OpCon Reviews

We use OpCon to automate tasks like moving files around, starting jobs on our mainframe, alerts, etc. 

OpCon's biggest benefit is cutting down on the workload. It reduces human interaction and the risk of human error. It has freed up employee time by automating some repetitive jobs. We save about 20 hours a week or roughly the equivalent of half a full-time employee. 

We use OpCon to automate stuff across the board, including some legacy solutions that vendors haven't quite been able to upgrade. We're currently running thousands of jobs. 

OpCon removes the human element from routine jobs, taking the potential for human error out of the equation. OpCon provides a single point of control for orchestrating workflows. There's a GUI to build and schedule jobs. You can set up your notifications, review error logs, and troubleshoot through there.

 The learning curve could be shorter. The problem is that it's difficult to simplify a product without taking away functionality. I would love to see OpCon become a little easier to grasp. However, my concern is that making things easier isn't always better for the product. If they can keep the integrity of the product while making it easier to learn, that would be an area of improvement.

I've only worked with OpCon for about nine months.

I haven't experienced any issues with stability.

OpCon is scalable enough for our purposes. We've got several thousand jobs running through it with no problems. 

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.

Positive

We previously had a solution just for moving files, but OpCon can do a wider range of things.  Both have their place. Our other solution was easier to use, but the capabilities were limited. 

I rate OpCon 10 out of 10. I recommend taking advantage of OpCon's training courses. They have two levels. The entry-level course is free with your license. You need to pay for the advanced course, but it's worth it. 

We are using it to schedule work across different platforms, including Windows, Linux, and z/OS.

OpCon certainly costs us less than the product we were using before. So in practical, financial terms, it improved things. It has also improved the productivity of the administrators because it's much easier to use than a text-based product.

And when it comes to streamlining operations, with the flowcharting we can now visually see the flow of jobs going through our system and that has exposed some complexity that was unneeded. For example, we discovered processes that have been around for years and people realized that we didn't need to run those anymore. It helped us to improve our throughput by exposing inefficiencies.

It has also saved time for our IT team, particularly for our programmers who use the interface to monitor their systems and their jobs. They have found it easier and more reliable than what they were used to in the past. It has probably saved our developers 20 hours a month. And in our organization, overall, we have realized a 10 to 15 percent increase in productivity, thanks to OpCon.

We particularly like the fact that it's graphical because it is Windows-based. Before, we were text-based on the mainframe. You can also produce flow charts. Because it's point-and-click, its ease of use is very nice.

The learning curve was not very steep. When we converted to it, SMA held some classes, and they even held classes that were specific to our environment and where we were coming from. People were functional in it within a week.

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.

I have been using OpCon for about two years.

We haven't had any issues with its stability or performance. It has been perfectly stable so far.

It is easy to scale in that we can add agents very easily to it. When we get a new machine and we go into what's called Enterprise Manager, which is where we manage the system, we add the machine and off we go. We are not a huge shop, but we've been able to add systems to it very easily and have not felt any bad effects from that.

I'm very pleased and impressed with SMA's technical support for OpCon. They're responsive and they've done a very good job in fixing problems that we've reported.

Positive

We were using ASG-Zeke, which is now Rocket Software. We got away from them because we did not care for their support and they were, frankly, expensive.

The initial deployment was complex because we were migrating from our previous product and that's always going to be complex. But they did it almost seamlessly, in about six months, which was really impressive to us. We shut down the old system and turned on OpCon in one day and we were off.

The solution is used almost exclusively by the IS department to schedule our work and it's in one physical location.

The install/deploy time of our old solution and this one was pretty much the same. The process to install the software isn't much different from one product to another, generally.

As for maintenance, it is typical with any product to perform upgrades. In my role, I handle the mainframe piece, and that's pretty straightforward. We contracted with SMA to help us with maintaining the pieces that run on the other platforms, and it's all pretty straightforward and easy to do.

