IBM Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

IBM and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7. IBM holds a 6.2% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 4.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

IBM Workload Automation

Read 33 IBM Workload Automation reviews

3,835 Views
3,528 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Tidal by Redwood

Read 37 Tidal by Redwood reviews

2,302 Views
2,279 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Workload Automation

Tidal by Redwood

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

IBM Workload Automation and Tidal by Redwood compete in the workload automation category. Tidal appears to have the upper hand due to its seamless integrations and adaptable scheduling, though IBM offers robust customer service and high availability.

Features: IBM Workload Automation offers diverse automation capabilities with dependencies, event-based scheduling, and integration with applications such as Oracle and SAP. It provides dynamic conditional branching and high availability for critical business processes. Tidal by Redwood provides real-time monitoring, scheduling flexibility, and ease of management across platforms, simplifying workflows with its integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: IBM Workload Automation users report challenges with the interface and monitoring unscheduled dependencies, indicating a need for better cloud capabilities. Tidal struggles with an outdated UI and complexity in setup and integration. While Tidal is seen as flexible, improvements in reporting and real-time insights are suggested. Both products could enhance customization options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Workload Automation supports hybrid and on-premises deployments with high-level customer service, yet support experiences may vary by region. Customers may encounter technical support delays. Tidal by Redwood is noted for effortless on-premises deployments, less frequent support interactions, and responsive follow-up, making it simple to scale operations.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Workload Automation’s pricing model can be costly with sub-capacity licensing, though valued for its reliability. Users may consider alternatives for greater cost efficiencies despite appreciating its ROI. Tidal by Redwood offers flexible, transparent pricing with an enterprise-friendly model, facilitating budget planning without unexpected costs, allowing for scalable operations and robust ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM Workload Automation

Ranking in Workload Automation

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tidal by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

14th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 6.2%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 4.7%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Workload Automation	6.2%
Tidal by Redwood	4.7%
Other	89.1%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes

Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.

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Steve Mikula

IT Scheduling Manager at Paychex, Inc.

Very reliable processing engine, and scheduling is flawless—crucial elements in our financial transaction processing

Because we've been on it for 20 years, it's pretty easy for us to automate jobs with Tidal at this point. It has become second nature. It's pretty simplistic to set up and get going, although there are different levels of complexity you can have within the product. It depends on how simple you want to keep it. If you just keep it: Job A, Job B, Job C, Job D, that becomes pretty simple. But when you start integrating some complex calendars that use sub-calendars—and you can go three, four, or five deep to set up schedules—it becomes more complicated. The beauty of it is you can go as deep as you need to. We can get really complex or we can keep it simple. We have some use cases for both scenarios. 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. We are a financial company, we move billions of dollars a day, and if we don't have our transactions processed in a timely manner we can be penalized and our clients can be penalized. It can have a serious financial impact.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis."

"Technical support from IBM is very good."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is its holistic view, which helps me find technical solutions quickly. For instance, if a customer has an issue completing their workload within a specific time frame, the tool provides enough information to identify and resolve the issue. One of the main challenges is dealing with data infrastructure problems and pending updates. Workload Automation helps me leverage current AI capabilities to recommend architectural updates to avoid these issues. It also allows me to balance CPU usage effectively, ensuring service level agreements are met. The interface is user-friendly and facilitates this process smoothly."

"It offers features like MDM and a Windows workstation, although there are some technical dependencies. It is more user-friendly and also includes failover and failback capabilities. While both systems offer high availability, Control-M's high availability is superior to AWS's."

"The initial setup is easy."

"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."

"I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product."

"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."

More IBM Workload Automation pros

"The first, big thing that we got out of using Tidal Workload Automation was having a centralized view of the status of all of our batch processes across all these systems... We can look into the schedule at any given time and see if things are running on track or if they are falling behind. We can also see if something failed."

"Tidal integrates with other third-party systems, which makes it easy to connect and exchange data."

"It's easy to use and easy to administer, and it's very flexible."

"We have to run about 12,000 jobs every day and the majority of them need to be launched from our ERP, JD Edwards. The native compatibility of the Tidal platform with JD Edwards dovetails with our greatest need. It's directly connected to the heart of our IT system. We couldn't work without it."

"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."

"Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution."

"The Graphical Views feature is also very good for helping us to understand a job stream. It's great for providing a visual overview of the status of a workflow, especially the Critical Path view. That is one of our favorites."

"One of the most useful features is being able to set up a schedule and create dependencies. The calendar can kick off processes at certain times, based on dependencies that you specify, like time, or whether another process has finished. Dependencies are the most useful thing."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

"The performance of the previous versions could be better."

"IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly, and a lower cost would be beneficial."

"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."

"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."

"To improve IBM Workload Automation, I suggest enhancing automation features further, as more automation would be beneficial. The product is good enough for my current customers, but improving technical support and pricing would be welcome. We often need quicker responses and better solutions than we can manage manually. These improvements would make the product even better."

"The solution should offer more free technical sessions to customers so that they can gain more experience or learn more about how to use it."

"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."

More IBM Workload Automation cons

"It takes a lot of time to learn the product. I have admins and developers who are working on the products for the last three to four years and still don't know all the functionalities. Tidal has really great things about it, but people are focused on their day-to-day job and the solution is not intuitive."

