AppWorx Workload Automation vs Stonebranch comparison

AppWorx Workload Automation

Read 26 Stonebranch reviews

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1,409 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Stonebranch and AppWorx Workload Automation compete in workload automation solutions. Stonebranch has an edge in cost efficiency and ease of deployment, whereas AppWorx offers superior features and comprehensive support.

Features: Stonebranch is valued for its intuitive automation processes, flexibility, and ease of integration. AppWorx stands out for robust functionality, extensive integration capabilities, and high scalability.

Room for Improvement: Stonebranch could improve by enhancing reporting tools, expanding integrations, and refining user interface design. AppWorx users cite the need for improved system complexity management, better documentation, and a more user-friendly interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Stonebranch deployment is considered straightforward and comes with supportive customer service. AppWorx deployment can be more time-consuming, though users benefit from dedicated customer service that aids setup challenges.

Pricing and ROI: Stonebranch offers competitive setup costs and good ROI, appealing to budget-conscious users. AppWorx, despite higher costs, provides substantial ROI due to its comprehensive functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed AppWorx Workload Automation vs. Stonebranch Report (Updated: December 2024).

AppWorx Workload Automation vs. Stonebranch

December 2024

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Helped 824,067 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

AppWorx Workload Automation

Ranking in Workload Automation

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 December 2024, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AppWorx Workload Automation is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 5.4%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Manali Zagade

Senior Information Technology Specialist at Gen

Has an easy setup phase but needs to resolve its login-related issues in its GUI

My company is satisfied with the functionalities offered by AppWorx Workload Automation. My company and my manager decided to switch from AppWorx Workload Automation to another product, so it is a decision coming from upper management, and I have been assigned the task of creating an analysis report of the tools available in the market. My company did not do any process automations with the tool. My company is just monitoring whatever existing jobs are there in our environment. If we are getting any requirements from our company's IT team, we create those jobs in the tool. The product does support our industry's standard compliances. My company does not currently have any requirements for using AI. We just want to migrate our existing infrastructure into a new tool. The tool's scope is very limited for our company. I would definitely recommend the product to others since it is a stable solution. The issue that I faced in my company with the product is one of the major drawbacks of the product that AppWorx needs to look into because if you are not able to log in, then it could escalate as a big issue in the organization. GUI-wise, there are no such issues with the product, and the configuration is visible. Considering that the product needs to work on the graphical representation area, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very user friendly so anyone can use it."

"AppWorx isn't limited to Unix or Linux. We can set it up in Windows, AWS, or Azure environments. It's not dependent on any one particular environment."

"The most valuable features of AppWorx Workload Automation are simplicity and reliability. Additionally, they recently transformed the UI which is better."

"It is an object-based approach to task and process design in conjunction with conditional logic and event-based scheduling actions, which enables a build once/use often design methodology to be employed."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"The interface is good."

"It is really a robust product."

"The automated solution is the most valuable piece. Otherwise, we would have to be doing everything manually on every server."

More AppWorx Workload Automation pros

"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"

"Stonebranch performs well, and the graphical representation is excellent. Overall, it requires more technical effort from our teams, but the solution is intuitive, so anybody can use it."

"We lean a lot on the multi-tenancy that they offer within the product, the ability to get other people to self-manage their estate, versus having a central team do all the scheduling."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More Stonebranch pros

Cons

"It is difficult to integrate with the Active Directory (AD)."

"If there is a time out that happens at the tool's end, then we, as users of the product, are not able to login to the GUI."

"The compliance features are limited to the server and not the entire infrastructure."

"It has been a deprecated product, because it is so old. There has been a couple of new solutions that are a little more advanced."

"It is not really scaling per say because they are not putting much into it. They are trying to push their new product."

"We are looking for additional features that would allow us to call APIs and integrate the product with other tools more effectively."

"The graphical interface is pretty cool but not the best so it could use some improvement."

"As a general process automation and integration tool, it has been superseded by other offerings, notably the Workload Automation suite."

More AppWorx Workload Automation cons

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

"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."