SMA worked with us directly. They came out to our site on cut-over week. Most of the deployment was done in the midst of COVID, so everything was remote. But they came out for the planned cut-over and were with us for the whole thing.

On our side, four employees were involved in the deployment, along with the two OpCon people.

ROI is hard to quantify, but we have increased our productivity by about 15 to 20 percent, as an estimate.

A primary factor for us was cost. Given what it's doing for us, versus the price that we're paying for OpCon, we feel that it's extremely beneficial to us in terms of the total cost of ownership. But quantifying that is somewhat difficult.

Within two months we were realizing the advantages that we had, with OpCon, over our old product. 

It was substantially less expensive than ASG-Zeke. We bought a five-year contract after the initial license fee, and then it's maintenance for five years.

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. OpCon is in a market where there's a lot of competition and they're trying to really get a foothold in it. If price is one of your primary concerns, consider OpCon.

There were a number of vendors that we looked at but OpCon was the best fit for us.

I was that person who was researching workload automation tools but who had never heard of OpCon. I came across it somewhere on the web. I would recommend that someone like that reach out to SMA and ask for a demo. That's what we did. They even used a sample of our own data to show how they could convert it and what it would look like in their system.

We use OpCon for scheduling production tasks in many kinds of environments. The main ones are located on i5 i-series, OS/400. But we also use it in our Windows environment and on SAP. It handles around 10,000 jobs a day for us.

A lot of the jobs that are now in OpCon were already automated, but they were on other platforms and systems. For example, the world production batch that is running on OS/400 was automated on OS/400, with OS/400 programs. We moved the automation of the system to OpCon. We improved some of the parts, but we kept the main core of the production plan.

Using OpCon has brought us better visibility into our world production tasks. This is the essential point in my opinion, because when a lot of jobs are scheduled on different platforms, without any interaction possible between them, it's very difficult to manage things. With OpCon we avoid this difficulty. It's very visual.

Many of the tasks of one of our ERP systems, the invoicing and so on, are managed by OpCon. All the BI jobs that run on a daily, weekly, or a monthly basis, launch from OpCon and it gives us the capability of doing very clear follow-up.

We are a small company so we don't think about it in terms of how much it has freed up employees. But it has helped us to share responsibilities with a third-party in charge of the 24/7 monitoring of our system. In that way it has saved time, at least for our infrastructure team.

In addition, because we can manage each type of trigger differently, that alone helps save time.

• It's very scalable.
• We have experienced very few lags or issues, so it's very stable. 
• It's a very versatile product. You can schedule everything you want in many kinds of environments. We have never faced a limitation in this regard.
• The support is very responsive as well. They have replied to all our questions on time.

The SQL part could be improved. We sometimes have a large number of jobs on the SQL Server and we can experience a very light lag in job starts. The lag can be a few seconds. It's never more than one minute, but sometimes we can experience some lags. Maybe that could be improved.

We have been using OpCon for about eight years.

We have a very good relationship with them. We have known them now for a lot of years and they always reply to our problems and questions. They always have a solution, although we really haven't had a lot of problems with the product.

Our system analysts requested it, so it was easy for us. They are happy now to have it available and to use it on a daily basis.

We had the help of the Professional Services of SMA, but the setup was not difficult. The technical installation did not take more than one day.

Our strategy was to merge all activity, from everywhere in our environment, and to have everything running from the same place.

Our ROI is that it has saved about 10 percent of one FTE.

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 no additional costs.

There were only two solutions on the short-list. We did a lot of research on the internet about other companies, but a proof of concept was only done with Dollar Universe and OpCon. We choose OpCon because Dollar Universe had some issues regarding OS/400 at the time we tested it. That was close to 10 years ago, so maybe it's better now.

In terms of the extent of use of OpCon, I could see us using it for other stuff, but for the moment it's complete, as far as our production plans go. We don't have new directions or a new environment planned. Maybe, if it is possible to schedule things in the cloud, for example, in the future, we would do so. I don't think it's possible now to schedule things in the cloud, like Office for 365.

