ActiveBatch by Redwood vs IBM Workload Automation comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and IBM are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #19, while IBM is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.8% mindshare in WA, compared to IBM’s 6.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of IBM users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 35 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

1,943 Views
1,477 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Workload Automation

Read 33 IBM Workload Automation reviews

3,700 Views
3,404 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

IBM Workload Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch Workload Automation and IBM Workload Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

Features: ActiveBatch Workload Automation provides a wide range of valuable features such as versatility, ease of use, prebuilt jobs, real-time scheduling and monitoring, intelligent automation, scalability, REST API adapters, and an exceptional user interface. IBM Workload Automation prioritizes client voting for additional features, triggering jobs in multiple nodes, and batch application tracking.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation has areas that could be improved, such as licensing, user interface, trigger reliability, monitoring dashboard, documentation, support services, and integration capabilities. IBM Workload Automation has faced performance problems in past versions, difficulties with navigation, and limited reporting visibility.

Service and Support: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has been praised for its excellent customer service, particularly its reliable technical support. However, there are concerns about the service model and the availability of the hotline. IBM Workload Automation is highly respected for its support, with customers recommending its lab advocacy program for detailed code support.

Ease of Deployment: The setup process for ActiveBatch Workload Automation is straightforward and uncomplicated, without any significant challenges. However, there is a minor requirement for additional documentation during the file import. The initial setup for IBM Workload Automation can be difficult for individuals who are not familiar with IBM tools, however, with help, it becomes relatively easy.

Pricing: ActiveBatch Workload Automation offers a versatile licensing structure that eliminates the need for agents on all servers, whereas IBM Workload Automation's cost is based on the customer's agreement.

ROI: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has received positive feedback for its ability to generate positive results and financial benefits. Users have reported a significant increase in net revenue. There is a lack of specific user reviews and ROI data for IBM Workload Automation. However, it is known for its focus on optimizing workload management processes and enhancing efficiency.

Comparison Results: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is highly recommended over IBM Workload Automation. Users appreciate ActiveBatch's straightforward setup process, adaptability, ease of use, ready-made jobs, intuitive interface, real-time monitoring, scalability, and an extensive collection of prebuilt job steps.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. IBM Workload Automation Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. IBM Workload Automation

September 2025

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Helped 870,701 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

19th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (34th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (18th)

IBM Workload Automation

Ranking in Workload Automation

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.8%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 6.0%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Workload Automation	6.0%
ActiveBatch by Redwood	2.8%
Other	91.2%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti

Associate Consultant at Capgemini

Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation

Occasionally, I find myself contemplating if there is room for improvement in the user interface (UI), and envisioning that with certain enhancements. The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application. New users might encounter a minor setback due to the absence of readily accessible training videos, which could have otherwise proven to be an invaluable resource in aiding their initial familiarization with the platform, potentially hindering their seamless onboarding process and delaying their ability to harness the software's full range of capabilities to its utmost potential.

Read full review

Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes

Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As far as centralization goes it's nice because we can see all these processes that are tied to this larger process. The commissions, FTP processing, the reporting, the file moves to the business users — all that is right there. It's very easy to read. It's easy to tie it together, visually, and see where each of these steps fits into the bigger picture."

"For developers, it is easy to orchestrate the workflows and the integration has been very easy."

"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs."

"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."

"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."

"The nice thing about ActiveBatch is once we have created a specific job that can be easily be replicated to another job, then minimal changes will have to be made. This makes things nice. Reduction of coding is substantial in a lot of cases. The replication of one job to another is just doing a few minor tweaks and rolling it into production. This decreases our development costs substantially."

"We leverage the solution's native integrations regularly. We have to get files from a remote server outside the organization, and even send things outside the organization. We use a lot of its file manipulation and SFTP functionality for contacting remote servers."

"Since I started using this product, I have been able to easily track everything as it mainly monitors, alerts, and looks after all the services - even across platform scheduling - which has helped me immensely."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."

"The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years"

"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."

"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."

"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."

"The solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis."

"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."

"It offers features like MDM and a Windows workstation, although there are some technical dependencies. It is more user-friendly and also includes failover and failback capabilities. While both systems offer high availability, Control-M's high availability is superior to AWS's."

More IBM Workload Automation pros

Cons

"The product should be improved by providing a customization option."

"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."

"We have faced a couple of issues where we were supposed to log a defect with ActiveBatch. That said, the Active batch Vendor Support is very responsive and reliable."

"Between version 10 and version 12 there was a change. In version 10, they had each object in its own folder. But on the back end, they saw it at the root level. So when we moved over to version 12, everything was in the same area mixed together. It was incredibly difficult and we actually had to create our own folders and move those objects—like schedules, jobs, user accounts—and manually put those into folders, whereas the previous version already had it."

"Whenever there is an overload, we are seeing crashes happening."

"The documentation is very limited, and it can be improved."

"One thing I've noticed is that navigation can be difficult unless you are familiar with the structure that we have in place. If someone else had to look at our ActiveBatch console and find a job, they might not know where to find it."

"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."

"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."

"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."

"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."

"The solution should offer more free technical sessions to customers so that they can gain more experience or learn more about how to use it."

