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.
"It has helped with scheduling complex jobs with simple scripts."
"We are able to integrate it into multiple third-party tools like email, backup, tracking systems, SharePoint, Slack alerts, etc."
"ActiveBatch can automate predictable, repeatable processes very well. There is no real trick to what ActiveBatch does. ActiveBatch does exactly what you would expect a scheduling piece of software to do. It does it in a timely manner and does it with very little outside interference and fanfare. It runs when it is supposed to, and I don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to double check it."
"The Jobs Library has been a tremendous asset. For the most, that's what we use. There are some outliers, but we pretty much integrate those Jobs Library steps throughout the process, whether it's REST calls, FTP processes, or file copies and moves... That has helped us to build end-to-end workflows."
"From a scheduling point of view, it is pretty good."
"It can connect to a number of third-party/legacy systems."
"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"
"We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line."
"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."
"I have found the agents to be so much simpler, when compared to ESP."
"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."
"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."
"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."
"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"
"The features are upgraded, and every six months they're releasing patches."
"ActiveBatch is a little complex."
"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."
"There are very few documents that provide us with detailed information on the troubleshooting of errors that occur during integration with the existing environment."
"Except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"They should offer pricing that is more affordable."
"The documentation is very limited, and it can be improved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 can't handle negative written codes."
"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."
"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."
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, VisualCron and IBM Workload Automation, 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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