IBM Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

IBM and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.7, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #5 with an average rating of 9.7. IBM holds a 8.0% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

IBM Workload Automation

Read 32 IBM Workload Automation reviews

3,924 Views
2,656 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Tidal by Redwood

Read 37 Tidal by Redwood reviews

3,239 Views
1,311 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Workload Automation

Tidal by Redwood

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

IBM Workload Automation and Tidal by Redwood compete in the workload automation category. Tidal holds the upper hand with its superior features, while IBM offers better pricing and support options, highlighting trade-offs.

Features: IBM Workload Automation includes predictive analytics, dynamic workload adjustments, and event-based scheduling suited for complex environments. Tidal by Redwood offers comprehensive workflow monitoring, cross-platform integration, and advanced job scheduling with flexible dependencies, enhancing operational control.

Room for Improvement: IBM Workload Automation could improve its user interface and enhance integration capabilities. Its documentation can be more comprehensive. Tidal by Redwood can simplify its deployment process, offer better out-of-the-box features, and expand its reporting tools for better business insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Workload Automation provides a straightforward deployment process with extensive documentation and efficient customer support. Tidal by Redwood has a more complex setup but compensates with robust guidance and proactive support teams.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Workload Automation offers cost-effective pricing with a solid ROI, attractive for budget-conscious organizations. Tidal by Redwood, despite higher initial costs, delivers substantial long-term ROI through advanced capabilities and robust functionality.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood

January 2025

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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

IBM Workload Automation

Ranking in Workload Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tidal by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

5th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

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 IBM Workload Automation is 8.0%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 2.9%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

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.

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Steve Mikula

IT Scheduling Manager at Paychex, Inc.

Very reliable processing engine, and scheduling is flawless—crucial elements in our financial transaction processing

Because we've been on it for 20 years, it's pretty easy for us to automate jobs with Tidal at this point. It has become second nature. It's pretty simplistic to set up and get going, although there are different levels of complexity you can have within the product. It depends on how simple you want to keep it. If you just keep it: Job A, Job B, Job C, Job D, that becomes pretty simple. But when you start integrating some complex calendars that use sub-calendars—and you can go three, four, or five deep to set up schedules—it becomes more complicated. The beauty of it is you can go as deep as you need to. We can get really complex or we can keep it simple. We have some use cases for both scenarios. The thing that I like the most is the reliability of the engine. The actual scheduling part of the product is pretty much flawless, but the stability of the product is what I find to be reassuring. We are a financial company, we move billions of dollars a day, and if we don't have our transactions processed in a timely manner we can be penalized and our clients can be penalized. It can have a serious financial impact.

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

"The initial setup is easy."

"Technical support from IBM is very good."

"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."

"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."

"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is its holistic view, which helps me find technical solutions quickly. For instance, if a customer has an issue completing their workload within a specific time frame, the tool provides enough information to identify and resolve the issue. One of the main challenges is dealing with data infrastructure problems and pending updates. Workload Automation helps me leverage current AI capabilities to recommend architectural updates to avoid these issues. It also allows me to balance CPU usage effectively, ensuring service level agreements are met. The interface is user-friendly and facilitates this process smoothly."

"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."

More IBM Workload Automation pros

"It's easy to use and easy to administer, and it's very flexible."

"The most valuable feature is the job scheduler, where you can schedule thousands of jobs to execute at specific times."

"Tidal helps administrators and users to see the information that is relevant to them in that single pane of glass. They can see jobs running, they can see job history, and they can see job progression. If you look at alternatives like Airflow and clouds, you'd have to design your own UI to monitor the progress of the different jobs that you've created in Airflow. So Tidal is huge for us."

"Tidal Automation is very efficient and can quickly automate most manual and repetitive tasks."

"The Graphical Views feature is also very good for helping us to understand a job stream. It's great for providing a visual overview of the status of a workflow, especially the Critical Path view. That is one of our favorites."

"For us, the calendaring system is very robust. Some of the teams have very specific requests for when they need jobs to run. That's been really valuable, because a lot of times, when people run scripts, if they run on a holiday, they're going to fail... A couple of times a month it probably saves us work and the necessity of logging in from home and checking to make sure everything's okay."

"The versatility of being able to run on many different types of servers is valuable. There is also a versatility of different services that you could run jobs on. It's highly versatile. You can run a lot of different types of scripts on a lot of different types of servers. It interfaces with all of them."

"The best feature is that it allows task scheduling based on particular occurrences, like the receipt of files, database updates, or system notifications."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

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

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

"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."

"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."

"To improve IBM Workload Automation, I suggest enhancing automation features further, as more automation would be beneficial. The product is good enough for my current customers, but improving technical support and pricing would be welcome. We often need quicker responses and better solutions than we can manage manually. These improvements would make the product even better."

"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."

"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."