"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools."

"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."

"The performance of the previous versions could be better."

More IBM Workload Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."

"It allows for lower operational overhead."

"ActiveBatch is currently redesigning themselves. In the past, they were a low cost solution for automation. They had a nice tool that was very inexpensive. With their five-year plan, they will be more enhancement-driven, so they're trying to improve their software, customer service, and the way that their customers get information from them. In doing that, they're raising the price of their base system. They changed from one pricing model to another, which has caused some friction between ActiveBatch and us. We're working through that right now with them. That's one of the reasons why we're why we were evaluating other software packages."

"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."

"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."

"The pricing was fair. There are additional costs for the plugins. We have the standard licensing fees for different pieces, then we have the plugins which were add-ons. However, we expected that."

"I don't think we've ever had a problem with the pricing or licensing. Even the maintenance fees are very much in line. They are not excessive. I think for the support that you get, you get a good value for your money. It's the best value on the market."

"I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way."

"The solution's pricing is affordable."

"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."

"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."

"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."

"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

29%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	29

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?

IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly, and a lower cost would be beneficial.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?

We use IBM Workload Automation ( /products/ibm-workload-automation-reviews ) as a scheduler. We install agents on the application servers and use scheduling to trigger jobs on other servers. Our us...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering IBM Workload Automation?

I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product. However, the cost is a concern. The product features a master-slave setup that ensures continuity during failures....

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 13% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

Rocket Zena vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 4% of the time

More ActiveBatch by Redwood Competitors

Control-M vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 22% of the time

HCL Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 15% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 12% of the time

Automic Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 7% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM Workload Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

October 2025

Download ActiveBatch by Redwood product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation

October 2025

Download IBM Workload Automation product report

Also Known As

ActiveBatch

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS

Overview

ActiveBatch by Redwood enhances efficiency with features like job scheduling, integration, and real-time monitoring. It supports diverse platforms, automates tasks, and offers a single-pane view with robust security.

ActiveBatch streamlines automation by offering drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built job steps, and native integrations. Its customizable workflows and alert system aid in managing complex workloads like data processing and server monitoring across hybrid environments. While it effectively reduces manual errors and enhances productivity, areas like navigation and support for cloud platforms need enhancement. New users may face challenges due to its complexity and steep learning curve, and further improvements in reporting, mobile access, and training could provide additional support to users.

What important features does ActiveBatch offer?

Comprehensive Job Scheduling: Manages and automates complex workloads efficiently.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connects with different platforms and applications.
Real-time Monitoring: Offers a single-pane view for quick issue identification.
Customizable Workflows: Tailors processes to specific organizational tasks.
Robust Alert System: Ensures timely notifications for critical events.
Data Protection: Incorporates strong security measures for secure operations.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating ActiveBatch?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automates repetitive tasks, reducing manual intervention.
Improved Productivity: Streamlines processes across hybrid environments.
Error Reduction: Decreases likelihood of manual errors.
Platform Support: Provides integration with diverse systems.

In finance, ActiveBatch is implemented for orchestrating batch processes and data management. The healthcare industry utilizes it for automating patient data updates and server monitoring, while the retail sector benefits from file transfers and inventory management automation.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

IBM Workload Automation streamlines scheduling with automation and dynamic workload balancing. It integrates multiple platforms, offering efficient management across diverse systems, enhancing operational productivity.

IBM Workload Automation provides end-to-end control in managing tasks across varied platforms, supporting event-based scheduling and real-time updates. Its intuitive GUI allows seamless scripting and monitoring, facilitating integration with applications like SAP and Oracle. The inclusion of FTA agents ensures efficient local dependency management, while offering versatile scheduling options. Its capability to provide a comprehensive view, manage CPU usage, and meet service level agreements positions it as a valuable tool for large-scale operations.

What are the most important features?

Automation with Dependencies: Allows integration of complex tasks and workflows across multiple platforms.
Dynamic Workload Balancing: Ensures optimal resource utilization by adapting to changing demands.
Event-Based Scheduling: Initiates processes based on real-time events for timely task execution.
Real-Time Updates: Keeps users informed with instantaneous status changes and alerts.
User-Friendly GUI: Facilitates custom scripting and monitoring with ease.
Application Integration: Supports seamless connectivity with SAP, Oracle, and more.
FTA Agents: Efficiently handle local dependency resolution for consistent workflow operation.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Operational Efficiency: Streamlines workload management and reduces manual intervention.
Improved Resource Management: Balances CPU usage and avoids bottlenecks.
Enhanced SLA Compliance: Assures adherence to service level agreements, boosting reliability.
Scalability: Supports expanding operations with robust scheduling capabilities.
Integration Flexibility: Adapts to evolving technological landscapes with ease.

Industries such as government, banking, and large enterprises implement IBM Workload Automation for automated scheduling, workload balancing, and batch processing. It assists in migrating from legacy systems to web-based services, integrating with numerous applications, and managing extensive daily job lists. Key functions include offshore management and backend data collection, crucial for effective resource tracking. This adaptability enables organizations to efficiently support operations while scaling workloads as needed.

IBM

Sample Customers

Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital

Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. IBM Workload Automation

September 2025

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