Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Automic Automation vs Rocket Zena comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 25, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Automic Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rocket Zena
Ranking in Workload Automation
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Automic Automation is 6.6%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocket Zena is 3.4%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

MM
Aug 18, 2024
It helps simplify complex workloads, provides excellent visibility, and improves compliance processes
Broadcom's AAI module offers advanced predictive SLA monitoring and management reporting capabilities, integrating with ServiceNow for alerting and problem resolution. AAI provides critical path analysis and predictive alerts, analyzing and visualizing processes across diverse IT environments, including competitor tools like Redwood Tidal, IBM IWS, BMC Control-M and Apache Airflow and other Broadcom tools including AutoSys and CA7. Providing IT Operations and Support staff with a comprehensive view is particularly beneficial for large organizations, allowing them to monitor processes holistically on a single dashboard. AAI is a critical selling point for Automic, especially for corporations managing complex IT infrastructures resulting from mergers, acquisitions, or global operations. Another advantage of Automic Automation over competitors lies in its excellent SAP integration. Its ability to seamlessly integrate with SAP systems is a key factor in winning competitive bids, as it offers unmatched flexibility and adaptability. Automic's programmability allows for the creation of a versatile automation framework, surpassing traditional job scheduling capabilities. Prioritizing simplicity and user experience, Automic ensures even junior staff can easily understand and operate the system. By enforcing standardized naming conventions and templates, Automic maintains control and clarity, especially in large-scale operations with millions of jobs. Ultimately, Automic's reliability, supportability, and ability to enhance operational efficiency through automation make it a standout choice.
JuanGonzalez6 - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 28, 2022
A continuously evolving, stable solution, with responsive support
The visual whiteboard for design and execution included with the solution is very crucial to those who are new to Rocket Zena, especially so that the learning curve is minimized and they can focus on accomplishing the task. We process our system's payroll through Rocket Zena. The fact that it's a multi-process, multi-layered application, means that we can rely on the solution for kicking off processes, notifying user vendors of the steps, completions, error logging, and historic events from the previous run times. Rocket Zena's ability to automate jobs on the mainframe as a distribution workload automation solution is good. The solution continuously improves over time. We're eager to start the latest upgrade this coming year that'll put us on the cloud. Hopefully, this will improve the product even more. We can run things natively without the scheduler if needed. The solution working properly and up to date without the need for a mainframe scheduler is crucial. We use the solution to manage a few complex operational workflows end-to-end across multiple technology stacks. Rocket Zena does a great job of simplifying our cross-platform processes through automation. The solution helps speed operations up and keeps them automated allowing us to focus on other priorities. The solution helps increase our completion rates by working overnight to meet our SLAs. Rocket Zena completes 30 percent of our workload outside of our standard work hours. Rocket Zena's cross-platform job scheduling helped us save around 40 percent of programming time by automating repetitive tasks. We use the solution to transfer our current files and keep up with our infrastructure on a few automated jobs, such as refreshing our database which happens overnight. The solution helped free up around 15 percent of our engineer's time to focus on more value-added work.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Compared to other products, the stability is remarkable."
"You can create very fine, granular workflows with a lot of possibilities. It gives you the possibility to do things in many ways."
"The most valuable features are that a lot systems are supported. You can use this for z/OS, Windows, Unix, SAP, etc."
"It helps our efficiency because it is a batch processing tool which works without a menu."
"We have a lot of governance and compliance requirements as a bank that we can fulfill with this product."
"The most valuable feature is the one for SAP batch processing... There are certain other mid-level workload automation tools which can handle the OS level, but SAP is something which is really very critical. Automic stands out from the ordinary tools because handling SAP processes is absolutely easy with it."
"The most valuable feature is that I do not have to wait for one job to finish, then manually click on the next one to start. Automation is the best feature."
"The solution is integrated across all applications and platforms in our company. We can provide everything from the very first data source to the data target in one immense code."
"From a Linux configuration point of view, Rocket Zena is straightforward. It's fairly easy to set up the server and agents once you know how to do it."
"I have found the scheduling feature the most valuable. I can map dependencies by using ASG-Zena. It gives a nice, quick visualization as to where things are."
"I like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."
"Its FTP feature is very good, as is scheduling any process or task with the Zena client. I have found it to be very helpful. If a task fails, it gives you a prompt."
"In the latest upgrade, Zena added a web-based client. The more I use it, the more I like it. It's an excellent interface. They do a good job of steadily improving the solution to make it more useful."
"You can click Ctrl-G and bring a diagram view. You're able to view in a diagram format. The view that it provides is easy, and you can move to the left, up, or down. You can double-click on a certain process. It'll drill into that process and all of its underlying components. You can double-click on an arrow or a component, and it'll bring up a screen that'll have all the variables that are assigned to that particular piece, as well as the values at run time. So, the diagram feature of it, at least for me, is pretty valuable."
"We haven't had any problems since we installed it. It runs as expected, we haven't had any critical problems. It helps keeps the business running 24/7."
"The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer."
 