The ease of use depends on the person who is using it. For me, I learned it very fast. I found the product very user-friendly because it has the ability to add jobs for OS/400, and not all products have that kind of functionality. And that's true for SAP, for example. It's relatively simple to use if you have time to manage it on a daily basis. If not, it's very difficult to understand how it works.

Although it is possible with the product, at this time we haven't given access to the solution to all our people, those who are on the functional teams. For now, it's restricted to the technical team only. There are 10 or 12 people using it out of 2,200 employees. The majority of the users are system administrators.

We initially used it for core job scheduling, but our focus shifted to managing file movements with vendors through FTP as tasks were outsourced. It now functions as a comprehensive server monitoring tool, overseeing file transfers, scheduling jobs based on received files and managing dependencies. OpCon facilitates efficient updating of our internal database with vendor files and plays a vital role in failure notifications, job holds during issues, and alerts via email or text. Currently, we handle around twelve hundred unique jobs, resulting in sixty to seventy thousand job runs monthly.

The primary advantage lies in labor savings and the capability to monitor and respond to task outcomes effectively. OpCon facilitates not only scheduling but also provides continuous communication through email or text notifications. This ensures real-time updates on the status of critical processes, whether they have run successfully, encountered failures, or require attention. 

The notification feature enhances control and allows prompt responses to operational events. 

OpCon has empowered us to handle more intricate schedules that span diverse systems, especially during our transition to a new platform. Some schedules are quite complex, involving sub-schedules within them. For instance, a single job for the data warehouse comprises around two hundred and fifty unique tasks. This flexibility allows us to break down jobs individually, making it easier to address failures at a granular level, simplifies troubleshooting, and facilitates more efficient processing by releasing the next job once an issue is resolved. 

It has freed up our staff's time, enabling them to engage in higher-value projects. While we still encounter occasional failures, their frequency has significantly reduced. Instead of the manual check-off sheet approach, where someone would meticulously oversee processes, we now have the freedom to work on diverse projects. 

We've successfully automated numerous processes that were previously carried out manually. While I can't provide an exact count, the estimate falls within the range of hundreds, potentially around a hundred and fifty to two hundred unique items. 

Quantifying the time saved by OpCon is challenging, but to justify its purchase and ongoing maintenance, I would estimate it frees up the equivalent of at least two full-time positions. 

The cost savings are significant, considering the annual hours and salaries involved. While the platform requires ongoing maintenance and updates, it has effectively replaced the need for two full-time staff members engaged in manual processes. 

Implementing OpCon has significantly reduced errors in executing complex processes. Previously, relying on manual checklists left room for typos, sequencing issues, or overlooked details. OpCon addresses this by allowing a one-time setup and comprehensive review, minimizing possible errors. 

The platform supports various actions, including job submissions, file copies, and native execution of PowerShell scripts, eliminating the need for manual intervention. As a result, failures are now less frequent, with most issues attributed to file-related issues or occasional user errors, rather than OpCon-based job errors. 

We observed benefits right from day one, especially in terms of scheduling automation. Upon going live, the advantages were significant due to the automated calendars and frequencies. 

The most impactful feature was the ability to handle dependencies. In cases where one element failed, others could proceed, minimizing disruptions.

The most valuable feature of OpCon is its scheduling capability, particularly for automating file transfers with vendors. Before OpCon, this process was manual, requiring someone to log in to vendor websites daily for file transfers. With OpCon, this task is automated based on specified frequencies and calendars, reducing the need for constant manual intervention. This scheduling feature has extended to other areas within the credit union, allowing staff members to trigger automated processes by submitting files or using a self-service feature. OpCon is a significant labor-saving tool by automating formerly manual functions and streamlining operations across the organization. It is a centralized control hub, managing operations and consolidating tasks across five instances, including two for production and others for documentation, service, and development. The organization plans to expand this centralization to involve additional IT areas and departments seeking to automate manual tasks. We utilize the self-service feature for specific IT tasks, and we've extended its use to several departments within the credit union. The impact of the self-service feature on our processing and business efficiency has been significant. Rather than manually scheduling or relying on complex processes tied to specific criteria, the self-service button is provided to departments. It offers the capability to support older systems if needed.

