already using Workload Automation ESP for mainframe; so we just took that and moved it to the distributed engine, or to the DE series. There are a lot of similarities between the two.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We compared CA Workload Automation with IBM, as well as BMC. We went with CA because we really like the interface, and the way it worked with our products that we already had in house. We did have a bunch of other CA products, and it seemed to tie in pretty well with those.

What other advice do I have?

It just depends on what they're coming from. If they're coming from the mainframe flavor, just know that they are similar, but there are still some very glaring differences that you have to accommodate to.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user355647 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It extracts and externalizes data without having to be reengineered, which keeps the mainframe people happy.

What is most valuable?

CA7 is very robust and one of CA's legacy products. The batch platform varies depending on who installed it. The iDash feature sits on the top of it, but we're not using that. 

CA7 also extracts and externalizes data without having to be reengineered, which keeps the mainframe people happy.

What needs improvement?

It's hard to share any information out of it for data analytics or anything like that because its siloed.

Also, we tried the INS data collection feature as well as the DB2 feature (except for data presentation). We're not very happy with those.

For how long have I used the solution?

I don't recall how long we've used it, but it's been a while.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

It deployed without any issue.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've not had any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales fine for us.

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

We tried BMC, CA, and IBM. We tried IBM OMEGAMON for a very long time, 20+ years. CA offers SYSVIEW.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

MainView is a BMC product for monitoring. OMEGAMON is monitoring from IBM. Each one of them cover a different set of products.

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.
PeerSpot user
Lead Consultant at Infosys Technologies Ltd
Real User
It helped us schedule jobs to run on multiple servers based on the workload

What is our primary use case?

We have used batch job scheduling and ad-hoc jobs in DEV, QA, UAT, PREPROD, and production for tier-one sensitive applications.

How has it helped my organization?

It helped us to avoid manual error. It helped us to reduce the manual efforts also. Helped us by giving alerts for long running jobs.

What is most valuable?

Virtual machine usage: It helped us to schedule the job to run on multiple servers based on the workload. It is automatically taking care of workload balance based on configuration settings.

Calendar usage is also very useful. It allows us to use our own calendar.

What needs improvement?

  • It needs improvement in the high-availability side.
  • It needs improvement in WCC console and EEM console to make it user-friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user778578 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Programmer at American International Group
Real User
Their technical support is very receptive to the issues that we have and resolve them in a timely manner

What is our primary use case?

It schedules application jobs throughout the night for different companies, various companies that AIG processes: American General Life, Life and Retirement Services, and several of their legacy partners. We monitor the input throughout the evening, make sure the cycles are complete, bring up the onlines in the morning, and run jobs per request.

What is most valuable?

  • The automation of it
  • The triggering
  • The scheduling of the jobs
  • The processes

We recently got iDash. So, we are starting to review iDash with CA-7 now, and we are using it.  

How has it helped my organization?

Through consistently meeting SLAs, job dependencies, and requirements.

What needs improvement?

We are not ready to go to the newest release (12.0).

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three 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?

I do not really deal with that much. Basically, we have four processes running on four different environments.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have gotten great support from CA. They are there whenever we need them. Whenever we open a case, they are very receptive to the issues that we have and resolve them in a timely manner.

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

The previous solution was very difficult to manage. The monitoring required somebody to be hands on. 

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial setup.

What other advice do I have?

It performs really well.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
it_user558198 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analyst at a energy/utilities company
Vendor
We like the integration and auditing features.

What is most valuable?

The integration that it provides and the auditing features are the most valuable to us. It also gives us an end-to-end solution that we can give our clients.

How has it helped my organization?

It simplifies everything and also takes human error out of a lot of things.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see a better front end for job creation that does everything for you, so it also automates the process.

In addition, I would also like to see a job form, i.e., a fill-out form for the job requests. I also want to see it set up files, folders, security, policies, etc., and automate JIL creation.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Now, it has become very stable. In the earlier releases, I have seen some issues but with the current release, it is very stable. We've been very happy with this.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is very scalable. With the way we have ours set up, it allows for rapid extension, if needed, but we have never maximized our systems.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have used the technical support and it's good. They're very knowledgeable and very willing to help.

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

We have not used any other solution before. We've been using this product for a long time.

What other advice do I have?

You should look at some of the use cases because there are so many people that have so many different setups, with so many different ways to do it. We have found the most efficient way and that is why everyone comes to us and uses our agents.

