ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Stonebranch comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and Stonebranch are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.5, while Stonebranch is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.5. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.1% mindshare in WA, compared to Stonebranch’s 5.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Stonebranch users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 35 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

2,146 Views
714 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Stonebranch

Read 26 Stonebranch reviews

2,996 Views
1,389 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Stonebranch

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Stonebranch and ActiveBatch compete in the IT process automation category. Stonebranch seems to have the upper hand due to its strong integrations and cost-effectiveness, while ActiveBatch provides a comprehensive workflow visibility that users find valuable.

Features: Stonebranch offers robust integrations and task automation across multiple platforms. It is valued for its stability, universal templates, and agent simplicity. ActiveBatch provides end-to-end workflow visibility, a rich library of pre-built job steps, and ease of use across diverse systems.

Room for Improvement: Stonebranch could improve its graphical workflow overview, REST API accessibility, and FTP task support. Users also note the need for more intuitive documentation and technical support. ActiveBatch users suggest a more intuitive user interface and find the learning curve challenging, though they appreciate the monitoring capabilities. Both products could enhance API functions and cloud environment support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Stonebranch offers on-premises, private, and public cloud installation options, receiving praise for its quick, knowledgeable support. ActiveBatch provides hybrid cloud versatility with similar deployment options. Both products are noted for good customer support, with Stonebranch users particularly appreciating quick response times and specialized assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Stonebranch is noted for competitive pricing and cost-effectiveness compared to alternatives like Tivoli and Control-M, with a clear, hidden-cost-free pricing structure. ActiveBatch offers reasonable pricing and a subscription model for flexible licensing. Despite being slightly more expensive, users report strong ROI and cost savings, making it a worthwhile investment.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch

January 2025

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Helped 831,158 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

6th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (6th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (6th)

Stonebranch

Ranking in Workload Automation

16th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 5.4%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti

Senior Analyst 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.

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Earl Diem

Sr. Manager - Performance and Automation Engineering at PSCU Financial Services

Allowed us to develop workflows without having to train and develop very specialized skillsets

The Universal Agent is the most valuable feature. Being agent-based and being able to go across multiple technology stacks, which is what our workflows do, Stonebranch gives us the ability to bridge those disparate technologies. It enables us to remove the dependency-gap with the agent so we know the status of the workflow at each step. Workflow development in Stonebranch is straightforward. There is something of a learning curve, but it's not very steep. Being able to develop workflows without having to train and develop some very specialized skillsets to use the tool is very useful. Stonebranch absolutely helped enable digital transformation in our company and it still is. In our automation efforts, we're pushing everything to Informatica and, as we move those ETLs, we're automating the entire workflows. In phase-one and phase-two, there were 244 jobs migrated in from other ETL platforms to Informatica, and we've automated all of those. We have almost 200 jobs remaining. We're going to have something approaching 450 workflows in Stonebranch when we're done.

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

"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."

"Since we are no longer waiting for an operator to see that a job is finished, we have changed our daily cycle from running in eight hours down to about five. We had a third shift-operator retire and that position was never refilled."

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

"Approximately ~20 hours of manual effort have been reduced to ~5 hours with the help of ActiveBatch."

"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."

"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."

"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."

"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."

"I can name the aliases on the agent, so if we need a passive environment for an agent, that's one of the nice features. If our primary goes down, I can bring up the passive one and I don't have to change anything in the scheduling world. It will start running from that new server."

"I love the Universal Controller. It's been great for us. We host it on-premise... It's High Availability, meaning there's failover from one server to the other if one goes down."

"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."

"We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line."

"The features are upgraded, and every six months they're releasing patches."

"When it comes to agent technology and compatibility with other vendors, from a platform perspective it was the one vendor that fit all the platforms that we have, from your old platforms - mainframe, NSK, IBM i - to the new ones, going into cloud and container"

"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."

More Stonebranch pros

Cons

"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."

"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."

"The thing I've noticed the most is the Help function. It's very difficult, at times, to find examples of how to do something. The Help function will explain what the tool does, but we're not a Windows shop at the data warehouse. Our data warehouse jobs actually run on Linux servers. Finding things for Linux-based solutions is not as easy as it is for Windows-based solutions. I would like to see more examples, and more non-Windows examples as well, in the Help."

"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."

"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."

"The reporting needs improvement. There is a real need for the ability to generate audit reports on the fly. It needs to be a lot easier than what I can do right now. This is a major item for me."

"It does have a little bit of a learning curve because it is fairly complex. You have to learn how it does things. I don't know if it's any worse than any other tool would be, just because of the nature of what it does... the learning curve is the hardest part."

"A cloud option is not provided as a free feature, making it a costly solution for smaller organizations."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"There is a component called the OMS, which is the message broker. We rely on infrastructure, resiliency, and availability for that piece. If that could change to be highly available just as a software component, so that we don't have to provide the high-available storage, etc. for it, that would be a plus. It would just be cheaper to run."

"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."

"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."

"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."

"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."

"It can be hard to manage the task monitor."