The only feature we're anticipating is the ability to access and control OpCon through devices like the iPhone or iPad. Currently, when a failure occurs, we receive an alert, but to take corrective action, the on-call person needs to remotely access the software. Looking ahead, we hope for the capability to initiate tasks remotely. It might be beneficial if OpCon offered a more streamlined version at a lower cost, focusing solely on core functionality. The current software is robust and powerful, but a lite version with essential features could be a cost-effective option for organizations that don't require the full range of functionalities provided by the comprehensive solution.

I have been using OpCon for fifteen years.

The software remains stable, effectively monitors servers, and executes jobs, and I can't recall the last instance of it encountering any significant issues. It's highly stable and reliable for the range of tasks it handles. Considering the volume of processes we run each month, the occurrences of failures or issues requiring attention are typically job-based or related to user errors from other departments. I would rate it ten out of ten.

OpCon is highly scalable, offering a wide range of capabilities. If they adopted a pricing model per module, it could further enhance scalability as numerous functions can be performed with the software. Its complexity is flexible, allowing users to customize it based on their specific needs, making it suitable for both simple and intricate tasks. I would rate it ten out of ten.

The customer service has always been excellent, and we recently added managed services to our contract, allowing OpCon to assist us remotely for up to fifteen hours a month. It consistently excels in customer support, standing out among the various vendors we interact with regularly. Their support team is knowledgeable, responsive, and provides accurate solutions. Even in cases where further assistance is required, the option to pay for additional support is available. I would rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

We conducted a review for purchase several years ago, initially opting for MOVEit as it aligned better with our older core system, which was more tech-focused rather than GUI-based. However, we soon identified a significant limitation with MOVEit—it lacked a dependency component. After six months of in-house use, we recognized the weakness and transitioned to OpCon. Since changing vendors in 2005, we have exclusively used MOVEit and transitioned to OpCon.

The deployment of OpCon has been straightforward, and we initially handled it internally for several years. Their server setup and configuration instructions are clear, contributing to a smooth implementation. Over the past four or five years, we've opted for their paid support for implementations and software updates. At the time of deployment, there were likely two individuals involved in the process.

The pricing is reasonable. Given our plan, which allows us to run two productions and multiple failovers and development boxes, we find it to be a fair investment. While it suits our needs well, I'm aware that smaller credit unions may have found the cost challenging in the past. However, if an organization processes enough jobs and can justify the cost by realizing savings in employee roles, OpCon pays for itself.

I advise others to consider the benefits in terms of failure reduction, dependency management, and labor savings. OpCon's value becomes evident in the streamlining of operations and the automation of tasks. While it can be as straightforward or intricate as needed, having individuals who truly understand it can unlock its full potential and enable credit unions to achieve more with the platform. Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.

I use OpCon to automate processes in a financial institution.

OpCon provides a single point of control to orchestrate workflows and file moments which is incredibly important.

With the implementation of OpCon, we require minimal to no staffing on weekends or nights. The automation enabled by OpCon has streamlined our operations, reducing the number of personnel required while simultaneously enhancing our operational capabilities.

OpCon has enabled us to manage more complex schedules. We have seen a mass reduction in error rates and a lot of time savings in the target business units and operations.

I don't have a dedicated staff. Instead, I collaborate closely with a wide range of individuals. OpCon has enabled us to accomplish more with a smaller team by empowering project management teams to direct the processes. Consequently, we prioritize tasks that they deem valuable.

