IBM Workload Automation Reviews

Dynamic scheduling: This is one feature which helped us achieve some important business objectives without the need to install TWS on a server. Some of the servers in our organization have restricted access and dynamic scheduling helped us schedule jobs on these servers without the need to install TWS.

• Monitoring
• Reporting

TWS doesn’t have in-built monitors to capture and report READY/INTRO state jobs. In our environment, we use TWS to schedule jobs in SAP and without an in-built monitor to capture these, we use custom-built scripts to report jobs stuck in READY/INTRO state.

I have used the product for seven years.

There were real stability issues. The WebSphere process gets hung on TWS masters running TWS 9.1. WebSphere is used heavily in our environment and a restart of WAS is really required at least once in a month.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support was not always the best. You need a little bit of patience until the PMR is routed to the right layer of support.

Initial setup using the GUI was straightforward. However installing/upgrading a TWS master using the silent approach is a little bit tricky, as the details and the steps have to be collected from many other documents. There was no single document to help us to install the TWS, WAS, and IBM Installation Manager using the silent approach.

I would recommend other users to definitely consider TWS, as it has proven to be a powerful tool in our environment so far.

The simplicity of the GUI is the most valuable feature for us.

My organization has automated a lot of tasks that were previously being done manually like processing of cheques from multiple banks. This was a three step process wherein a dedicated man resource used to scan the cheques individually, another person then updated a record in the database followed by sending out an email.

All these steps required a lot of time and money and any absence of human resources would result in severe lapses. With the help of Tivoli, all the three tasks were automated into a single jobstream that runs throughout the year without any manual intervention, even taking off days and holidays.

Out of the box reporting and provision for customization/integration with other products are the areas where this product can be improved.

I have been using the product for six years.

We have not encountered any significant stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

The support teams at IBM that work with Tivoli Workload Scheduler cases are comprised of people who have tremendous command on troubleshooting issues as well as people who are not that technically capable. So the experience can be good and bad depending on the engineer that you end up coordinating with. I would say overall, the support for this product is above average.

I have been consistently using Tivoli Workload Scheduler as a one stop solution for my various client's job scheduling and automation needs, so I am not aware of any previous solutions.

The initial setup is not very easy as IBM has multiple components integrated with the core product which are mandatory to setup and can be a bit tricky.

This would be one the expensive lines of product in IBM's portfolio, so initial costs can run high if someone is buying it for the first time. The licensing is IBM proprietary, and clients are not charged on the basis of underlying hardware configuration that hosts the installed application - CPU cores and manufacturer to be exact - which goes up as you add on to your processing capabilities.

Over a period, once you are a client, you may get better pricing quotes from your sales representative. Also, there are workload based flexible pricing options available for smaller setups which can always be considered and negotiated accordingly.

The alternatives in this category of products are not many. BMC Control-M and CA Autosys and another job scheduler from Tidal are the major ones. I have evaluated BMC and CA, both are equally capable and perform wonderfully well, the one advantage IBM has over its counterparts is its capabilities with mainframe scheduling for a very long time. Most old companies have had mainframes for 2-3 decades now and IBM integrates seamlessly across their legacy mainframe as well as the newer distributed setups.

It's a very good scheduling product if you have a combination of mainframe and distributed environments that have batch operations and repetitive tasks running on them. The SAP plugin is outstanding and SAP process chains run a like a dream when scheduled using Tivoli.

If you have an environment like the one I've just mentioned, this would unarguably be your best bet. The initial costs are steep but it pays off in the longer run as the product itself is very stable if configured correctly.

The features most valuable to us are the diverse array of scheduling options, including run and exclusion calendars (holidays). The dependency management system allows us to build just about any scheduled batch process imaginable. Tivoli consistently runs jobs as scheduled and precisely as defined. This is critical, as we need our scheduler to be dependable and consistent.

We can also export job and schedule definitions to a flat file and then import them into a higher environment. This is critical for treating jobs and schedules as code, checking the definitions into version control, and deploying them cleanly. We can manage jobs and schedules ourselves without needing to turn to a designer in production.

Tivoli Workflow Scheduler provides a centralized tool for all scheduled jobs, including design, monitoring, and support. With thousands of jobs running each day, this would be unmanageable using Windows scheduled tasks, cron jobs, or a home grown scheduler based on Quartz or similar framework.

One area of improvement is the user interface. While it is extremely functional, it’s not very user friendly and it’s difficult to visualize the flow of a complicated job schedule. A visual flow would be very useful to see how far a schedule has progressed, where it failed, and why.

We’ve been using Tivoli Workload Scheduler for 4.5 years.

We have had no issues with scalability. However, we have less than 100 batch servers across all environments, so our environment is not very large.

I can’t rate technical support. I have never worked with IBM technical support on an issue with TWS. However, our number of support requests has been low due to the reliability of the product.

I have not used a previous solution. TWS was already in use when I started working here.

The initial setup is somewhat complex when taking into account the following factors:

• the supported\recommended database types are Oracle or DB2 for Windows shops
• deployment of agents across all batch processing servers
• security configuration
• load balancing and redundancy on the MASTER

Upgrades are also complex as all existing jobs, schedules, and other entities must be ported over and tested.

I have not dealt with pricing or licensing.

I did not evaluate other products as TWS was already in use when I started working here.