"I have a request regarding our agent on the mainframe. It may time out when communicating to the Universal Controller, when the mainframe is extremely busy. That can cause a task which is running at that time to not see the results of the job that ran on the mainframe. It happens sporadically during times of really busy CPU usage. We're expecting that enhancement from them in the fourth quarter."

"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."

More Stonebranch cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"It allows for lower operational overhead."

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

"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."

"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."

"The price of the solution is at a medium level compared to the competition."

"Stonebranch is cheaper than Control-M, so many companies are using Stonebranch."

"I don't have pricing information, but I do know it's cheaper than our old legacy system. Other than the standard licensing fees there are no additional costs."

"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."

"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

I'd advise users to start by knowing what the actual requirement is and thoroughly assess the automation needs. New users should take advantage of the demos and trial versions so they get an idea o...

See all answers

What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referrin...

See all answers

What do you like most about Stonebranch Universal Automation Center?

We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Stonebranch Universal Automation Center?

The pricing is good. I would rate it eight out of ten. The pricing is similar to AutoSys. It's lower than Redwood, which was on the higher side in terms of pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Stonebranch Universal Automation Center?

It can be hard to manage the task monitor. We are still working with the vendor, and we are trying to make the changes as per our requirements. We are asking them to build some new solutions so the...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 30% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 23% of the time

Tidal by Redwood vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 13% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

Automic Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 7% of the time

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Control-M vs Stonebranch

Compared 35% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 20% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 10% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 8% of the time

AppWorx Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Stonebranch

December 2024

Download Stonebranch product report

Also Known As

ActiveBatch

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Learn More

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Stonebranch

Overview

ActiveBatch by Redwood automates and manages batch processes, data integration tasks, and workflow scheduling. It's used for file transfers, data processing, server monitoring, and report generation, supporting both on-prem and cloud environments.

Organizations implement ActiveBatch by Redwood to automate complex job scheduling and data workflows, integrating seamlessly with FTP, SQL, PowerShell, and other systems. With features like real-time monitoring, error handling, and centralized management, users can significantly boost productivity while minimizing manual intervention. Its flexibility in supporting on-premises and cloud environments makes it adaptable for diverse IT landscapes. The tool simplifies workflow orchestration with an extensive library of pre-built steps and robust API integrations, ensuring efficiency in handling various workloads.

What are ActiveBatch by Redwood's key features?

Job automation: Automates routine and complex jobs.
Real-time monitoring: Offers instant insights into job performance.
Customizable workflows: Tailors workflows to specific business needs.
PowerShell integration: Supports advanced script execution.
Job triggering: Initiates tasks based on specific conditions.
File handling: Manages file transfers and processing efficiently.
Server management: Monitors and handles server tasks consistently.
API integration: Connects with various applications for streamlined operations.
Alerting: Provides notifications for critical job events.
Flexible scheduling: Enables detailed and adaptable job scheduling.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Centralized management: Simplifies oversight of all processes.
Productivity boost: Reduces manual effort and errors.
Time savings: Accelerates task completion and workflow execution.
Comprehensive visibility: Enhances monitoring of all job activities.
Reliable performance: Ensures consistent task execution.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business and IT needs.

In various industries, ActiveBatch by Redwood is used to streamline operations, whether in finance handling large-scale data processing, healthcare managing patient records, or retail optimizing supply chains. It addresses specific needs by offering robust automation, efficient job scheduling, and seamless integration with existing systems, driving operational excellence and efficiency.

Stonebranch automates enterprise-level workload and task scheduling across platforms like Linux, Windows, and mainframe, managing thousands of daily tasks for improved efficiency and visibility.

Stonebranch enables organizations to streamline job scheduling by replacing older systems with a robust solution that automates complex workflows, batch processing, and secure file transfers. Its compatibility with multiple platforms and enhanced visibility aid teams in efficiently managing business processes, database interactions, and IT workflows. Equipped with a Universal Controller and Agent, it provides seamless integration across diverse systems, empowering users with greater control over their tasks. While it fosters digital transformation, there are opportunities for enhancements in areas like graphical workflow overviews and API functionality.

What features does Stonebranch offer?

User-friendly interface for intuitive navigation
Robust agents ensuring reliable task execution
Comprehensive workflow automation tools
Platform-agnostic compatibility for diverse systems
Secure file transfer capabilities
High scalability for growing needs
Effective error handling features

What benefits should users expect?

Improved efficiency in task management
Streamlined processes reducing operational complexities
Enhanced visibility and control over workflows
Seamless integration with existing systems
Support for digital transformation initiatives

Organizations in industries such as finance and healthcare implement Stonebranch for its ability to automate complex processes, manage mainframe and distributed environments, and securely transfer sensitive data. Its platform-agnostic nature caters to the demanding needs of these industries, providing a reliable backbone for essential operations.

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

Nissan, Coop, United Supermarkets, Groupon, CSC, Orbitz, Johnson & Johnson, BMW, Qantas.

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch

January 2025

Free Report: ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch

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