We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch Workload Automation 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: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is highly regarded for its versatility and ease of use. It offers prebuilt jobs, real-time monitoring, and automatic scheduling. Users appreciate the REST API adapters and native integrations. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is praised for its performance and graphical representation. Users find its ability to set dependencies between jobs and rerun functions beneficial. The graphical user interface and task monitor are user-friendly.
ActiveBatch Workload Automation has opportunities for improvement in various aspects such as managed file transfer, user interface, trigger reliability, monitoring dashboard, and integration with DevOps tools. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could enhance its offerings through cloud availability, advanced analytics, and a mobile app for convenient job hour monitoring and calculation.
Service and Support: ActiveBatch has received mostly positive feedback for its customer service, with users appreciating the helpful and reliable technical support. However, there are suggestions for improvement. Stonebranch has received high praise for its customer service, with users describing it as very good, excellent, and always available to provide assistance.
Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for ActiveBatch is straightforward and uncomplicated, with minimal challenges. However, there is a slight requirement for additional documentation when importing files. The setup for Stonebranch is deemed average in terms of simplicity, with some difficulties arising from the intricate infrastructure. Stonebranch offers support during the migration process and promptly addresses configuration and maintenance problems.
Pricing: The setup cost for ActiveBatch Workload Automation is straightforward and can be done quickly. Users find the pricing reasonable and competitive compared to other options. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is more affordable than its rivals, which makes it a favored choice for businesses.
ROI: ActiveBatch has proven to be highly effective, delivering valuable features and driving a notable boost in net revenue. Although specific ROI figures are not provided, the platform has garnered praise for its positive outcomes. Stonebranch stands out for its impressive cost savings.
Comparison Results: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is the preferred choice when comparing it to Stonebranch Universal Automation Center. Users appreciate ActiveBatch's ease of use during setup, as well as its versatility and prebuilt jobs for streamlined batch processing and process automation. The software's scalability, automation, and administration console are also highly praised.
"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."
"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."
"For developers, it is easy to orchestrate the workflows and the integration has been very easy."
"The nice thing about ActiveBatch is once we have created a specific job that can be easily be replicated to another job, then minimal changes will have to be made. This makes things nice. Reduction of coding is substantial in a lot of cases. The replication of one job to another is just doing a few minor tweaks and rolling it into production. This decreases our development costs substantially."
"The REST API adapters and native integrations for integrating and orchestrating the software stack are very flexible."
"I found ActiveBatch Workload Automation to be a very good scheduling tool. What I like best about it is that it has very less downtime when managing many complex scheduling workflows, so I'm very impressed with ActiveBatch Workload Automation."
"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."
"One of the most valuable features is the job templates. If we need to create an FTP job, we just drag over the FTP template and fill out the requirements using the variables that ActiveBatch uses. And that makes it reusable. We can create a job once but use it for many different clients."
"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"I can name the aliases on the agent, so if we need a passive environment for an agent, that's one of the nice features. If our primary goes down, I can bring up the passive one and I don't have to change anything in the scheduling world. It will start running from that new server."
"I have found the agents to be so much simpler, when compared to ESP."
"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."
"We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line."
"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."
"They have some crucial design flaws within the console that still need to be worked out because it is not working exactly how we hoped to see it, e.g., just some minor things where when you hit the save button, then all of a sudden all your job's library items collapse. Then, in order to continue on with your testing, you have to open those back up. I have taken that to them, and they are like, "Yep. We know about it. We know we have some enhancements that need to be taken care of. We have more developers now." They are working towards taking the minor things that annoy us, resolving them, and getting them fixed."
"The interface is not that user-friendly and is a little tough to navigate."
"There are some issues with this version and finding the jobs that it ran. If you're looking at 1,000 different jobs, it shows based on the execution time, not necessarily the run time. So, if there was a constraint waiting, you may be looking for it in the wrong time frame. Plus, with thousands of jobs showing up and the way it pages output jobs, sometimes you end up with multiple pages on the screen, then you have to go through to find the specific job you're looking for. On the opposite side, you can limit the daily activity screen to show only jobs that failed or jobs currently running, which will shrink that back down. However, we have operators who are looking at the whole nightly cycle to make sure everything is there and make sure nothing got blocked or was waiting. Sometimes, they have a hard time finding every item within the list."
"There are very few documents that provide us with detailed information on the troubleshooting of errors that occur during integration with the existing environment."
"Setting up the software was hard."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"One thing I've noticed is that navigation can be difficult unless you are familiar with the structure that we have in place. If someone else had to look at our ActiveBatch console and find a job, they might not know where to find it."
"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."
"It can be hard to manage the task monitor."
"It can't handle negative written codes."
"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."
"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'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."
"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."
"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."
ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked 4th in Workload Automation with 35 reviews while Stonebranch is ranked 16th in Workload Automation with 26 reviews. ActiveBatch by Redwood is rated 9.2, while Stonebranch is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of ActiveBatch by Redwood writes "Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Stonebranch writes "Allowed us to develop workflows without having to train and develop very specialized skillsets". ActiveBatch by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs and IBM Workload Automation, whereas Stonebranch is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence and IBM Workload Automation. See our ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Stonebranch report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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