IBM Workload Automation Reviews

Product administration with minimal scheduling usage these days. Installing, configuring, and administering distributed agents and integration with multiple services and applications.

Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform. I have practical experience with all of the major "Enterprise" WLA products (Control-M, CA-7, and Zeke). None of them have the functionality and ease of use of TWS.

The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community. The variety of agents available allows for an extremely flexible Enterprise WLA solution. The WAPL (formerly SOE) functionality is one of the major things that sets IWA apart from the other platforms. With its use, you can automate tasks that other platforms can only dream about.

This may not be the norm, but slow down on the releases a bit. I fully understand that IWA functionality is increasing at an amazing rate, but trying to keep up with the upgrades is rough. Figure out a way to speed up the DWC response a little.

None! It's indestructible, and if configured correctly, and easily recovered in a disaster scenario.

None! I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size.

Let us be honest: It is IBM. They may not have invented arrogant, but they perfected it. 

If you make it clear that you know what you are doing and you get support involved, it is as good as it gets. I have been given direct cell phone contacts to Product Development in Rome (when it was still there). They cared enough to help at that level.

I am currently supporting both IWA and CA-7 while my company decides on which direction to go forward.

With any experience whatsoever, IWA is as simple to install and configure. You basically fill in some blanks and run the setup jobs. They create all of the STC, panels and skeletons that you require.

In-house.

If you are running an IBM Mainframe, why would you want any other product as your z/OS based WLA "hub" ? 

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

Not applicable. I have used IWA, CA-7, Control-M, and Zeke in the past.

Having used all of the major WLA platforms, I believe:

1. IWA is the most user-friendly and feature-packed product on the market today. 
2. Control-M is a close second (even though there are rumors that BMC is shopping it around). 
3. As for CA, at this point it's hard to tell what CA's Strategic Vision is going forward. They have ESP, Dseries, and now Automic, yet they are keeping the old dinosaur CA-7 alive because they can't figure out how to get all of the old legacy clients off it without major heartburn.

The tool is managed from offshore by another company. The primary use for it in our company providing support to our main client who is a large beverage company that needs the product to manage operations. I just act as the support interface between the client and the offshore team starting at the time I took this position as a global manager for workload scaling. I found out about this product someplace and how we could put it to use. We have been running it ourselves and with our client for a long time. It is also a part of our company's application or solution set.  

The use cases for my workload purposes have to do with my applications. It works fine for scaling jobs and can interface with other systems. So it does what I need it to do.  

The interface for the applications team is really the most valuable part of the product in my opinion.  

The interface for the operator is not so good. I do not think it is as complete as something like Control-M by BMC Software (named for former Shell executives Scott Boulette, John J. Moores, and Dan Cloer). A few other things could be better like the scheduler and linking between jobs and dependencies.  

I have been working for the last five years between the client the provider and my company. 

This product is quite stable. There are no issues within the application or with the tool itself becoming unstable.  

The scalability is actually quite fine. I think that right now we have around 100 to 150 users that have jobs running on it.  

The offshore team is made up of about five guys that mainly take care of the maintenance tasks. At this moment, we do not actually have any plans to scale our usage. Maybe in the coming two years, we might have to. We are planning to upgrade or migrate to another tool depending on what is best for our situation at that time.  

I think the technical support is great. They have been helpful when we needed something resolved.  

Before working with IBM Tivoli Workload Automation I worked with Control-M from BMC. 

The main differences and advantages of Control-M are mostly to do with the operator interface. The console that the operator is using is quite a bit better in Control-M rather than Tivoli, and so is the way to schedule and make the relationships between jobs.  

I think the product is generally easy-to-use and that includes my experience with the setup.  

The advice I would give to others considering using Workload Automation depends on the necessity and the reality of their requirements. It depends on the complexity of the jobs. Depending on that it may be interesting to use Tivoli because it is a good tool. It is a good application to use to run workload tracking.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product between and eight and ten depending on who is using it and for what reason. I think it is quite good so I think it deserves a nine.  