In my opinion, the most important criteria whilst selecting a vendor is reliability.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user389130 - PeerSpot reviewer
Autosys Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Video Review
Consultant
The benefits are that it's automated, reporting facilities are terrific, and it's easy to report incidents if a job fails.

What is most valuable?

Most of all it automates the processes we need to get done at night. We've grown into it. We have several thousand jobs in our production environment right now, about 40,000 altogether, and that number's going to be growing because with the success that we're seeing with certain applications that have submitted jobs to the workload automation, other groups in our company are saying "Hey, we want to get onboard too and automated our processes, too."

How has it helped my organization?

The benefits are that it's automated, reporting facilities are terrific, also when there is, let's say, a failure of a job, it's very, very easy to report that incident, that event, and we can certainly notify the appropriate personnel who need to be notified of that, very, very quickly.

What needs improvement?

I've wondered about certain features. Our release of iDash right now is 11.4. I have seen release 12 in the labs and presentation and I'm just blown away by the features that I see. Many of the things I was thinking about, asking about, they were already answered in the new release. CA has a roadmap and they have even more features coming in down the road which I like very much, so we're very, very happy with that, and that goes of course, for other products as well.

For how long have I used the solution?

12 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues. Once we went from version 4.5 to 11.0 and now 11.36, we have experienced great stability as time goes on.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No problems with scalability at all. Our centralized AutoSys server are running processes, jobs on several hundred client machines without a problem, without a problem at all. We foresee a growth in that as time goes on over the next year or so.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have great faith in the CA tech support website, and their responses to us every time we have a question, even if it's just a question on functionality, never mind it might be a problem that may come up, they respond to us very quickly; so we feel very, very secure with that. That actually is also true for many other CA products that we have at our sites as well.

If we did have a serious problem, which happens very, very rarely - we contact them by email; they've resolved every single issue that we've had.


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

We had AutoSys 3.4 which used to belong to Platinum Technologies, they became part of CA. I'm thinking right now compared to what it was like then back in 2004, the number of jobs was very, very small, but we knew that as we went forward with CA with the new releases that it would grow very easily with that and meet the demand, which it has done, and we don't see any problem, any limit to the software at this point.

How was the initial setup?

No, not complex at all, very, very easy. One of the products I'm working on which is CA iDash, a monitor for the automation tools, is extremely easy to use, extremely easy to install, to setup, to configure and run. In fact, that was one of our reasons for going with it this past year, that particular product of the whole CA Workload Automation package.

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

When it comes to advice I would say that obviously cost is one factor, I never get involved with that, but cost is a factor. That's a very good question because we recently purchased iDash this year, and it's intended to replace a third party competitor software which we're using right now, and even though iDash was about 15% more, because of licensing and ease of use, that 15% more is more than paid for by the flexibility we have, because the other software we're limited to how many instances we can have of it, and how many jobs it can see - iDash, no limit at all. As many iDash instances as we want, and there's no limited to how many AutoSys environments we're going to be monitoring, and that's a real plus for not only the users but also IT management and upper management as well.

What other advice do I have?

Rating: at least 9.5, 9.6/10 for sure. I probably shouldn't say 10 because I want to give CA something to work at and work towards, so 9.9.

I heartily recommended them, even if they had software such as the Terma Labs JAWS or something else, to really very seriously consider looking at iDash for the lot of features, it's so easy to use, I said "CA will be very glad to a proof of concept test trial install for you, and then you can do a comparison." I didn't try to push people, say "Oh, iDash is a lot better." I said "I think they should decide for themselves." But I think it'll be evident once they get it in, look at it, and do a comparison. There's a good guarantee they'll go in that direction, I would think, based upon my own experiences.

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
it_user373482 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Video Review
Vendor
Setup isn't complex compared to other solutions. Scalability is good as well.

Valuable Features

You see a lot of automation tools right now in the market. Whenever we try to look at the products that clients are trying to use, we try to see which one is better matched for their requirements. Most of the times, we try to gauge their level of understanding of the products as well. Workload Automation gives a lot of insight for the client, to better understand how they can actually automate the process of scheduling the jobs within their environment. Workload Automation really plays a good role. If you see every product come with its own workload or its own scheduling product so if you talk about SAP, SAP rebuilt its own scheduling product. You talk about Hulu which comes with Uzi which is its own scheduling product. Having a different scheduling product scattered around in the environment, it is really a tough for the management to have a better in-scope of seeing what actually is happening in the scheduling area.

