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.
"The solution has streamlined operations. We have written custom jobs to do particular things, but OpCon is definitely the one that manages running them at particular times. Often times, those jobs have to run after hours. So while we still develop and spend time and man-hours writing code, once it's done, OpCon is running that in the afternoons or evenings. This is usually done during off hours when a person would normally be required to be here and do it. Instead, OpCon is available, consistent, reliable and easy to get things in and working quickly once we develop and get them working. OpCon takes care of the entire process, including notifications that we define if something were to happen so we know what to do next. Again, it's simplifies the entire process."
"It allows us to have more information and more control than we previously had over the processes that are running in host systems."
"For us, the most valuable feature of the solution is the file transfer piece and being able to automate the moving of files around between our various vendors. It reduces the time involved versus somebody having to individually move the files around."
"The most valuable feature is the automation in general."
"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."
"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."
"The ability to chain jobs together allows us to create complex interdependencies between our jobs, and the integration into our core system is important because it allows us, through an automated system, to do a huge number of things that used to be done manually."
"The automation of processes is the most valuable feature. One of the major hurdles for us over the last few years, before we found OpCon, was to make our nightly process happen automatically. Being a bank, we have nightly update processes that have to happen for posting transactions, for example, and it was a huge load off our department to have that automated."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"When it comes to agent technology and compatibility with other vendors, from a platform perspective it was the one vendor that fit all the platforms that we have, from your old platforms - mainframe, NSK, IBM i - to the new ones, going into cloud and container"
"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."
"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."
"The features are upgraded, and every six months they're releasing patches."
"The only downside to OpCon is that its features can be complicated and really must be taught. Most of our users don't have training beyond the free Basic Training that SMA provides, so for fresh eyes, it is kind of difficult to understand some of the language used."
"At first, it's a little clunky, but once you learn it, it actually is very simple. You have to get over that initial learning hump."
"I have noticed lately that [tech support's] first answers tend to be, "Let's upgrade it to the latest and greatest first," without looking into anything. The last couple of times I've logged a ticket that's been the response, which is a little frustrating. We're not big on just upgrading on a whim. We do full testing."
"It would be nice to go to a fully thin client."
"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."
"The UI refresh rate is really bad and needs improvement."
"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 biggest area where there is room for improvement would be integration with their code. They've got a function for embedded scripts and it would be nice if that worked with a code or versioning management system, like GitLab."
"It can be hard to manage the task monitor."
"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."
"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."
"It can't handle negative written codes."
"It's not available on the cloud, so they should take that due to safety, security, and scalability."
"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."
"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."
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.
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