Additional features I would like to see included in the next release to improve and make it a ten would just be the two things I mentioned that Control-M does somewhat better for now. The interface for the operator should be improved, and the way to create relationships and dependency between the jobs can be better.  

I work with IBM Workload Automation in a remote environment. I mainly provide level two and three support as part of a team where the bank has level one support. My role involves balancing the workload and avoiding issues, utilizing IBM's facilities to optimize back-end workloads and meet service level agreements.

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.

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.

I have been working with IBM Workload Automation for two years.

The support is generally good, though there are some interruptions.

Positive

The ROI from using IBM Workload Automation is noticeable. Many customers are familiar with BMC, but with a well-trained team, IBM Workload Automation is good enough.

We haven't used it with AI yet. It supports our disaster recovery plans as we schedule yearly tests. I would recommend IBM Workload Automation because it's competitive, and the maintenance team is familiar with it. 

Overall, I rate this product an eight out of ten.

IBM Workload Automation provides good performance and monitoring. It tells me how we can do a lot of transactions at the same time. The solution has good workload management features.

The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time.

I have been using IBM Workload Automation for three years.

IBM Workload Automation is a stable solution.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Our clients for the solution are mostly enterprise businesses.

Not everyone on the technical support team knows the product well.

Neutral

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight out of ten.

The solution’s complete implementation only takes two hours.

The solution is a little bit expensive.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.

The solution's dynamic workload balancing is very good, and I rate it an eight out of ten. IBM Workload Automation is a very good product for enterprise businesses. However, it is difficult to implement this product for small and medium businesses, as they have many alternatives to work with and get the same performance.

I rate the solution’s integration capabilities an eight out of ten. The solution is compatible with automation features. I would recommend the solution to enterprise businesses.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We have some customers from the government side, and IBM Workload Automation is part of their environment to automate their daily work.

The solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis. It accelerates work instead of doing it manually.

The solution should offer more free technical sessions to customers so that they can gain more experience or learn more about how to use it.

IBM should consider spreading the knowledge about the solution in detail because customers rely on themselves to do some operation work. They need to learn more about it. If you don't conduct any sessions for them, they will not learn by themselves.

I would recommend more online sessions for customers instead of documents. When they start reading the documents, they sometimes get stuck in the middle because they don't understand. They want to see what's happening, which can be efficiently achieved by online sessions.

I have been using IBM Workload Automation for three years.

IBM Workload Automation is a very, very stable solution.

IBM Workload Automation is a scalable solution. I would recommend the solution for bigger companies.

The solution's technical support is good from a performance point of view. However, tickets are sometimes addressed in three or four days. From the customer's point of view, it takes a long time to fix the issue.

Positive

The solution's pricing is affordable.

The solution's dynamic workload balancing is very good. However, not all customers are using it because they feel it affects the performance of the machines by placing a heavy workload on them.

Before using the solution, all customers relied more on manual processes. IBM Workload Automation increased the process efficiency of our clients by replacing their manual processes with automation.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The solution comes with a scheduler. It contains a file for receiving things from external sources. We trigger the file, on which basis the subsequent business practices are kicked off, one after the next. This means that there is dependency on the file dependency. The subsequent steps in the business practices kick off, automatically, once the file is loaded. 

The performance of the previous versions could be better. We encountered certain issues with the lower version of it, the 9.2. Things have greatly stabilized since then. However, as with any IBM tool, things are a bit tricky. I would give a rating of four or five out of ten, as we encountered certain issues with the domain controller with the lower versions. 

It would be nice if we could get support for earlier versions. Generally speaking, IBM insists that we move on to their latest one. 

In respect of the dependency diagrams, the job dependencies across the business process should be improved. 

I have been using IBM Workload Automation for three or four years. 

The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable. 

We do not have plans to increase the number of users of the solution.

We regularly reach out to technical support when dealing with issues that are beyond our control. 

We did not use a different solution prior to IBM Workload Automation. 

