We performed a comparison between OpCon and Rocket Zena 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 versatility, seamless integration, convenient self-service option, and ability to automate manual tasks. Rocket Zena is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, simplicity, useful diagram feature, Linux configuration compatibility, cross-platform job scheduling, and efficient FTP file transfer capability.
OpCon can improve its web-based interface, Solution Manager, which is not as functional as the desktop interface. Upgrading to newer versions can be complex, and users want a mobile app for accessibility. Rocket Zena lacks visibility into connections between applications, has limitations on the number of components in a process, and has a slow UI loading time. Users also find the UI unintuitive and want a web interface for easier access.
Service and Support: OpCon's customer service has a highly skilled and efficient technical support team that provides prompt and effective solutions. Customers value the support staff's helpfulness and friendliness. Rocket Zena offers excellent support, with knowledgeable and responsive technical assistance. However, obtaining higher-level support may involve some delay.
Ease of Deployment: OpCon's initial setup involves close collaboration with SMA consultants and training, which can be complex. Rocket Zena's setup varies among users, with some finding it easier to understand. However, Zena faces challenges when it comes to integrating with SAP.
Pricing: OpCon is recognized as being pricey and intricate to set up, demanding a learning curve. Nevertheless, it is regarded as a high-quality product that offers good value for the investment. Rocket Zena is seen as cost-efficient and budget-friendly, making it a feasible choice for smaller businesses.
ROI: OpCon has proven to be a valuable investment with significant returns through reduced time and errors, enhanced productivity, and the removal of full-time operators. Rocket Zena offers time savings, improved accuracy, and alleviates stress for engineers.
Comparison Results: OpCon is highly favored over Rocket Zena due to its flexibility, integration capabilities, self-service features, automation capabilities, and reliability. Users appreciate OpCon's graphical user interface, database functionality, and the ability to create a testing environment. OpCon's positive user reviews and its comprehensive features make it the preferred choice.
"The image scanning and anti-malware features are really valuable."
"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."
"Having the jobs laid out while attaching dependencies is a nice addition to the program."
"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."
"We particularly like the fact that it's graphical because it is Windows-based. Before, we were text-based on the mainframe. You can also produce flow charts. Because it's point-and-click, its ease of use is very nice."
"It allows us to have more information and more control than we previously had over the processes that are running in host systems."
"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."
"There are a lot of valuable features. The version that we're currently casting, Self Service, is going to be the most valuable to us. It is going to allow us to open up the doors, broaden our automation capability and help other business units to be able to automate a lot of the little things that they do from day to day. I'm really looking forward to being able to help other areas with their automation needs. Self Service is really key."
"From a Linux configuration point of view, Rocket Zena is straightforward. It's fairly easy to set up the server and agents once you know how to do it."
"I have found the scheduling feature the most valuable. I can map dependencies by using ASG-Zena. It gives a nice, quick visualization as to where things are."
"I have used other tools with similar capabilities; it's the ease of use."
"I like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."
"We haven't had any problems since we installed it. It runs as expected, we haven't had any critical problems. It helps keeps the business running 24/7."
"In the latest upgrade, Zena added a web-based client. The more I use it, the more I like it. It's an excellent interface. They do a good job of steadily improving the solution to make it more useful."
"The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer."
"You can click Ctrl-G and bring a diagram view. You're able to view in a diagram format. The view that it provides is easy, and you can move to the left, up, or down. You can double-click on a certain process. It'll drill into that process and all of its underlying components. You can double-click on an arrow or a component, and it'll bring up a screen that'll have all the variables that are assigned to that particular piece, as well as the values at run time. So, the diagram feature of it, at least for me, is pretty valuable."
"I don't really think anything needs to be improved within the functionality. The only struggle I had, when I first started using it, is that it depends a lot on the command line and I didn't have that experience. So more built-in, basic commands or more education on commands would be good."
"The solution has quite a learning curve for beginners. It's challenging. I wouldn't rate it as super-easy to automate processes. It's medium-weight. I've used more complex software, but I've used simpler software."
"I would like more web-based training from SMA. That would be nice. Our primary OpCon representative is phenomenal, but we would like some training opportunities for learning on our own. When I started utilizing OpCon, the sheer breadth of it made for a very daunting task. I was almost fearful to start, not to mention fearful to go change things and possibly hinder a job."
"The one area it needs some help in is the mainframe area because that is not its strength. They support the mainframe but it's not something that they are good at."
"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."
"I would like OpCon to implement a reporting feature on the dashboard that displays historical data for specific jobs. Ideally, this feature would allow us to view the past seven days or the next seven days, but with a specific focus on highlighting instances where a particular job has historically failed, particularly on Saturdays over the past year."
"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."
"The FICS integration is a little bit clunky. We've had some tickets with their support team, and sometimes they couldn't figure it out, but that probably has more to do with FICS than with OpCon."
"The scheduling mapping is a little disjointed. There is no wizard-type approach. There are a lot of different things that you have to do in completely different areas. They could probably add the functionality for creating all components of a mapping or an OPA schedule. The component creation could be done collectively rather than through individual components."
"One area where it could be improved is communication between the different servers. Sometimes there are processes that have already been completed but we get a status notification that they're still active."
"The documentation has room for improvement."
"In the next release, I would like the user experience to be improved. The user interface should be more appealing to gen-z."
"In the web interface, it stacks the tasks across the top, and they accumulate until you close or clean those out. That seems a little cumbersome. You must right-click and close all tabs constantly to keep the console clean and manage your views."
"Another one that is probably a little bit bigger for me is that when there is an issue or there's an error, it writes on a different screen. I have to find the actual process name and go to a different screen to view the alert that got generated. On that screen, everyone's processes, not just the processes of the folks in my department, are thrown. It takes me a while to find the actual error so that I could go in there and look at the alert. It could be because of the way it was set up, but at least for me, it isn't too intuitive."
"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."
"In the next release, I would like to have an alert feature to indicate when an agent is down. Rocket Zena is not capable of sending alerts that the agent is down. As of now, you have manually monitor to see when the agent is down."
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OpCon is ranked 9th in Workload Automation with 56 reviews while Rocket Zena is ranked 12th in Workload Automation with 9 reviews. OpCon is rated 9.2, while Rocket Zena is rated 8.4. 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 Rocket Zena writes "A continuously evolving, stable solution, with responsive support". OpCon is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, UiPath and Automic Workload Automation, whereas Rocket Zena is most compared with Control-M, Rocket Zeke, IBM Workload Automation, AutoSys Workload Automation and ActiveBatch by Redwood. See our OpCon vs. Rocket Zena report.
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