Before purchasing Tivoli Workflow Scheduler, check out Automic One Scheduler. It’s much more expensive, but it does a lot more than just scheduling. If you are using TWS, make sure you provide training to your batch developers. Design a model for promoting jobs and schedules between environments. Utilize “composer” extracts and check your jobs and schedule definitions into a version control repository.

With FTA (Fault Tolerant Agent) on remote servers, you have Agents to run jobs. An FTA does not need a network connection to do the job, except when the master sends the daily production plan to the FTA. This feature is very nice because POF is only one time a day. So FTA removing POF from the final schedule is very valuable.

Have a more simple GUI for end-users. This is simply because I am used to using the command line. The GUI is not easy for non-technical users.

I have used the solution for 15 years.

We had stability issues when managed by not enough skilled people.

There were no scalability issues using DM.

Technical support was excellent.

Initial setup was simple.

It is expensive.

Spend time to define a robust architecture, and day-to-day operations with a specialist.

The TWS GUI was an excellent feature. Job monitoring and scheduling using the front end was extremely easy.

Job scheduling is an integral part of deploying data warehousing jobs. I was a part of the developer team and while coordinating with the support team who did the actual job scheduling, it was easy for them to coordinate with us on what job to release first, what to cancel, what to release dependencies, etc.

If there was a way to monitor SLA breaches from within TWS, it would have been great. The only way to monitor job failures on TWS was to check the GUI for any failed streams. This said, there are ticketing systems associated with batch and real-time jobs that triggered an alert whenever something failed and that works well with TWS.

The one scenario that I encountered (and found a solution to by implementing a script from outside of TWS) was when a critical job does not start running even after the scheduled time, say due to an unexpected outage on one of the dependencies listed on TWS, there was no way to alert the owners of the application. And no ticketing system would alert anyone because technically, there is no failure. Or there was no way to trigger an alert from within TWS for a long running job, that is running way past it’s ETA.

I used the solution for two years.

None that I encountered during my two-year tenure at Chase.

Deployments and issues with the TWS server were handled by a different team. Other than periodic maintenance outages, there was no other major downtime that I encountered.

Individual access setup was relatively easy. But I think I would attribute this to the setup teams, to the on-boarding team at Chase. We had a specialized request procedure and an access team handled the request.

Things shifted after I joined. They evaluated Control-M and decided to pursue Control-M and discontinue use of TWS. Control-M had a far superior user interface and also had a notification system which TWS lacked.

There are multiple factors that would influence my preference to this product. In purely ease of use, functionality etc, I would rate it 8/10. I am not considering the cost of license etc.

The FTA agents feature is most beneficial, as it easily resolves local dependencies on the workstation, even when there is a network disconnect between the MDM and FTA.

I belong to a part of the delivery module in our organization. We implement TWS in the customer’s environment. It has definitely improved many different processes in our organization.

There is need to add any type of utility which can convert workload definitions of other syntax to the TWS syntax, during workload migration and conversions. Currently, there is no utility as such with TWS.

For example, there could be one scenario, where the customer wants to switch from the existing scheduling tool to TWS. Every tool has its very own syntax for defining workload definitions.

During migration project activities, it gets very difficult for converting the existing workload syntax to TWS syntax. We need to create our own scripts or different methods, that helps us in achieving this task.

If I remember correctly, the BMC Control-M tool does have such utility of converting any workload definition syntax to Control-M based workload definition syntax, i.e., upto a certain extent. Hence, this is one area where TWS can be improved.

I have been using this solution for more than a year now.

I have not had any stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

I’ve not had such a good experience with the technical support. At times, I have seen long delays in getting answers/responses.

I started out with implementing the TWS solution only.

Initially, it was complex; during implementation, I faced many challenges.

For licensing, you should proceed with the monthly job executions. Earlier, it also used to have the PVU (Processor Value Unit) license model as well. I am not sure, if this is still there.

Get clarity from IBM and accordingly proceed, depending upon the requirement.

TWS is very much stable on the Linux platform but this doesn’t mean that it can’t go well with Windows. Looking at the OS maintenance and other patching activities, it is better to go with Linux.

Scalability is not an issue with TWS. Make sure you have all the pre-requisites met before implementing it. It will work all fine.

• Valuable Features:
• Time zones: As we are a global company, scheduling jobs in different time zone is mandatory (especially due to DST changes).
• Web interface: Easy access for end users.- CLI: Even more automation is possible than by using the standard features.
• User/group-based roles for access segregation
• AD integration: To use the same user repository

This product has increased the level of automation with no / minimum downtime and predictable scheduling.

The web interface (TDWC) is a bit slow.

I personally got in touch with it in 2003 (as soon as I was employed).

There were some stability issues with older versions we used. There have not been any on the current one (8.6.02) since we started using it, for ~3+ years.

We encountered scalability issues. There are some parameters that need to be tuned once you reach a certain level, and it is not clearly stated / explained in the product documentation.

Technical support is 4/10.

Initial setup was a bit complex, as we did it without any consultant and the coding is not perfect or the same for different platforms (i.e. Windows, different Linux flavors, Solaris, AIX, etc.).

It is expensive, but reliable (in short, you GET what you pay for).

If cost is not an issue, I definitely recommend it.

I  used IBM Workload Automation within the past 12 months

The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years.

The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions. However, it is easy to set up.

I would advise others to push their marketing representatives to give a simplified licensing solution, or if you outsource, to an IT vendor, have them deal with the complexities of the process.

I rate IBM Workload Automation an eight out of ten.