While the installation is fine, it requires the involvement of an IBM engineer. The solution is easier to install for those who are well versed in the IBM world, but this is a bit difficult for someone who has a background in application development. The process is easier for someone who has experience working with IBM tools. 

One can handle the installation on his own. 

Including management, fewer than seven people are needed for the deployment and maintenance. This will always involve an administrator. There will also be a program manager involved, the rest of the team consisting of developers. 

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

There are approximately 50-plus users making use of the solution in our organization. 

My advice is that the implementation be handled by someone with the requisite knowledge. This will be difficult for someone who is not properly acquainted with IBM products. It should be done by someone who knows the IBM environment, who would find the process much easier to handle. 

I rate IBM Workload Automation as an eight out of ten. 

The most valuable feature is the job scheduler.

I would like to be able to access the return value or result from one job, in the following job. This is a feature that other solutions have and is very helpful. I had to create my own workaround for it because the capability is important for me.

It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule. Most IT applications now have mobile app support.

I worked on IBM Workload Automation for close to 10 years, although I have recently changed companies and no longer use it.

The stability is good. 

We did not need to scale this solution. We had close to ten people who used it.

Technical support from IBM is very good. I have worked with different vendors and I know that it is sometimes difficult to get a good level of support, but there were people supporting this solution who were very good and always helped.

The implementation was done by external consultants.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

TWS has two command line interfaces to help manage items in the active plan and database. This allows you to create custom scripts to make mass updates to job definitions in the plan\database. You can even schedule these custom scripts to make the updates at a later time (e.g., holding a set of jobs prior to a planned outage and releasing after). It also has an event processor that lets you define custom rules based on certain events (e.g., when a job fails, when a job hasn’t finished within a certain time or within 30 minutes of its predecessor, when a file is available, when a job is stuck, etc.).

Aside from basic scheduling features and Windows/Unix job types, this product gives us a lot of options to integrate with other systems:

• Custom plug-ins (SAP, DataStage, PeopleSoft, Cognos)
• Database & integration job types (Oracle, MS SQL, Web Services, J2EE)
• File transfer and remote command job types

It is a great way to centralize your enterprise workload to provide better visibility to support groups and better cohesion between applications. Mobile app features are also available to empower users to monitor\manage their workload on the go.

The web UI is a bit cumbersome in terms of navigation, although it seems some improvements were made on the most recent release, v9.3. Also, scheduling is driven based off of a Symphony file, which is a flat file that outlines scheduled work for the day and its progress. This file is prone to corruption during networking/hardware issues. TWS also has a daily refresh process that refreshes the Symphony file each day. Any permanent changes to the TWS network are dependent on this process.

Time zone management can also use some improvements. We have to schedule creatively to account for the hard-coded plan start/end times with other time zones. Ideally, it would be a seamless effort.

I have used it for four years.

None; overall the product is very stable, but can give you odd results if the environment is unstable (hardware\network issues). Once the environment issues are resolved and job scheduling has resumed, you might still experience strange behavior with dependency resolution and cyclic job functionality, which typically clears up with the next daily refresh.

None; we’ve had no issues with scalability other than time zone management, which requires some creative scheduling scenarios to account for the hard-coded plan start/end time and time differences between master server and remote agents.

7/10; technical support is virtually impossible to get via direct phone call. You have to rely on trouble tickets and wait for a return phone call, which can take several hours depending on what time of day you are calling. You will need to keep constant follow-up on your ticket, as well, because it can slip through the cracks and go unnoticed for days. However, once engaged, especially on a conference call, the team is knowledgeable, courteous and very helpful.

Initial setup was somewhat complex, although it might be because we installed on Linux. Windows might have been a bit easier using the installation wizards.

It can get costly, as expected; IBM uses a Processor Value Unit (PVU) licensing model, which can be cumbersome to maintain.

I’ve used BMC Control-M in the past, at another company.

This product is a great product overall, but can behave strangely if any environmental issues occur (hardware/network). A lot of the issues we face, however, are supposed to be resolved with the later version. I’ve seen some demos of the latest release and it seems like large improvements have been made in terms of functionality and user experience.