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.
Information Technology Solution Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Consultant
Top 20
2024-06-10T14:27:00Z
Jun 10, 2024
To improve IBM Workload Automation, I suggest enhancing automation features further, as more automation would be beneficial. The product is good enough for my current customers, but improving technical support and pricing would be welcome. We often need quicker responses and better solutions than we can manage manually. These improvements would make the product even better.
IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach. For example, IBM still refers to machines as 'workstations,' whereas other systems, like Control-M, use more intuitive terms like 'applications' or 'agents.' In Control-M, concepts like folders and jobs are easy to understand, especially if you're familiar with working on a laptop or Windows operating system. With IBM, you need to learn their specific terminology and workload concepts, but with Control-M, anyone can start working easily without requiring extensive prior knowledge. IBM Workload Automation might be suitable for background processes or specialized tasks that don't require much front-end user interaction. However, I would still recommend Control-M as a scheduling automation tool. Unlike IBM, which focuses on background operations, Control-M offers comprehensive automation support with a user-friendly interface. It allows users to monitor, execute jobs, receive alerts, and manage workflows with a more graphical and intuitive interface, ensuring smooth end-to-end enterprise operations. Initially designed for mainframe environments, IBM's tool expanded to distributed systems, but its GUI features are still not as advanced or user-friendly as those in Control-M. IBM needs to shift towards more web-based and mobile-friendly clients rather than relying on offline tools. They should develop Android-based applications and a more user-friendly web client for IBM Workload Automation. Additionally, the architecture needs to be simplified for easier management, especially for administrators. Even minor issues, such as a single agent malfunction, can disrupt the entire system, which contrasts with Control-M’s more robust architecture. IBM should refine its architecture to be more user-friendly and avoid outdated terminology. Users are accustomed to modern tools like Office 365, not IBM’s older solutions like LoadTus. The updates IBM has made are incremental and haven’t significantly addressed current demands. In contrast, Control-M has made substantial improvements across versions, incorporating modern naming conventions, AI, and cloud features to meet customer needs.
Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.
Information Technology Advisor at a wellness & fitness company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-02-13T20:29:28Z
Feb 13, 2023
Each day the schedule refreshes and that's a challenge for us. In comparison, the ESP scheduling tool refreshes immediately and automatically reconnects. The simulation in Workload Automation is very complicated and difficult.
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.
IT Specialist TWS at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-05-08T09:35:00Z
May 8, 2021
There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools.
Other solutions like Control-M are better than this solution. IBM should have better integration with the cloud. It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products.
Manager Production Applicative at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-02-24T06:02:44Z
Feb 24, 2020
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.
IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-02-16T08:27:36Z
Feb 16, 2020
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.
IBM Workload Automation helps companies manage operations, portfolio management, resource collection, and dependency scheduling. It facilitates transitions from legacy apps to web services, executing batch processing for tens of thousands of jobs daily with hundreds of users.
Teams rely on IBM Workload Automation to optimize backend workloads, maintain service levels, and offer support in remote environments. Its interface and job scheduler are appreciated for their value and...
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.
To improve IBM Workload Automation, I suggest enhancing automation features further, as more automation would be beneficial. The product is good enough for my current customers, but improving technical support and pricing would be welcome. We often need quicker responses and better solutions than we can manage manually. These improvements would make the product even better.
IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach. For example, IBM still refers to machines as 'workstations,' whereas other systems, like Control-M, use more intuitive terms like 'applications' or 'agents.' In Control-M, concepts like folders and jobs are easy to understand, especially if you're familiar with working on a laptop or Windows operating system. With IBM, you need to learn their specific terminology and workload concepts, but with Control-M, anyone can start working easily without requiring extensive prior knowledge. IBM Workload Automation might be suitable for background processes or specialized tasks that don't require much front-end user interaction. However, I would still recommend Control-M as a scheduling automation tool. Unlike IBM, which focuses on background operations, Control-M offers comprehensive automation support with a user-friendly interface. It allows users to monitor, execute jobs, receive alerts, and manage workflows with a more graphical and intuitive interface, ensuring smooth end-to-end enterprise operations. Initially designed for mainframe environments, IBM's tool expanded to distributed systems, but its GUI features are still not as advanced or user-friendly as those in Control-M. IBM needs to shift towards more web-based and mobile-friendly clients rather than relying on offline tools. They should develop Android-based applications and a more user-friendly web client for IBM Workload Automation. Additionally, the architecture needs to be simplified for easier management, especially for administrators. Even minor issues, such as a single agent malfunction, can disrupt the entire system, which contrasts with Control-M’s more robust architecture. IBM should refine its architecture to be more user-friendly and avoid outdated terminology. Users are accustomed to modern tools like Office 365, not IBM’s older solutions like LoadTus. The updates IBM has made are incremental and haven’t significantly addressed current demands. In contrast, Control-M has made substantial improvements across versions, incorporating modern naming conventions, AI, and cloud features to meet customer needs.
Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.
Each day the schedule refreshes and that's a challenge for us. In comparison, the ESP scheduling tool refreshes immediately and automatically reconnects. The simulation in Workload Automation is very complicated and difficult.
This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly.
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.
There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools.
Other solutions like Control-M are better than this solution. IBM should have better integration with the cloud. It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products.
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.
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.