In the rare instances where we utilize the self-service feature, it empowers our end-users to handle their tasks independently without the need to submit tickets or contact the operations team. They can complete their processes at their convenience, allowing for flexibility in their workflow. This flexibility ensures that they are not required to execute tasks at a specific, predetermined time point.

We use OpCon to manage legacy systems alongside modern systems, which has allowed us to maintain functionality and efficiency. While some legacy software can be cumbersome and we are unable to eliminate all of it, OpCon enables us to make the most of these systems. Integrating OpCon with new components has streamlined our operations, creating a cohesive and user-friendly system.

Our company has implemented OpCon for over a decade, and we currently execute more than 2,000 processes daily. Achieving this level of process automation was not a sudden accomplishment; it has been a steady and gradual growth process. Quantifying the precise impact of OpCon is challenging due to its long-term integration into our policies, procedures, and processes. However, we estimate that OpCon has saved us hundreds of hours per week.

OpCon minimizes errors regardless of the task's complexity or whether it's a repetitive task with a predictable outcome. Therefore, complexity is not the primary factor contributing to errors; repetitiveness is.

The time to value with OpCon is immediate because it instantly frees up one person's workload. That's a win right there. No matter how big or small the automated process, it's one less manual task that someone has to do. While we may not see an immediate return on investment at the corporate level that executives crave, the positive impact on employees is immediate and tangible.

I find OpCon's ability to monitor files and folders, and its integration with other software to be the most valuable.

The UI is very dated, click heavy, and has a very unintuitive layering with in some screens. It is often difficult to see all aspects of what is entered on a given screen. 

OpCon's pricing model has become increasingly à la carte, with numerous individual components available for purchase at varying price points. This fragmented approach could be improved by implementing either bundled pricing or a more streamlined pricing structure.

I have been using OpCon for ten years.

I would rate the stability of OpCon ten out of ten.

OpCon is scalable.

Unfortunately, we can no longer reach their technical support by phone. They now only assist through email or their ticketing system. While we miss the convenience of phone support, their email and ticketing system responses are notoriously slow. However, when we do connect with a representative, they are extremely knowledgeable and helpful. It's just that there's no sense of urgency, and we're left waiting for a response indefinitely.

Neutral

We utilized a significant amount of Azure's native functionality. Azure offers a wide range of services, with some having multiple designations. Primarily the Azure automation.

OpCon is far more functional for us because not all of our applications are hosted on Azure. Therefore, OpCon's cross-platform compatibility allows it to connect to our legacy system, while Azure automation is limited to the Azure environment.

The initial deployment was straightforward. I can complete the deployment myself.

OpCon's pricing is quite fair. The task-based model is appealing because it allows us to scale up or down as needed. We're primarily focused on scaling up, and the model has been working well in that regard for some time now. However, the introduction of à la carte offerings on top of the base price is becoming a concern. While the base pricing is reasonable, the à la carte options are making the overall cost more complicated and potentially problematic.

I would rate OpCon a nine out of ten.

Regular maintenance is necessary for OpCon, encompassing updates, patches, and server reboots. These activities are similar to the standard maintenance required for other software applications.

We have OpCon deployed within our production environment and development environment.

Before implementing OpCon, it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of our current processes. The processes we intend to automate must be well-defined and documented to ensure a successful automation endeavor. Additionally, a realistic commitment of time and resources is essential for automation projects. As we gain experience and expertise in automation, the process will become faster and simpler. However, allocating appropriate time and resources remains paramount throughout the entire automation lifecycle. This includes time for understanding the processes, integrating them into OpCon, and conducting thorough testing to validate the processes within OpCon.

We have OpCon in our test environment, we're testing that right now and putting it into production next month.

Our primary use cases are for our core system that does batch processing for our core system, which is Symitar. We have automated about 90% of our daily processing. And we have started to branch out to utilize it more for Self Service where our other business units can automate some of their processing as well.