Improvements to My Organization

Centralizing all this into a single workload automation tool using the CA product has really helped a lot of customers. This has benefited most of the users to have a better understanding of the environment. It's pretty good compared to the older versions. It actually supports a lot of new features where you can also implement in our clustered solutions and also in higher availability with more of load balancing and everything.

Room for Improvement

One of my clients who has recently converted everything from the Architecture to what they are using to the complete iPad and solutions. Deploying those solutions and integrating with them was a little challenge at this point of time. We would definitely like to see some kind of roadmap with this workload automation product, having integrations with mobility as well.

Stability Issues

It's pretty stable compared to the older versions I would say.

Scalability Issues

The scalability - it is really good. I mean there are other products which do play the similar roles but having this workload automation in place and having a different product integrating with it whenever there is a need, you have a Windows shop today and tomorrow now most of the clients are trying to migrate from Windows to Unix. When we have that shift change happening, adding more clients and having more support for this operating systems to schedule this systems, this is really playing a lot of help in the scalability of managing this product.

Customer Service and Technical Support

I would rate them a 9 on a scale of 10. They are really good. We had a lot of help at the time of migrations that we usually plan with our clients when we do implement a solution or when we try to do the upgrades. The CA partners usually help us in even mentioning that as a hard site, because of this hard site there will be a dedicated technician who will be helping us. In order that if there is anything working during the migration period or anything like that. We don't really run around with the different people in order to get our solution done. One engineer who is dedicated to our site during that hard site period will be helping and resolving most of the issues. Support is really good with CA. Set-up is depending on the client's environment, how big and how small they are. We just need to understand that better requirements and providing that solution in order to set up this product in their environment. Makes a lot of work that we need to do in order to better understand their requirements

Initial Setup

Setup: we can say it's not that complex compared to other products. CA has a very user friendly environment where we can actually do it in no time. Moving towards the mobility because most of the clients are converting themselves from old school sitting in front of their desktops. Everyone wants to manage through mobile products.

Other Advice

Rating: I would say 9/10 because I believe always there is a scope of implement for every product. There is nothing like everything is really best in product so yeah there is still scope of improvement with workload automation tool.

So far what we are doing, we are really happy with this product. When they talk about the workload automation solutions, we definitely try to explain how better it can be having worked with the CA producs compared to others. It's pretty easy because most of the corportation do understand the requirement and what best that solves. The best part of the CA is it is open to integrate with multiple products. It is not that we cannot integrate or we do not have anything like that. The support has more scope where they can also work with us in order to do a third party integration as required as well. I mean it's pretty easy for us.

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

Some inaccuracies here, I don't think setup is simple if you want to use advanced features, resilience has been there since the origins of the product, stability is better in version 11.3 than 11.0 but not as good as 4.5

it_user779295 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
​Ease of use, scripting capabilities help us reduce headcount, prevent errors, self-heal
Pros and Cons
  • "​It allows you to automate tasks, and reduce headcount, prevent errors, self-heal."
  • "I would like to see the Service Orchestrator, a B2B product, and maybe a process audit."
  • "They could do better supporting it. They have too many of the same type of products, so sometimes it doesn't get as much attention as it should."

What is our primary use case?

It's our enterprise workload automation scheduler. 

It performs pretty well, it's a pretty stable product.

How has it helped my organization?

It allows you to automate tasks, and reduce headcount, prevent errors, self-heal, self-service type technologies.

What is most valuable?

  • Ease of use 
  • Scripting capabilities

What needs improvement?

In the next release I would like to see the Service Orchestrator, a B2B product, and maybe a process audit.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. Just the usual database problems, but the application, normally, doesn't have any problems at all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The system itself is not scalable but you can add multiple connections into it. You can use the APIs to integrate with other systems.

How are customer service and technical support?

We use tech support all the time. They're pretty good. The response time from them depends on the complexity of the problem. They could do better sometimes.

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

It's a requirement for all large corporations to have some type of enterprise scheduler. We went with CA because they are a good partner, and they're pretty stable, and they acquire everybody else. They only have two main competitors, IBM or BMC.

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward. It's not difficult.

What other advice do I have?

Our most important criterion when selecting a vendor is the partnership.

I give the solution an eight because it has a few quirks, but it's a pretty reliable system. They could do better supporting it. They have too many of the same type of products, so sometimes it doesn't get as much attention as it should.

I would advise a colleague who is looking at similar solutions to stay informed with the technology, and engage with the CA reps. 

I would recommend it whole-heartedly.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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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.