AppWorx Workload Automation vs Stonebranch comparison

AppWorx Workload Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Stonebranch and AppWorx Workload Automation are two prominent tools in the workload automation market. Stonebranch appears to have an edge due to its superior integration capabilities and platform support, particularly with mainframes.

Features: Stonebranch offers advanced integration abilities, universal templates for task automation, and a reliable agent system. It supports cross-platform operations including mainframes and cloud environments, benefiting users with a resilient scheduler and a robust framework for digital transformation. AppWorx focuses on simplicity and workload management, leveraging AI for efficiency and excelling in environments such as Windows, AWS, and Azure.

Room for Improvement: Stonebranch could enhance its graphics for workflow overview, improve API functionalities, and offer better user training resources. AppWorx needs improvements in its UI, lacks mainframe support which limits its enterprise potential, and could benefit from expanded FAQs and better negative code handling.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Stonebranch offers on-premises and cloud deployment options and is highly rated for customer support and technical expertise, especially in Unix and mainframe environments. AppWorx provides flexibility with hybrid deployment models and is praised for quick and helpful support, though some users suggest faster response times.

Pricing and ROI: Stonebranch is recognized for competitive pricing and cost-effectiveness, with various licensing options contributing to significant ROI. Some AppWorx users find the licensing cost high but acknowledge its cost-efficiency. Both tools provide a positive ROI, but Stonebranch stands out for its value proposition.

To learn more, read our detailed AppWorx Workload Automation vs. Stonebranch Report (Updated: January 2025).

AppWorx Workload Automation vs. Stonebranch

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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

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

15th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AppWorx Workload Automation is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 5.1%, up from 3.7% 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

"It has improved my organization through automation of back office and infrastructure procedures, and by integrating and orchestrating key business applications spanning multiple technology stacks."

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

"The automation in Atomic Applications Manager has provided a solid return on investment as it has significantly reduced the time required for tasks that were previously manual, such as running batch and online jobs and report submissions."

"AppWorx Workload Automation's simplicity and powerful functionality are its most valuable features for us."

"It allows for efficient workload management and reports on the status of processes, which was a unique feature when it was first introduced."

"It is really a robust product."

"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."

"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."

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"

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

"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 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."

"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."

"The ability to monitor tasks that are on the open-system side as well as our mainframe side gives us a one-window view of all our processes."

"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."

More Stonebranch pros

Cons

"Currently, I have switched to negotiating through third-party vendors for licensing, which has made it more expensive. Broadcom should address this by dealing directly with customers again."

"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."

"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."

"Reporting, forecasting and intelligence could be improved."

"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."

"Currently, I have switched to negotiating through third-party vendors for licensing, which has made it more expensive. Broadcom should address this by dealing directly with customers again."

"AppWorx Workload Automation does not support mainframe environments, which limits its use for larger and older organizations like ours that still rely on mainframes."

More AppWorx Workload Automation 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."

"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 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."

"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."

"One hiccup we've had is due to the fact that we have other internal scheduling tools. We're able to talk to them, but we have trouble with some of the networking between them, so we're still trying to work out the kinks there."

"It can't handle negative written codes."

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

More Stonebranch cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are satisfied with the pricing."

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

"Licensing options are fairly straightforward."

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

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

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

"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

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

26%

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 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?

The licensing is fair and reasonable for what the product offers. We will soon need to redo our licensing due to changes in our department.

What needs improvement with AppWorx Workload Automation?

AppWorx Workload Automation does not support mainframe environments, which limits its use for larger and older organizations like ours that still rely on mainframes.

How would you compare Stonebranch Universal Automation Center vs Control-M?

Hi Doug, I am looking at the same, or at least a very similar issue. Have a customer who is leaving z/OS on which he is using IWS to go to Linux, and the question now is whether to pick up IWS (TWS...

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Comparisons

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Control-M vs AppWorx Workload Automation

Compared 29% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs AppWorx Workload Automation

Compared 9% of the time

OpCon vs AppWorx Workload Automation

Compared 9% of the time

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Control-M vs Stonebranch

Compared 33% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 19% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

Fortra's JAMS vs Stonebranch

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

AppWorx Workload Automation

Download AppWorx Workload Automation product report

Download Stonebranch product report

Also Known As

CA Automic Applications Manager

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

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.”

Broadcom

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.

AppWorx Workload Automation vs. Stonebranch