We performed a comparison between IBM Workload Automation and OpCon based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: IBM Workload Automation and OpCon are both highly regarded for their unique strengths. IBM Workload Automation stands out for its impressive capability to initiate tasks across multiple nodes and pre-plan them. OpCon is recognized for its adaptability, seamless integration capabilities, self-service functionality, and ability to automate manual tasks.
IBM Workload Automation could benefit from enhancements in performance, navigation, job dependencies, daily schedule refreshes, stability, reporting visibility, and integration with new technologies. OpCon could be improved in terms of its web-based interface, upgrading process, logs, programming and configuration, accessibility through a mobile app, self-service functionality, failover, licensing, support, and UI features.
Service and Support: IBM Workload Automation's customer service is praised for its lab advocacy program, which provides thorough code support. However, customers may face difficulties in pinpointing the root cause of certain problems. OpCon's customer service and support have garnered positive feedback. Customers describe their technical support team as exceptional and commend their prompt responses and efficient solutions.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for IBM Workload Automation can be difficult for those who are not familiar with IBM tools or application development. OpCon's setup can be complicated. Close collaboration with SMA and receiving training is necessary, however, once acquainted with the system, it becomes more manageable.
Pricing: IBM Workload Automation's setup cost is dependent on the customer's contract and the number of agents installed. OpCon offers a tiered pricing model that includes previously purchased add-ons. Although OpCon is recognized as an expensive and intricate solution, it offers good value for the price.
ROI: IBM Workload Automation focuses on optimizing workload scheduling processes. Users have found it beneficial for automating and streamlining tasks, resulting in time savings and improved efficiency. OpCon has also demonstrated significant advantages in terms of ROI. It excels in automating tasks, which saves time and also contributes to increased productivity.
Comparison Results: OpCon emerges as the preferred choice when compared to IBM Workload Automation. OpCon stands out for its adaptability, ability to integrate with other systems and self-service functionalities. Users appreciate the ability to automate tasks according to their own requirements, leading to a decrease in complexity and an increase in productivity.
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"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."
"The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years"
"The initial setup is easy."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"We have found it scales very well. We run thousands of thousands of jobs every day, and sometimes thousands of jobs in a few hours."
"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."
"The core system is the most valuable part: being able to view the processes that we've never really been able to view as a whole before. That is super-helpful, as is being alerted when issues arise."
"With a simple click of a button in self-service, the department or the user can complete his/her job."
"Last year, we added a second environment and the OpCon Deploy product. This has allowed us to build a testing environment. This has been a great addition for us as we can work through our workflows without disrupting our production environment."
"Reliability is always important, and the reliability of the system is outstanding."
"Among the numerous valuable features, one standout capability is the implementation of self-service buttons."
"File Watcher can run jobs when files are made available in a folder."
"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."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"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."
"It would be nice to go to a fully thin client."
"The initial setup is very complex, but that's not necessarily something that needs to be improved. I'm told that in the next version they're improving the upgrade process. So that's in the works already."
"It is a complex product to use. Programming the schedules is complex. It does require training from OpCon... I would like to see some online training, some videos. When I bring in a new employee... it would be nice if there was some basic information for her to look at to understand this program. Even for my systems administrator, it would be helpful if there were tips and tricks available."
"The FICS integration is a little bit clunky. We've had some tickets with their support team, and sometimes they couldn't figure it out, but that probably has more to do with FICS than with OpCon."
"We would like a display of the created date, created by, and last modified date, as well as modified by."
"I believe there's room for improvement, and while I think it's something they are considering, I would welcome seeing OpCon integrate with a broader range of systems and third-party products."
"I might like to see a little bit more of a seamless user interface. That would be good. They're moving towards a browser-type interface, rather than the Java application that we currently use. Also, a little bit more built-in self-service would be good, rather than a standalone product."
"The logs are a little daunting to look at the first few times, however, as you begin to understand what you're looking at, it becomes easier."
IBM Workload Automation is ranked 14th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews while OpCon is ranked 9th in Workload Automation with 56 reviews. IBM Workload Automation is rated 8.2, while OpCon is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OpCon writes "Gives us the ability to schedule dependent jobs across different mainframes". IBM Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and ESP Workload Automation Intelligence, whereas OpCon is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Automic Workload Automation, UiPath and VisualCron. See our IBM Workload Automation vs. OpCon report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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