We performed a comparison between OpCon and Tidal Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: OpCon offers flexibility, integration capabilities, and self-service features, reducing reliance on IT. It also excels in automation, graphical user interface, and database functionality. Tidal Automation has a strong job scheduler, real-time monitoring, and error handling. It also provides role-based access control and compliance controls for data security.
OpCon has areas that can be enhanced, such as its online platform, Solution Manager, and the process of upgrading to newer versions. It would be advantageous to have a mobile application and improved failover functionality. Tidal Automation requires improvements in its user interface, pricing structure, and integration capabilities. Additionally, it could benefit from advanced reporting, artificial intelligence, and machine learning features.
Service and Support: OpCon's customer service receives positive feedback for its promptness and successful resolutions, whereas Tidal Automation's support team is lauded for their expertise and willingness to assist. OpCon occasionally provides irrelevant solutions, while Tidal Automation sometimes overlooks less important matters.
Ease of Deployment: OpCon's initial setup necessitates collaboration with SMA consultants and training, making it complex. Tidal Automation offers a straightforward and easy setup with helpful documentation, resulting in a shorter deployment process.
Pricing: OpCon is recognized as having a high initial investment and being intricate to set up, however, it is regarded as a worthwhile product that offers good value for its cost. Tidal Automation is deemed to have a reasonable and predictable price, providing good value for the features and support it offers.
ROI: OpCon is a valuable investment that saves time, reduces errors, and eliminates the need for full-time operators. Tidal Automation provides cost savings, increased efficiency, and improved risk management.
Comparison Results: OpCon is the favored choice when compared to Tidal Automation. OpCon offers flexibility and integration capabilities, allowing users to automate tasks according to their specific requirements. The self-service feature improves productivity and reduces dependence on IT. Users particularly appreciate OpCon's graphical user interface and database functionality.
"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."
"Often times there are criteria that cannot be determined by the system, which allows a human to make the determination and use the Self-Service Solution Manager to trigger a job."
"We're also starting to use its Self Service and Solution Manager. My team in the data center and some of the development team use the Self Service. Developers are using the Self Service for upon-request jobs for their testing. They used to have to go through us to schedule testing and now they can just go on and kick it off all they want. They have also really appreciated that they have access to view and/or submit jobs."
"Manual processing has been automated 99 percent by OpCon. With new processes, we give it at least two weeks manual so we can write down the details of how to do the steps, then we automate it. Within a month, it has been automated, then it's no longer a manual process."
"It is so simplistic that it gives us peace of mind. Before, we had all these processes that were run manually, such as different file transfers and jobs running for our core at certain times. Now, all that stuff is done automatically."
"MAS is by far the best feature, although not a feature of the software specifically. MAS has more knowledge than our employees, so we have been able to develop schedules that are far beyond our own skillset."
"It makes everything simpler. Once OpCon is in, it just repeats itself day after day. We don't have to worry about whether a process will be missed. It will run every single time. We are not dropping jobs or missing stuff. When you have multiple institutions, it's very easy to miss jobs. You get on a roll, start doing things, and then forget somebody. With OpCon, everything is done."
"The whole product is valuable to us because of the integrations that it has with the MCP and the Windows environments. You have to have the agent on each one of them that you want to monitor. The integrations that we have created are along the lines of extracting files and sending them through SFTP to another vendor. Those are the things that were taking a lot of time away from my staff."
"It has been super stable. There are no complaints on stability. We would not be using it if Tidal wasn't stable."
"It's the most efficient tool in doing repetitive tasks and saves a lot of time with minimum possibility of error."
"The best feature is that it allows task scheduling based on particular occurrences, like the receipt of files, database updates, or system notifications."
"The data management on offer was valuable."
"With other tools, you do not have the ability to schedule jobs on their own. You need to create a group and then assign everything to that group. Only then will the job be able to execute. In Tidal, you can schedule a single job and there is no need to create a group. That's what I like the most."
"The best feature of Tidal Workload Automation Software is its ease of integration with other systems, including ERP, CRM, and BI tools."
"It's easy to use and easy to administer, and it's very flexible."
"We use the solution for cross-platform, cross-application workloads. The solution’s ability to manage and monitor these workloads is very easy and accurate. We have file dependencies for running jobs. The job does not start until a file exists on a completely different server, then where the job will run. So, it is cross systems."
"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."
"Licensing would be the first part I would overhaul. Each time a new licensing paradigm comes out, more features are removed and costs are added. They "add" features that are rarely used and increase charges for the number of jobs run. I'm sure someone in finance got a raise for their brilliance but the end-users won't thank them one bit. Expect price hikes and threats when you hold them to account at every opportunity."
"I would like to see them improve the Solution Manager for the web application. It's the future for us. Our customers need a lot of functionality, but there isn't that functionality within Solution Manager. So they have to develop and improve it."
"Of course they have a RESTful API within OpCon, but they have that new web services agent that we installed because we have some SOAP APIs and we had to interact with SMA to get things running. Our developers did do some tweaks, but we have now been able to get some test jobs running, and understand how the workflow goes back and forth."
"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."
"A way to select multiple jobs in the UI for a quick change or to hold, release, et cetera, would be nice."
"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."
"From an administrative point of view, I wouldn't give really high marks to the solution. I actually entertained getting the JAWS application at one point. One of the shortcomings with the scheduler is the reporting capabilities. At least at the time, JAWS was the best that they had for a third-party integration. I think they've got things in the pipeline to help alleviate that gap."
"Tidal's adaptability and user-friendliness could be increased by integrating it with additional programmes and platforms."
"They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting."
"To better fit their unique needs, the solution should give more customization options."
"I don't know if Tidal wants to get into the business of monitoring long-running jobs, but that could be a feature for the future: a job launching and monitoring tool. Using Tidal for monitoring doesn't seem like a good fit, but if they could offer something that did that as an add-on or include it, it might be helpful."
"Setting up the initial product was a little hard."
"I would like more involvement with the cloud."
"The solution needs more advanced reporting and data visualization capabilities to enable deeper analysis of job performance and trends."
OpCon is ranked 9th in Workload Automation with 56 reviews while Tidal by Redwood is ranked 2nd in Workload Automation with 37 reviews. OpCon is rated 9.2, while Tidal by Redwood is rated 9.0. 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 Tidal by Redwood writes "Great visibility with a single pane of glass and a low learning curve". OpCon is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Automic Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation and ActiveBatch by Redwood, whereas Tidal by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs and Stonebranch. See our OpCon vs. Tidal by Redwood report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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