The fact that if you automate your core processing, in our case, alleviates the need to make sure that if somebody is running late or somebody calls in sick, your jobs are still going to run, they're still going to be on time. It has notifications built-in to let you know if something has failed or has missed the start time. It really keeps your business flowing and with proactivity. That's been the biggest example for my institution. It's the fact that we're a 24-hour shop. There's no downtime. It keeps us running and moving. We're about 90% automated if we look at our core processing. 

The automation of manual tasks has reduced human error by at least 40 hours a week. It's essentially saving another person. 

It has saved our IT team time by automating things a lot less wait time for people waiting for my team to actually run processes or transfer things. There's no delay in between the time when something is supposed to happen and when it happens.

We are able to move forward with business needs. My team is now able to learn, do additional training and other facets of IT. Rather than spending the time blending jobs, transferring, and doing things manually, they're now able to work on other projects within the organization. They're learning more about different areas of how other things function within IT. We become more project-oriented than process-oriented. We're able to identify things within the business that we can automate or that could be changed. We've gone from reactive to proactive

We are at least 80% more productive. 

There are a lot of valuable features. The version that we're currently casting, Self Service, is going to be the most valuable to us. It is going to allow us to open up the doors, broaden our automation capability and help other business units to be able to automate a lot of the little things that they do from day to day. I'm really looking forward to being able to help other areas with their automation needs. Self Service is really key.

OpCon is pretty easy to use. I'm not a programmer, I had no formal training. They offer some basic training courses. They also have a lot of documentation online and their support staff is super helpful. So it's pretty easy as long as you can take the time to familiarize yourself. It's a pretty easy application.

For the Enterprise Manager, the UI is okay. It puts your processing in alphabetical order instead of the actual processing order, but they are building a new UI. They really are on track to make it even more user-friendly. It's like they're listening to some of the common complaints from their customers, or they started to build out what we need or what we are looking for.

We are setting up the Self Service feature right now. That's going to be our biggest list in our organization. We just installed it and went through our training a few weeks ago. My team is building Self Service buttons in our testing environment right now.

Enterprise Manager is a little clunky which I know they're addressing in the solution's manager. 

It's annoying that our processes are listed alphabetically. It should be listed in dependency order or order of processing. That's one thing that drives me crazy. That's my biggest issue.

I have been using OpCon since October of 2010.

They've gone through some changes recently with the owner, but I know that they're on the right track. I feel that they're very stable.

They see that there are other competitors out in the market that do what they do. So they want to make sure that they stay relevant and are able to keep up with changing technology. They put a lot of stuff in the new release from 19 to 20. The team has been working really hard to take that stuff into account, like how to future-proof and make this more flexible. I think it's very scalable.

Currently, six of the admin users are me and my team. And we are primary users of OpCon, which means that we are monitoring and setting up. And then we have our Symitar administrative, our core host system administrative who's also involved. We also have our payments team who used to do ACH and draft returns. They are primary users as well.

For deployment, you really only need a couple of people, but I'd like to ensure that my entire team is well trained. You don't necessarily need seven people, if one or two people have a backup is plenty. My team's official title is Computer Operators. They're basically responsible for batch processing and file transfers within the credit union.

Right now 90% of the usage is my team with a small bit with our payments team. So one thing we've been able to do is learn more about the product, go out to our business and see what their needs are. With the new version and the Self Service features, we plan on branching out because Self Service allows business partners not to have to log in to either our core system or the OpCon system, it's through a UI or URL. And so the thought there is that we will be able to branch this out to accounting collections. The payments team has the other items and the card services team as well. There are certain processes in the run in our core and we would like to automate those so that they can just either run automatically or they control when they run them through.

We will start with Symitar and sometimes Symitar will refer us back to SMA. They work really well together and we're able to come to a resolution, but sometimes it's both systems in OpCon and Symitar that have an issue.

SMA support is super helpful. They're a great team.

