Stonebranch vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

Stonebranch and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Stonebranch is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.7. Stonebranch holds a 5.3% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Stonebranch users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

Stonebranch

Read 26 Stonebranch reviews

2,998 Views
1,415 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Tidal by Redwood

Read 37 Tidal by Redwood reviews

2,921 Views
1,168 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Stonebranch

Tidal by Redwood

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

Tidal by Redwood and Stonebranch compete in the automation software space. Tidal holds the upper hand with its robust scheduling and permission segmentation, while Stonebranch excels in cross-platform integration and agent-driven reliability.

Features: Tidal shines with its robust calendaring system that effectively prevents job failures during holidays. It offers advanced permission segmentation, allowing for customized access levels across numerous job groups. Its cross-platform scheduling enhances flexibility. Stonebranch distinguishes itself with reliable agents and compatibility across various technology stacks, bridging disparate technologies. The unified task view allows seamless task monitoring and control, enhancing workflow development.

Room for Improvement: Tidal still encounters challenges with user navigation and reporting capabilities, despite recent improvements in its Transporter tool. Drill-down and root cause analysis can be cumbersome for some users. Stonebranch requires enhancements in mainframe connectivity, interface, and task monitor management. Both products could benefit from improved reporting and user interfaces, focusing on intuitive navigation for Tidal and better mainframe support for Stonebranch.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tidal is usually deployed on-premises with some hybrid implementations. There have been notable improvements in technical support after an acquisition, leading to increased responsiveness. Stonebranch, also primarily on-premises, lacks public cloud presence. Its customer service is strong, known for its responsiveness and knowledgeability. Tidal has enhanced its support, while Stonebranch consistently receives praise for its established service quality.

Pricing and ROI: Tidal's pricing model is recognized for flexibility and transparency, enabling scaling without hidden costs. Users report significant time and cost savings from its automation capabilities. Stonebranch offers competitive pricing, often being more cost-effective than its rivals. Both solutions provide substantial ROI through operational efficiency, with Tidal emphasizing time and management resource savings, and Stonebranch highlighting value in licensing flexibility and included support.

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

Buyer's Guide

Stonebranch vs. Tidal by Redwood

January 2025

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Helped 839,422 peers since 2012

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

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

Tidal by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

4th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Stonebranch is 5.3%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 3.0%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

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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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.

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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

"I have found the agents to be so much simpler, when compared to ESP."

"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."

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

"The tasks are incredibly capable, and as long as you name them with a nice, uniform naming convention, they are very useful. You can create some interesting workflows through various machines, or you can just have it kick off single tasks. All in all, I really like the Universal Task. You can do some mutually exclusive stuff, such as an "A not B" kind of thing. It has a lot of capabilities behind the scenes."

"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."

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

More Stonebranch pros

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

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

"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 had a number of different schedulers in this organization and we've been porting everything that was running out of these other, unrelated schedulers into this scheduler. That has afforded us the ability to set up direct dependencies between processes that couldn't talk to one another before. Over the 15 years, we've definitely gained a lot from that. What had been manual controls have become automated controls..."

"The feature that I find to be valuable, as I'm working with other folks, is the ability to cross-schedule across platforms, and the flexibility that comes with that."

"The best feature of Tidal Workload Automation Software is its ease of integration with other systems, including ERP, CRM, and BI tools."

"It has been super stable. There are no complaints on stability. We would not be using it if Tidal wasn't stable."

"With other tools, you do not have the ability to schedule jobs on their own. You need to create a group and then assign everything to that group. Only then will the job be able to execute. In Tidal, you can schedule a single job and there is no need to create a group. That's what I like the most."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

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

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

"It can't handle negative written codes."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Stonebranch cons

"I don't know if Tidal wants to get into the business of monitoring long-running jobs, but that could be a feature for the future: a job launching and monitoring tool. Using Tidal for monitoring doesn't seem like a good fit, but if they could offer something that did that as an add-on or include it, it might be helpful."

"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."

"Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation."

"Tidal's adaptability and user-friendliness could be increased by integrating it with additional programmes and platforms."

"Their software installation and update process could use some improvements. I'm pretty sure they're working on that, but that's definitely an area where it could be streamlined a lot. There's still a lot of manual work that you have to do with the schedule when you deploy masters or do the agents."

"The job failure alerts can be updated with more details for better troubleshooting."

"My complaint about their pricing model is that every year or every time technology changes or somebody has a new requirement, it usually means that I can schedule that with Tidal, but I would need another adapter. So, every time there is a change, I need a different adapter that I don't have. That's why it is harder to plan for Tidal growth because you have to buy a new adapter every time."

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

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."

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

"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."

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

"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."

"Tidal is a low-cost tool and not expensive in comparison to other tools."

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

"We've been able to purchase more adapters because the cost of the product has been very reasonable."

"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."

"...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."

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

"The new prices that we've received seem reasonable and comparable to the marketplace."

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

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

17%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

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 Stonebranch

Compared 33% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 18% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 10% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

Rocket Zena vs Stonebranch

Compared 2% of the time

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Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 46% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Automic Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Stonebranch

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

February 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Overview

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.

Stonebranch

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

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Stonebranch vs. Tidal by Redwood

January 2025

Free Report: Stonebranch vs. Tidal by Redwood

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