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.
"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."
"ActiveBatch's Self-Service Portal allows our business units to run and monitor their own workloads. They can simply run and review the logs, but they can't modify them. It increases their productivity because they are able to take care of things on their own. It saves us time from having to rerun the scripts, because the business units can just go ahead and log in and and rerun it themselves."
"The REST API adapters and native integrations for integrating and orchestrating the software stack are very flexible."
"Approximately ~20 hours of manual effort have been reduced to ~5 hours with the help of ActiveBatch."
"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to trigger workflows, one after another, based on success, without having to worry about overlapping workflows. The ability to integrate our BI, analytics, and our data quality jobs is also valuable"
"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."
"Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis."
"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."
"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"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."
"The Universal Agent is the most valuable feature. Being agent-based and being able to go across multiple technology stacks, which is what our workflows do, Stonebranch gives us the ability to bridge those disparate technologies. It enables us to remove the dependency-gap with the agent so we know the status of the workflow at each step."
"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."
"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."
"The tasks are incredibly capable, and as long as you name them with a nice, uniform naming convention, they are very useful. You can create some interesting workflows through various machines, or you can just have it kick off single tasks. All in all, I really like the Universal Task. You can do some mutually exclusive stuff, such as an "A not B" kind of thing. It has a lot of capabilities behind the scenes."
"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."
"Setting up the software was hard."
"Some improvements can be made to the user interface."
"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."
"The thing I've noticed the most is the Help function. It's very difficult, at times, to find examples of how to do something. The Help function will explain what the tool does, but we're not a Windows shop at the data warehouse. Our data warehouse jobs actually run on Linux servers. Finding things for Linux-based solutions is not as easy as it is for Windows-based solutions. I would like to see more examples, and more non-Windows examples as well, in the Help."
"It could be easier to provide dashboards on how many jobs are running at the same time; more monitoring."
"Providing some detailed training materials could be very helpful for new users who have very limited technical information about the tool."
"There are very few documents that provide us with detailed information on the troubleshooting of errors that occur during integration with the existing environment."
"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."
"It can be hard to manage the task monitor."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One hiccup we've had is due to the fact that we have other internal scheduling tools. We're able to talk to them, but we have trouble with some of the networking between them, so we're still trying to work out the kinks there."
"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."
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, IBM Workload Automation and VisualCron, whereas Stonebranch is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, Control-M, 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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