We also looked at DMC. OpCon has a relationship with Symitar. That was a selling point for us because they have a close relationship and they already have several Symitar clients using OpCon and they came with great reviews. DMC had several other core systems that they were automating but Symitar wasn't the main system. So we just felt more comfortable going with SMA.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had a great team. We had both SMA and Jack Henry, which is our core vendor. They were both on-site. They worked really well together. They were very hands-on in training and had me and my team involved in the whole process.

The deployment took us two weeks. We wanted to implement it in the test first so that we could see how it interacted with our core and our other systems within our network. So that's where we first installed it so that we could do our basic setup and testing. And then once those testing passed, then we set aside some time to set it up in a production environment. Because we obviously didn't just didn't want to gung ho and go back into production.

We use Jack Henry. They are our Symitar, which is our core processor, our integrator.

They told us about SMA because SMA has a relationship with Jack Henry as a core processor. They did a lot of their automation. Jack Henry told us about SMA, which is how I came to bring them on board. Because they had already built a lot of automation for our core processing. They already had a business relationship. 

We currently renewed with one of their new technology bundles. It's around $36,000 annually. We run a query of our SQL in our SQL database to see how many jobs we run. They're charging us per usage and whatever add-ons you want to use with OpCon.

My advice would be to ask a lot of questions. Make sure that you involve your entire staff from beginning to end. OpCon was a really easy experience. Having them on-site, sitting next to you with hands-on experience, you can't beat it. They're not hiding anything. I really appreciated the amount of effort that they put into showing up, training, and following through as well. Whenever something did go wrong, they're always there to support you.

We consider OpCon to be one of our tier-one applications, meaning it's almost as critical and important as our core host system. We haven't done any vendor comparisons in ten years because we're very happy with them. 

Typing matters. A lot of what you enter is manually typed. So watch your spacing, watch your fat fingers and copy and paste or copy schedules wherever possible. And then the other trick is eventually you always have a frequency. Those are the few things that I mess up on that really make my whole deployment delayed because I can't find why it's not working and it's always usually because I have an extra space somewhere or character I didn't need. Watch your typing and have a second set of eyes.

I would rate OpCon a ten out of ten. 

We run thousands of processes/jobs on z/OS (mainframe), Unix/Linux, and Windows. In many cases, these processes have cross-platform dependencies. 

We also have two separate OpCon databases - one for production and one for development. This is the usual case of implementing and testing new jobs/schedules in development prior to promoting them to production.

We literally run our business on OpCon and as such OpCon needs to be, and is a 24/7 enterprise scheduling system. It cannot be down. Thus far, we have found it to be very resilient.

It is still early in our OpCon implementation, however, thus far it has shown its value in ease of use - both in terms of maintaining and implementing jobs/tasks and through its use of a relational database, which gives us enormous power in reporting and updating information.

Change does not come easily to people. That said, due to OpCon being a modern, graphical system our schedulers and developers have enthusiastically embraced it and this has made the transition from our previous system much smoother than we had anticipated. 

The most valuable aspects of the solution for us are:

The GUI. Our previous scheduling software had a graphical user interface but this was nothing more than an add-on. It constantly had problems and eventually was abandoned due to its unreliability. Since migrating to OpCon we are now in a purely graphical environment. This provides more information in a smaller space and makes administration a point-and-click process.

The Database. OpCon uses an SQL Server as its data repository. This has given us substantially more capability for reporting and updates.

The deployment. OpCon has a deploy concept which is a methodology to implement change management to schedules.

We cutover to OpCon from a previous solution approximately six weeks ago so we are still in the early stages of our implementation. That said it is difficult to ascertain what improvements could be made at this early stage.

If I had to select something I'd say that the web based interface, Solution Manager, should have more functionality. Enterprise Manager, the desktop interface is extremely powerful but SMA's strategic direction is Solution Manager. We have found it difficult to have people rely solely on Solution Manager.

