We performed a comparison between OpCon and Stonebranch Universal Automation Center based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: OpCon is praised for its flexibility, integration capabilities, self-service options, reduced human error, intuitive graphical user interface, database functionality, deployment concept, testing environment, on-demand access, MAS assistance, reliability, and strong automation capabilities. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is lauded for its performance, excellent graphical representation, intuitive solution, regular upgrades, job dependencies, rerun function, GUI, task monitor, stability, scalability, and helpful technical support.
OpCon could enhance its web-based interface and Solution Manager while upgrading to newer versions may be complicated. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center would benefit from cloud availability and improved analytics capabilities.
Service and Support: OpCon's customer service receives positive feedback for providing timely solutions and a strong dedication to effective resolutions. Stonebranch's support is highly regarded for its expertise, efficiency, and consistent availability to assist customers.
Ease of Deployment: OpCon's initial setup requires collaboration with SMA Technologies and training, however, with the help of SMA consultants, it is considered smooth. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center's setup is generally easy, however, the complexity of the infrastructure may pose some challenges.
Pricing: OpCon has a high initial cost and is intricate to set up, necessitating a learning curve. Nevertheless, it is viewed as a valuable and high-quality product. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is comparatively less expensive, making it a favored option for businesses.
ROI: OpCon has proven to be highly effective in generating return on investment through its task automation capabilities, time-saving features, and error reduction. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center has demonstrated significant cost savings of 40-50% when compared to previous tools.
Comparison Results: OpCon is the preferred choice when compared to Stonebranch Universal Automation Center. OpCon is highly praised for its flexibility, integration capabilities, self-service feature, graphical user interface, and reliability. Users appreciate the ability to automate tasks according to their specific needs, reducing human error.
"Among the numerous valuable features, one standout capability is the implementation of self-service buttons."
"We recently did a branch acquisition of another bank, though not a full bank. With that, we had to convert all of their ACH transactions. It was a very complicated product that we received from our core provider, Fiserv, for some translation programs. It was very cumbersome to run through the process, convert it out, get output files, etc. Without anyone touching it, I was able to automate the full process from pulling in the files from this other bank, converting everything needed, and posting it to our customer's account 24-hours throughout the day."
"There are three features which are valuable: the automated calendar functions; the notification process for failed jobs or unscheduled events occurring, via email and text messaging; and the ability for the scheduling package to communicate across multiple platforms."
"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."
"My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and provides dashboard reporting."
"Since we got it configured, it has just done the job day in, day out. Being able to rely on it and know that it's going to happen, whether there's a person over it or not, is really good."
"The most valuable feature is the automation in general."
"The most valuable features are its integration into Windows, into VM, and into AIX, as well as SQL."
"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."
"I have found the agents to be so much simpler, when compared to ESP."
"The ability to monitor tasks that are on the open-system side as well as our mainframe side gives us a one-window view of all our processes."
"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."
"We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line."
"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."
"I love the Universal Controller. It's been great for us. We host it on-premise... It's High Availability, meaning there's failover from one server to the other if one goes down."
"The features are upgraded, and every six months they're releasing patches."
"Do your first install, your first upgrade, with SMA. It's simple, it's as per the manual, as per the training, but you need that little bit of confidence."
"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 way to view a schedule is called perch view, and that's not always the greatest. It can be quite slow."
"Some additional logging-information reporting would also help. They have all the information there but you still have to search around and look back. It's not right there for you, where you click and can get the reporting. You have to know the system and do some additional searches. So reporting is another area that they can build on by simplifying it."
"We are still in the early stages of our implementation, so at this point, I cannot see any needed improvements or features."
"The products are extremely powerful and capable. Anytime you have such capability, the programming/configuration that goes into making it work can be complicated."
"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 don't really think anything needs to be improved within the functionality. The only struggle I had, when I first started using it, is that it depends a lot on the command line and I didn't have that experience. So more built-in, basic commands or more education on commands would be good."
"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."
"It can't handle negative written codes."
"It would be ideal if they had the exact same features as the CA Workload Automation DE series. It would be helpful to have calendaring options."
"There is a component called the OMS, which is the message broker. We rely on infrastructure, resiliency, and availability for that piece. If that could change to be highly available just as a software component, so that we don't have to provide the high-available storage, etc. for it, that would be a plus. It would just be cheaper to run."
"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."
"It's not available on the cloud, so they should take that due to safety, security, and scalability."
"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."
"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."
OpCon is ranked 9th in Workload Automation with 56 reviews while Stonebranch is ranked 16th in Workload Automation with 26 reviews. OpCon is rated 9.2, while Stonebranch is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of OpCon writes "Gives us the ability to schedule dependent jobs across different mainframes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Stonebranch writes "Allowed us to develop workflows without having to train and develop very specialized skillsets". OpCon is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Automic Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation and UiPath, whereas Stonebranch is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence and IBM Workload Automation. See our OpCon vs. Stonebranch report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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