"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."

"It's not available on the cloud, so they should take that due to safety, security, and scalability."

"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."

"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."

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

"It would be ideal if they had the exact same features as the CA Workload Automation DE series. It would be helpful to have calendaring options."

More Stonebranch cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost model is based on the number of orchestrated systems used."

"The price for annual licenses is a bit expensive so pricing is rated a two out of ten."

"Licensing options are fairly straightforward."

"We are satisfied with the pricing."

"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."

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

"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."

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.

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824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

15%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AppWorx Workload Automation?

The most valuable features of AppWorx Workload Automation are simplicity and reliability. Additionally, they recently transformed the UI which is better.

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

It's good. I haven't heard any complaints. It's a very cost-efficient tool with high availability, so no issues there.

What needs improvement with AppWorx Workload Automation?

Currently, we download a client file from a URL and set up the master. I'd like to see a return to the previous functionality where we could just enter the URL in the browser, and the entire master...

What do you like most about Stonebranch Universal Automation Center?

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

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.

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...

Automic Automation vs AppWorx Workload Automation

Comparisons

Compared 48% of the time

Control-M vs AppWorx Workload Automation

Compared 25% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs AppWorx Workload Automation

Compared 9% of the time

OpCon vs AppWorx Workload Automation

Compared 7% of the time

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Control-M vs Stonebranch

Compared 35% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 22% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 10% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Stonebranch

Compared 3% of the time

More Stonebranch Competitors

Product Reports

AppWorx Workload Automation

December 2024

Download AppWorx Workload Automation product report

Download Stonebranch product report

November 2024

Also Known As

CA Automic Applications Manager

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Learn More

Broadcom

Overview

AppWorx Workload Automation automates your Ellucian’s Banner or Fiserv DNA processing. This innovative, best-in-class task scheduling solution accelerates your processing, provides visibility and control over business processes, and mitigates risk in both environments.

AppWorx Workload Automation Can:

Automate banner processes without writing scripts
Automate testing
Document process flows and procedures
Maintain a history and audit trail of production runs
Automate migration from development to test to production environments
Reduce training
Eliminate human errors associated with manual tasks

Benefits of AppWorx Workload Automation For Your Ellucian’s Banner

Automate recurring business processes, such as administration and record-keeping, while complying with state and federal reporting requirements.
Batch jobs are processed accurately.
If there are any inconsistencies or job failures, Automic for Banner immediately sends email notifications to the appropriate personnel.
Significantly improve your return on investment.
Automating batch processing and report generation.
Eliminating server overload by using a combination of features (AppWorx provides queues to control the number of jobs that can be submitted to a server at any given time, can spot duplicate runs of the same reports, and can delay impromptu reports submitted by individuals until all regularly scheduled reports are processed, etc.).
Eliminates the need for developers to write shell, PERL, or batch scripts to automate scheduling.
Automatically keeps a history of every job run, the parameters that were used, and the output generated at each step. These records are readily available for viewing online and can be printed for reference.
Export and import utilities make migration an error-free, repeatable process. Database logins, printers, and libraries can be mapped when you are moving process flows to a new environment. Mapping eliminates potentially erroneous code changes.

Benefits of AppWorx Workload Automation For Your Fiserv DNA Processing

Run DNA jobs directly, eliminating the need to copy and release queues for each batch cycle.
Automatically run DNA jobs at the optimum time using sophisticated scheduling.
Run multiple DNA jobs at the same time in parallel from one batch station.
Eliminate potential data entry errors by automatically retrieving parameters from your enterprise databases.
Automatically check the results from one step to ensure data integrity before continuing to the next step.
Alert production analysts to problems the instant they occur.
Coordinate processing steps across all software applications.
Automatically distribute output files to vendors.
Perform all operations from one GUI client.

Reviews from Real Users

“The most valuable feature for me is the scheduling,” says an enterprise application architect at a retailer who has been using the solution for close to 10 years.

A manager at a tech services company adds that “The interface is good. The compliance-related features are very good.”

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

Sandvik, Hanwha Life

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