We recently migrated to OpCon from another vendor's scheduling system and have now been running our shop's tasks for approximately six weeks. 

Thus far we have only had a few minor problems, all of which the vendor addressed quickly. We have not encountered any major problems. The product is very stable and reliable.

Scalability is dependent on the underlying database. Given that OpCon uses SQL Server, we are very confident in its ability to scale.

Thus far, we have only had a few minor issues but the vendor's responses were quick - as were their solutions. We have no complaints.

We switched from a different vendor's scheduling system. We implemented a project that encompassed a requirements definition, a vendor questionnaire, demos, and finally a selection of a product.

We switched from our old scheduler for multiple reasons. First, the vendor was asking far too much money for an upgrade. Also, we found this vendor's support weak at best. Finally, we wanted something that presented a modern user interface, which the old system tried to implement but it was a poor attempt.

We migrated from a mainframe-based solution using a proprietary database to a Windows-based solution using a SQL Server database. Given the enormity of this level of change, the transition and setup were remarkably smooth. I consider this to have been a straightforward setup.

As part of our migration to OpCon we contracted SMA Technologies, the OpCon vendor, to perform the migration in concert with our scheduling team.

The SMA team was excellent. Their knowledge of SQL Server, z/OS and Windows was extraordinary. I cannot say enough good things about them.

As of right now, the ROI is undetermined.

Be sure to consider post-implementation costs. In our case, we contracted with the vendor for ongoing assistance given our lack of experience and manpower with a Windows-based solution.

We considered CA's Workload Automation but they would not return our calls. They had recently been acquired by another company so perhaps that had something to do with it.

We also considered Tidal Workload Automation but decided it was not a good fit for our environment.

We had previously attempted to migrate to IBM Workload Scheduler but could not make this work.

BMC's Control-M was given very serious consideration but we did not like the way BMC treated us. Control-M surely would have worked but the marketing team caused us concern.

I highly recommend OpCon to any organization considering either a new implementation or a migration from a previous vendor's system. In our case we migrated from a previous system and SMA Technologies did what another vendor could not. It took six months and the cutover went remarkably smooth given the level of change.

We use OpCon to automate daily operational jobs.

We implemented OpCon to remove risks associated with manual processes and improve efficiencies to reduce the time for those operational jobs to complete.

OpCon provides a single point of control which is extremely important to our organization.

The benefits of OpCon were seen immediately. It took a little bit of time to set up all of the automation, But once it was created, we began seeing benefits immediately.

OpCon enables us to manage complex schedule steps and multiple systems.

Between 25 and 40 percent of our staff's time has been saved to focus on higher-value projects.

We've rolled out self-service buttons to the business units, empowering them to handle their requests without involving our department. This has been highly beneficial.

We have used OpCon to manage legacy systems along with modern ones for file transfers.

We have approximately 300 processes that were all manual before using OpCon to automate them.

OpCon has helped save between 15 to 25 hours per week.

Errors have been reduced when running more complex processes, resulting in a positive effect on our organization.

My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and provides dashboard reporting.

I would like OpCon to implement a reporting feature on the dashboard that displays historical data for specific jobs. Ideally, this feature would allow us to view the past seven days or the next seven days, but with a specific focus on highlighting instances where a particular job has historically failed, particularly on Saturdays over the past year.

I have been using OpCon for nine years.

OpCon has been completely stable.

The scalability of OpCon is reasonable.

The technical support is excellent.

Positive

There was a lot of work involved in the deployment but it was straightforward.

The implementation was completed in-house.

While the overall cost is reasonable, I'm interested in exploring options for making the managed automation solution, specifically the mass solution, more cost-effective.

I would rate OpCon ten out of ten.

Maintenance is required for licensing and periodic updates.

It's crucial to review current manual tasks and prioritize those offering the greatest potential cost savings, considering both risk mitigation and time efficiency. To determine if automation is worthwhile, we need to assess the time users currently spend on these tasks.