"Some users have complained that the initial setup process is complicated and time-consuming, while others have suggested that the software could offer more freedom in customizing processes."

"I would like more involvement with the cloud."

"My complaint about their pricing model is that every year or every time technology changes or somebody has a new requirement, it usually means that I can schedule that with Tidal, but I would need another adapter. So, every time there is a change, I need a different adapter that I don't have. That's why it is harder to plan for Tidal growth because you have to buy a new adapter every time."

"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."

"The GUI, the graphical user interface, gets a little bit busy."

"The UI might have the potential to provide a more polished and user-centric encounter, promoting seamless engagements and simplifying the navigation process for individuals interacting with the software."

"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."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."

"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."

"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."

"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."

"The solution's pricing is affordable."

"There have been pricing increases, but with the reduction that our company obtained from Tidal this year, the pricing has become very acceptable for this type of product."

"We've been able to purchase more adapters because the cost of the product has been very reasonable."

"I have had no issues with the licensing."

"We think the pricing is very fair. We have been happy with the pricing compared to some of the other solutions in the space."

"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."

"BMC is really expensive. The other solutions are about the same price. I think Tidal is even cheaper than the others, such as CA, Stonebranch, and JAMS."

"There are project, system, and server costs. Some of the things that they are doing is introducing new products. They are introducing what they call their Repository, which is a way for you to move a job. That doesn't cost anything to us, because it is reusing a tool called Transporter. The repository is the successor to Transporter, so we already own it and are sort of grandfathered in. But that new product requires a server and database, so now we have to go out and get a server and database. So, there is a cost there."

"Our yearly licensing costs are between $10,000 to $20,000. They have always been reasonable with us. I like that non-production licensing is about half the cost of production licensing. Licensing is by adapter typically. We have had scenarios where we have had to take an adapter from one environment to another, and they've allowed us to do that. They have made it a very reasonable process. There's definitely a feeling that they will work with you."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	38

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?

IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly, and a lower cost would be beneficial.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?

We use IBM Workload Automation ( /products/ibm-workload-automation-reviews ) as a scheduler. We install agents on the application servers and use scheduling to trigger jobs on other servers. Our us...

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What advice do you have for others considering IBM Workload Automation?

I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product. However, the cost is a concern. The product features a master-slave setup that ensures continuity during failures....

See all answers

What do you like most about Tidal Automation?

Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?

The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tidal Automation?

Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation. The setup and configuration of the software is a bit complicated. Providing the training vi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 24% of the time

HCL Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 16% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 12% of the time

Automic Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Workload Automation Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 30% of the time

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 18% of the time

Automic Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Stonebranch vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 4% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation

September 2025

Download IBM Workload Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

August 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Overview

IBM Workload Automation streamlines scheduling with automation and dynamic workload balancing. It integrates multiple platforms, offering efficient management across diverse systems, enhancing operational productivity.

IBM Workload Automation provides end-to-end control in managing tasks across varied platforms, supporting event-based scheduling and real-time updates. Its intuitive GUI allows seamless scripting and monitoring, facilitating integration with applications like SAP and Oracle. The inclusion of FTA agents ensures efficient local dependency management, while offering versatile scheduling options. Its capability to provide a comprehensive view, manage CPU usage, and meet service level agreements positions it as a valuable tool for large-scale operations.

What are the most important features?

Automation with Dependencies: Allows integration of complex tasks and workflows across multiple platforms.
Dynamic Workload Balancing: Ensures optimal resource utilization by adapting to changing demands.
Event-Based Scheduling: Initiates processes based on real-time events for timely task execution.
Real-Time Updates: Keeps users informed with instantaneous status changes and alerts.
User-Friendly GUI: Facilitates custom scripting and monitoring with ease.
Application Integration: Supports seamless connectivity with SAP, Oracle, and more.
FTA Agents: Efficiently handle local dependency resolution for consistent workflow operation.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Operational Efficiency: Streamlines workload management and reduces manual intervention.
Improved Resource Management: Balances CPU usage and avoids bottlenecks.
Enhanced SLA Compliance: Assures adherence to service level agreements, boosting reliability.
Scalability: Supports expanding operations with robust scheduling capabilities.
Integration Flexibility: Adapts to evolving technological landscapes with ease.

Industries such as government, banking, and large enterprises implement IBM Workload Automation for automated scheduling, workload balancing, and batch processing. It assists in migrating from legacy systems to web-based services, integrating with numerous applications, and managing extensive daily job lists. Key functions include offshore management and backend data collection, crucial for effective resource tracking. This adaptability enables organizations to efficiently support operations while scaling workloads as needed.

IBM

Tidal Software is a leading provider of enterprise workload automation solutions that orchestrate the execution of complex workflows across systems, applications and IT environments. With a comprehensive portfolio of products and services, Tidal optimizes mission-critical business processes, increases IT cost efficiencies and satisfies legal and regulatory compliance requirements. Hundreds of customers around the world count on Tidal for modernizing their workload automation and driving their digital transformation. Tidal Software is headquartered in Chicago with offices in Houston, London, Minsk, Belarus and Chennai, India. For more information, visit tidalsoftware.com.

Tidal Software by Redwood

Sample Customers

Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood

September 2025

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