We performed a comparison between IBM Workload Automation and Tidal Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: IBM Workload Automation offers the option for clients to vote on and suggest new features, supports triggering jobs in multiple nodes, and provides a convenient way to monitor batch applications. Tidal Automation stands out with its efficient job scheduler, user-friendly interface, flexibility, and seamless integration with various systems.
IBM Workload Automation has addressed performance concerns and improved navigation, however, there are still challenges with job dependencies and daily schedule updates. The solution lacks stability, reporting visibility, and integration capabilities. Tidal Automation has a busy user interface and a complex pricing model, which may result in a steep learning curve. It needs better QA testing, enhanced job migration, and production statistics reporting. The solution does not offer AI capabilities, advanced reporting, or customization options.
Service and Support: IBM Workload Automation is praised for its technical support, particularly their lab advocacy program which provides in-depth code support. However, customers may face challenges in identifying the source of certain issues. Tidal Automation's customer service and support has a responsive and knowledgeable team. They are commended for their ability to address problems quickly and provide solutions, as well as their impressive product knowledge. However, there are occasional mentions of lower-priority items getting overlooked.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for IBM Workload Automation can be difficult, particularly for individuals who are not familiar with IBM tools or application development. The setup for Tidal Automation is described as simple and uncomplicated, only necessitating a small number of servers and a database.
Pricing: The cost of setting up IBM Workload Automation is determined by the customer's contract and can vary based on the number of agents installed. Users consider the pricing of Tidal Automation to be reasonable and consistent, without a significant increase even with increased usage.
ROI: Based on available insights, IBM Workload Automation lacks user feedback on ROI determination. Tidal Automation garners favorable reviews highlighting cost savings, enhanced efficiency, and superior risk management.
Comparison Results: Tidal Automation is favored over IBM Workload Automation because of its simple setup process, user-friendly interface, and dependable job scheduler. Users like how Tidal Automation offers a consolidated view and allows real-time monitoring, as well as the flexibility to run jobs on various servers.
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"The thing that I like the most is the reliability of the engine. The actual scheduling part of the product is pretty much flawless, but the stability of the product is what I find to be reassuring."
"The data management on offer was valuable."
"Especially in the newer versions of Tidal, the segmentation of user permissions enables us to give people operator permissions for their jobs, to rerun jobs, but view-only for other groups' jobs. We're able to keep people from hurting themselves or other groups accidentally. The permissioning is really good."
"The most valuable feature is the job scheduler, where you can schedule thousands of jobs to execute at specific times."
"Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution."
"The best feature is that it allows task scheduling based on particular occurrences, like the receipt of files, database updates, or system notifications."
"Thinking of all the people involved in checking jobs on a daily basis, manually running jobs or auditing them through standalone tools, and trying to connect them. We have saved hundreds of hours weekly, which is substantial."
"Tidal Automation is very efficient and can quickly automate most manual and repetitive tasks."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"Slow down on the releases a bit. I fully understand that IWA functionality is increasing at an amazing rate, but trying to keep up with the upgrades is rough."
"One of the weaknesses of the product is, when something happens, it's difficult to find out the root cause. There are a lot of logs you can take a look at in Tidal. Sometimes, they are useful, but other times, they're not. That is mostly relegated to the administrative team. Users for the most part don't see that and don't know anything about that. They just know they have a problem, then it's up to the administrative team to see what happened and figure out the problem."
"The job failure alerts can be updated with more details for better troubleshooting."
"The solution needs more advanced reporting and data visualization capabilities to enable deeper analysis of job performance and trends."
"Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation."
"One area for improvement is the command-line interface and the API to bulk-load jobs. It's a little bit kludgy, but we still manage without it. They're working on it and it's getting better all the time. In addition, the documentation for their API for creating jobs needs to be updated. It's a bit of a learning curve."
"I know they are working on it, but there needs to be better reporting. Currently, there are only three or four reports that we can get off of the system. That needs to be improved. They already have a solution to this in the new version. I.e., a schedule of all the jobs running for one day, specifically calling out what dependencies that job relies on. It would be like a flow chart of how the day's jobs would run."
"From an administrative point of view, I wouldn't give really high marks to the solution. I actually entertained getting the JAWS application at one point. One of the shortcomings with the scheduler is the reporting capabilities. At least at the time, JAWS was the best that they had for a third-party integration. I think they've got things in the pipeline to help alleviate that gap."
"The GUI, the graphical user interface, gets a little bit busy."
IBM Workload Automation is ranked 13th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews while Tidal by Redwood is ranked 2nd in Workload Automation with 37 reviews. IBM Workload Automation is rated 8.2, while Tidal by Redwood is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tidal by Redwood writes "Great visibility with a single pane of glass and a low learning curve". IBM Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and CA 7 Workload Automation Intelligence, whereas Tidal by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, ActiveBatch by Redwood and Rocket Zeke. See our IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
We monitor all Workload Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.