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

More IBM Workload Automation cons

"I'm still hoping with Explorer to be able to see end-to-end job streams. That's not really something that's easy to see today in the web client. However, I haven't worked with Explorer yet. One of the things that we have found frustrating is not being able to see an end-to-end job stream across multiple applications within Tidal. We use jobs for that right now, but I have high hopes that we'll be able to see that in Explorer."

"The solution needs more advanced reporting and data visualization capabilities to enable deeper analysis of job performance and trends."

"I know they are working on it, but there needs to be better reporting. Currently, there are only three or four reports that we can get off of the system. That needs to be improved. They already have a solution to this in the new version. I.e., a schedule of all the jobs running for one day, specifically calling out what dependencies that job relies on. It would be like a flow chart of how the day's jobs would run."

"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."

"Setting up the initial product was a little hard."

"For the most part, the drill-down and the logging are really good. But if we take an Informatica job, for example: We have the ability, and the operators have the ability, to actually drill down and see, at a session level, where the failure is. There is, unfortunately, no way to extract that into an actual output email or failure email. It's not that that information is not available, but extracting it into an email would be a nice-to-have."

"Some users have complained that the initial setup process is complicated and time-consuming, while others have suggested that the software could offer more freedom in customizing processes."

"The product’s UI is outdated. They should work on this particular area."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

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

"The solution's pricing is affordable."

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

"We pay maintenance annually through Blue House of about $9,000. That's for our two environments: production and test."

"If you are willing to shop around to other vendors, you can possibly get a good price on your support license."

"Our yearly licensing costs are between $10,000 to $20,000. They have always been reasonable with us. I like that non-production licensing is about half the cost of production licensing. Licensing is by adapter typically. We have had scenarios where we have had to take an adapter from one environment to another, and they've allowed us to do that. They have made it a very reasonable process. There's definitely a feeling that they will work with you."

"...it is a pretty affordable scheduler tool that lets us do a lot. You get a lot of bang for the buck... The licensing model is hugely flexible."

"BMC is really expensive. The other solutions are about the same price. I think Tidal is even cheaper than the others, such as CA, Stonebranch, and JAMS."

"This solution is a bit expensive in the current world where everybody is trying to cut down on certain things."

"The licensing model's flexibility is awesome. The way it's licensed for us is that it's licensed per master and then per agent. We have an enterprise agreement, so we have unlimited agents, and we have it on 500 devices."

"The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

32%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Workload Automation?

The initial setup is easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?

IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach. For example, IBM still refers to machines as 'workstations,' whereas other systems, like Control-M, use m...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?

We use the solution for network automation.

See all answers

What do you like most about Tidal Automation?

Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?

The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tidal Automation?

Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation. The setup and configuration of the software is a bit complicated. Providing the training vi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 33% of the time

HCL Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 18% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Workload Automation Competitors

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 49% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Stonebranch vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 4% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation

January 2025

Download IBM Workload Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

January 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Overview

IBM Workload Automation helps companies manage operations, portfolio management, resource collection, and dependency scheduling. It facilitates transitions from legacy apps to web services, executing batch processing for tens of thousands of jobs daily with hundreds of users.

Teams rely on IBM Workload Automation to optimize backend workloads, maintain service levels, and offer support in remote environments. Its interface and job scheduler are appreciated for their value and effectiveness. Users benefit from batch automation, multiple node job triggering, stability, and batch app tracking. It provides a holistic view to resolve technical issues and leverage AI for updates. Its user-friendly interface simplifies workload management. Performance, monitoring, request features for adding functionalities, and workload management are key advantages.

What are the most important features?

Interface and Job Scheduler: Highly valued for managing processes efficiently.
Batch Automation: Facilitates the automation of batch processing tasks.
Multiple Node Job Triggering: Enables triggering jobs across multiple nodes.
Stability: Ensures a reliable and consistent performance.
Batch App Tracking: Allows tracking and monitoring of batch applications.
Holistic View: Helps in resolving technical issues and leveraging AI.

What are the benefits or ROI items to look for in reviews?

Performance: Enhanced system performance and monitoring capabilities.
Workload Management: Effective management of various workload types.
Request Feature: Ability to add new functionalities as needed.

IBM Workload Automation is implemented across several industries for diverse tasks. Companies executing high-volume batch processing, managing complex job dependencies, and transitioning from legacy systems find it valuable. Industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing utilize it to maintain operational efficiency, enhance system performance, and automate critical processes.

IBM

Tidal Software is a leading provider of enterprise workload automation solutions that orchestrate the execution of complex workflows across systems, applications and IT environments. With a comprehensive portfolio of products and services, Tidal optimizes mission-critical business processes, increases IT cost efficiencies and satisfies legal and regulatory compliance requirements. Hundreds of customers around the world count on Tidal for modernizing their workload automation and driving their digital transformation. Tidal Software is headquartered in Chicago with offices in Houston, London, Minsk, Belarus and Chennai, India. For more information, visit tidalsoftware.com.

Tidal Software by Redwood

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood

January 2025

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