We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch by Redwood and Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Since I started using this product, I have been able to easily track everything as it mainly monitors, alerts, and looks after all the services - even across platform scheduling - which has helped me immensely."
"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 automation feature is a very valuable feature as the associates do not have to worry about performing repetitive tasks (i.e. endpoint security scans on a daily basis) that would take several hours to complete on a daily basis."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is the versatility of the prebuilt jobs."
"Error Handling is one of the best standout features of ActiveBatch."
"The REST API adapters and native integrations for integrating and orchestrating the software stack are very flexible."
"The product offers a centralized platform for managing activities across many environments, applications, etc."
"By implementing a sophisticated scheduling mechanism, the system allows for the precise triggering of jobs at user-selected frequencies, enabling a seamless and automated execution of tasks according to specified time intervals."
"Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is a solution that is on the market for a very long time. There is an integrator that has been developed and evolves every year. On the roadmap, there is always a new integration. For example, it's one of the solutions in the market that out of the box can handle EBICS protocol. The file processing is done very well. By default, there are a lot of configurations that can be customized."
"The product has been very stable."
"The Security Plus feature of this solution is excellent, and allows you to send encrypted files very securely to remote destinations."
"Automation is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides 100% reliability for file transmission. It ensures that files get delivered in a secure manner. When you use Connect:Direct, your file 100% gets delivered to the next delivery location. If the log shows that a file got delivered, it will have all the transmitted data without truncation or other data issues."
"Offers secure file transfers with a fast and efficient protocol for very large files."
"Security is the most valuable feature of this product."
"The reporting needs improvement. There is a real need for the ability to generate audit reports on the fly. It needs to be a lot easier than what I can do right now. This is a major item for me."
"Any product is going to have some room for improvement, no matter what. I see the company has already ventured into AWS and they're constantly trying to improve the managed file transfer which they have recently improvised. I think they bought a software called JSCAPE and they're trying to improve it, which is good. I am not sure if JSCAPE would be part of the base product but currently, you have to buy a separate license for it, which doesn't make sense. If it was Microsoft, ServiceNow, or integrating with other software vendors, I would understand but JSCAPE is now in-house and I'm not sure if they can justify having a separate license for JSCAPE. I would probably expect them to be packaging JSCAPE into the base product. They did switch over from a perpetual license model to a subscription model, which hurt the company a little bit. Nobody is offering the perpetual model anymore. As long as the transition is fair for both the companies, I think it should be fine and not burn us out."
"I can't get the cleaning up of logs to work consistently. Right now, we are not setup correctly, and maybe it is something that I have not effectively communicated to them."
"An area for improvement in ActiveBatch Workload Automation is its interface or GUI. It could be a little better. There isn't any additional feature I'd like to see in the tool, except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."
"The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application."
"The monitoring dashboard could have been more user-friendly so that in the monitoring dashboard itself we can see the total number of jobs created in the system and how many were currently active/scheduled/chained."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"Sometimes we face issues and can't figure out the cause of failures."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"They have File Agent, which is an additional utility and a component of Connect:Direct, for automated file transmission. In that utility, there is some issue with the file name. There is a limitation on the file name, and that is being fixed by IBM."
"Technical support is the number one concern."
"This solution cannot be deployed on a root_squash NFS, which limits superuser privileges."
"User interface is not user friendly."
"Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct could improve by adding some of the functionality that some other vendors have. For example, GoAnywhere has call agents, which are small clients that can be installed on the endpoints and can be handled by the central point on the server. If I want to do this with the IBM solution, I have to sell a lot of account addresses. The price could be unprofitable for the customer. There is some small functionality that could be implemented and could be easily done to improve this solution."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
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ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked 5th in Managed File Transfer (MFT) with 35 reviews while Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is ranked 8th in Managed File Transfer (MFT) with 7 reviews. ActiveBatch by Redwood is rated 9.2, while Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of ActiveBatch by Redwood writes "Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct writes "Good automation features but needs improvement in the monitoring dashboard ". ActiveBatch by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, VisualCron and IBM Workload Automation, whereas Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is most compared with IBM Sterling File Gateway, Kiteworks, Aspera Managed File Transfer, MOVEit and Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT. See our ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct report.
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