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OpCon vs VisualCron comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

OpCon
Ranking in Workload Automation
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Workload Automation
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (15th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of OpCon is 2.0%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Jose Rivera Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 24, 2024
Helps automate all kinds of jobs and it's worth the price because it saves a lot of time and money
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has failed, and they restart it on their end, so now, we have the job restarting twice. There were times when we came into the office in the morning, and we had two files because the job ran twice. I do not know if the system can prevent a job from running the second time. If a job has run successfully, or it is running, it should not run again.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 26, 2023
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"OpCon has also reduced our data processing times because of the way you can build out workflows. It can run things in sequence. It's not restricted to a linear process, so you can run multiple jobs at once, allowing for multi-threaded jobs."
"The biggest thing that we like about OpCon is how easy it is to trust it once we put the automation in place. Once we put whatever that job or schedule is, if we have the proper settings and conditions and we understand the components of OpCon in itself, we can go from a manual process to an automated process. We allow our team to get time to rest and have time to handle other things."
"I rate OpCon support 10 out of 10. I've never had a problem with them. I've always been able to get answers quickly and always seem to find a knowledgeable person to assist with any questions."
"There's also a self-service solution manager... that allows us to enable staff to run complex automation tasks by clicking a button and entering some information. They don't have to have access to the OpCon environment to kick off those kinds of events."
"The most valuable feature is being able to schedule tasks so that they reliably occur each day, each week, each month, or sometimes several times a day... The scheduler works as it should."
"Reliability is always important, and the reliability of the system is outstanding."
"The ability to chain jobs together allows us to create complex interdependencies between our jobs, and the integration into our core system is important because it allows us, through an automated system, to do a huge number of things that used to be done manually."
"It allows batch work to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible."
"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
 

Cons

"I would like to see OpCon being accessible using a mobile app."
"The one area it needs some help in is the mainframe area because that is not its strength. They support the mainframe but it's not something that they are good at."
"The only downside to OpCon is that its features can be complicated and really must be taught. Most of our users don't have training beyond the free Basic Training that SMA provides, so for fresh eyes, it is kind of difficult to understand some of the language used."
"I have noticed lately that [tech support's] first answers tend to be, "Let's upgrade it to the latest and greatest first," without looking into anything. The last couple of times I've logged a ticket that's been the response, which is a little frustrating. We're not big on just upgrading on a whim. We do full testing."
"The image-scanning features need improvement."
"I believe there's room for improvement, and while I think it's something they are considering, I would welcome seeing OpCon integrate with a broader range of systems and third-party products."
"The initial setup is very complex, but that's not necessarily something that needs to be improved. I'm told that in the next version they're improving the upgrade process. So that's in the works already."
"I would like more web-based training from SMA. That would be nice. Our primary OpCon representative is phenomenal, but we would like some training opportunities for learning on our own. When I started utilizing OpCon, the sheer breadth of it made for a very daunting task. I was almost fearful to start, not to mention fearful to go change things and possibly hinder a job."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It used to be per machine, so we had X number of devices licensed. Now it's not. If we had a lot of machines, the new license might've decreased the cost. Unfortunately, we didn't see the same gains."
"Our annual maintenance costs are $45,000. The initial cost is separate."
"OpCon cost us $80,000 in 2017 money, and that included everything: support, installation, onsite assistance during the conversion, etc. It's been a worthwhile investment by far."
"Yearly, it's around $30,000."
"It's definitely worth the cost."
"It was substantially less expensive than ASG-Zeke... I would suggest that someone who is only looking at price when evaluating workload automation tools take a very hard look at OpCon because it is well-priced."
"The cost is based on the number of jobs. You pay for what you use. For us, the support cost is between €20,000 and €30,000 per year. It's too expensive."
"There are different add-ons, like the Self Service or Vision model. It all depends on what agents you have in your environment. We have a mainframe and Windows, and while I think SQL is free, SAP or anything beyond that has different connectors that might need a license."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"ROI is one month."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
"The price is a bit high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Insurance Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Healthcare Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about OpCon?
My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and provides dashboard reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpCon?
I am the one who signs the contract. In the beginning, when I started working here, it seemed very expensive, but after I learned everything that it does, I found it worth the price. I would recomm...
What needs improvement with OpCon?
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has fa...
What do you like most about VisualCron?
The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.
What needs improvement with VisualCron?
The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LOHR, Carnival Cruise Lines, Herbalife, Digital Federal Credit Union, Synergent, Frandsen Bank & Trust
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about OpCon vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.