Cons

"We have some problems with updates where some functions are changed, so you have to check your whole system to see if everything is still running. The update process for us is around two months of testing and one day of updates."
"If you're getting deep into some of these workflows, you may have 20 different windows open and, if you didn't already have that deep understanding of how enterprise orchestration works, it would be very overwhelming to get up to speed on something like that... It needs some way to minimize the amount of windows and get it to where you could have all the information you need available on the screen."
"When there's an error or a problem, the automation part of it could be easily programmed to escalate it up to the developers or whoever is going to work on it. We had to home-grow that within the product because third-party products are so expensive."
"I would not recommend using Automic's technical support for complex problems."
"We would like a way to test our cloud-based automations on-premises, and then migrate them to the cloud after they have been tested, without needing an additional license."
"There are certain jobs that are triggered one after another. It would be helpful to have a more user-friendly way of seeing how these jobs are connecting from one server to another."
"They need to handle cross datacenter failover. They have a really good High Availability solution that works well within a single sysplex, but in our environment, since we have two main datacenter locations, we have two separate sysplex."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly in terms of job creation and scheduling, especially when doing bulk job creation."
"Rocket Zena is a mainframe-based job scheduler. I would like it to be more open so that we can use it on a distributed platform."
"In the web interface, it stacks the tasks across the top, and they accumulate until you close or clean those out. That seems a little cumbersome. You must right-click and close all tabs constantly to keep the console clean and manage your views."
"The documentation has room for improvement."
"One area where it could be improved is communication between the different servers. Sometimes there are processes that have already been completed but we get a status notification that they're still active."
"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."
"Another one that is probably a little bit bigger for me is that when there is an issue or there's an error, it writes on a different screen. I have to find the actual process name and go to a different screen to view the alert that got generated. On that screen, everyone's processes, not just the processes of the folks in my department, are thrown. It takes me a while to find the actual error so that I could go in there and look at the alert. It could be because of the way it was set up, but at least for me, it isn't too intuitive."
"In the next release, I would like the user experience to be improved. The user interface should be more appealing to gen-z."
"The scheduling mapping is a little disjointed. There is no wizard-type approach. There are a lot of different things that you have to do in completely different areas. They could probably add the functionality for creating all components of a mapping or an OPA schedule. The component creation could be done collectively rather than through individual components."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It costs to scale. While, it is scalable, the add-ons are expensive."
"There are different licensing fees for cases where high availability is important."
"The solution seems expensive to me, but it does the job well."
"Pricing is competitive compared to other major vendors."
"You do not need any humans to start jobs, so you can save a lot of money."
"This is a support system for us, not our core business, so we purchased this product inexpensively."
"It costs too much. That's why we are now looking at other products."
"We cannot use all the functions because they are too expensive."
"The pricing and the licensing are good. It is affordable and can be used to improve and optimize productivity."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Automic Workload Automation?
It is easy to manage complex workloads and use electronic workflow automation.
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
The support has declined somewhat over the years due to various takeovers. It's not as personal as it used to be.
What do you like most about Rocket Zena?
In the latest upgrade, Zena added a web-based client. The more I use it, the more I like it. It's an excellent interface. They do a good job of steadily improving the solution to make it more usefu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rocket Zena?
The pricing and the licensing are good. It is affordable and can be used to improve and optimize productivity.
What needs improvement with Rocket Zena?
In the web interface, it stacks the tasks across the top, and they accumulate until you close or clean those out. That seems a little cumbersome. You must right-click and close all tabs constantly ...
 

Also Known As

Automic Dollar Universe
ASG-Zena
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
Fraternidad Muprespa
Find out what your peers are saying about Automic Automation vs. Rocket Zena and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.
801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.