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.
"Manual processing has been automated 99 percent by OpCon. With new processes, we give it at least two weeks manual so we can write down the details of how to do the steps, then we automate it. Within a month, it has been automated, then it's no longer a manual process."
"We haven't freed up a full person's job using it, but there are a good handful of people for whom it has freed up about half of their time. And those employees love it. A lot of tasks are based on certain times, and they're no longer stuck doing those things at those times. We don't have to have anybody coming in early anymore. They can focus on the processing part of their jobs instead of the file moving and downloading."
"It can run scripted tasks automatically over and over without intervention. That is what it does and the part that I really like because repetitive tasks need to be done over and over, day after day, no matter what day of the week it is. It is difficult to have staff do these manually and consistently, especially over weekends or through the night. Instead, you can have OpCon do them."
"It allows us to have more information and more control than we previously had over the processes that are running in host systems."
"It's very scalable. Right now we're barely scratching the surface of what it can do. I've looked at Symitar's instance of OpCon and they're running something like 13,000 jobs a day with all the clients that they have. So it can go from small use cases like ours to enterprise-level."
"I find OpCon's ability to monitor files and folders, and its integration with other software to be the most valuable."
"With a simple click of a button in self-service, the department or the user can complete his/her job."
"The most valuable feature of OpCon is its scheduling capability, particularly for automating file transfers with vendors."
"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 like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."
"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."
"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."
"Its FTP feature is very good, as is scheduling any process or task with the Zena client. I have found it to be very helpful. If a task fails, it gives you a prompt."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer."
"I have used other tools with similar capabilities; it's the ease of use."
"It is a complex product to use. Programming the schedules is complex. It does require training from OpCon... I would like to see some online training, some videos. When I bring in a new employee... it would be nice if there was some basic information for her to look at to understand this program. Even for my systems administrator, it would be helpful if there were tips and tricks available."
"I believe there's room for improvement, and while I think it's something they are considering, I would welcome seeing OpCon integrate with a broader range of systems and third-party products."
"There is some difficulty with the ease of use when I don't have some of the templates that were already created. More templates would be great. Non-core featured templates are my biggest struggle."
"More functionality within self-service would be greatly appreciated."
"There are some limitations in the actual jobs that are created and how you're able to rename files. Suppose you're bringing in, say, 10, 15, or 20 reports from a core system, and you're using an "asterisk character" to identify files. For example, if you're grabbing files that start with this, end with this, but the characters in between could be different, it has to retain that same name in the destination. It won't allow you to rename them with a date stamp or the like."
"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."
"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 process of getting automations done and the process of testing them is a little complicated."
"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."
"Rocket Zena is a mainframe-based job scheduler. I would like it to be more open so that we can use it on a distributed platform."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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, Automic Workload Automation and UiPath, 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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