How does workload automation software help DevOps professionals, sysadmins, and IT professionals at large?
In their latest workload automation reviews, IT Central Station users discuss topics such as self-service capabilities, module integration features, reporting abilities, the ROI seen from their software, and how their teams’ productivity is impacted on the whole.
Continue reading to learn what users really think about their automation software of choice.
BMC Control-M
Self Service Plug-in
A Control-M Workload Admin at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees describes BMC Control-M as “intuitive”, emphasizing the value of its self-service plugin;
“Product is intuitive, you can start working with it and figure out the basics pretty quickly. The built-in modules (examples: File Transfer, Database, File Watcher etc.) help eliminate custom built scripts, which accomplish the same thing.
One big example I can think of is the availability of the Self Service plug-in. The non-scheduling IT users or business users will actually be able to have insight into their automated job flows which is a feature that we never had before.”
Module Integration
Sandesh Choundawar, Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees, shares how Control-M’s module integration enabled positive changes to his team’s productivity:
“Before implementing Control-M, SAP or FTP related jobs were triggered using scripts. With Control-M, these jobs can be triggered using modules already integrated into Control-M, reducing team effort.
Also, Forecast and BIM give us a clear picture of batch job deadlines and alerts us of schedule overruns.”
Simultaneously, Marcel Cunha de Meneses, IT Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees, suggests improvements be made to Control-M’s module integration capabilities;
“I would like to see improvement in the integration of modules. As I worked with the modules, I saw the need for better integration several times.
In the case of a Web Service (WS) module, it could have more facilities with the integration of SOA services when an asynchronous service is invoked. When used for this purpose, it generates a number of unnecessary alerts to the operator dashboard.”
CA Workload Automation
“Major Return on Investment”
Clark Ammons, AutoSys Administrator/Engineer PS Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees, shares how CA Workload Automation’s “return on investment is major”:
Watch Clark’s review in video-interview format:
“The benefit of using this product is the fact that your return on investment is major. When you don't have to teach people how to script or how to write different codes because of the way they connect to stuff, you're saving money, because you're able to put stuff into a production environment in a much faster solution.
We're also able to update our customers and let them know via apps to be able to see from using a web service to run and they log in to see what their activity is or what the status is on their stuff. It's updated immediately.”
Granular Security
Philippe Thérond, Enterprise IT Management Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees, writes about the tool’s granular security features:
“Granular security enables self-service role-based access. JIL language is always a big accelerator for creating/editing job flows efficiently. Great at handling timezones and daylight savings adjustments.”
Historical Reporting Capabilities
Francis Meckevech, Sr. Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees, would like to see the tool’s reporting capabilities become more usable for less technical users;
“We would like to see good improvement in the historical reporting capabilities. It's always been, I think, a bit of a weak point.
Currently, if you know a SQL programmer, he should become your best friend, but I'd like to see it get to the point where somebody with really basic skills – where they understand the information they want – can easily extract it. That's really the big area with room for improvement.”
IBM Workload Automation
IBM Scheduler
A System Administrator, Data Center Operations Lead at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees discusses the IBM Scheduler feature:
“The IBM scheduler allows for easy and seamless execution of the automated tasks in order to ensure data processing.
The event notification feature is beneficial since it allows for prompt and immediate notification in relation to any errors occurring in the system.”
Console Functionality
Gayathiri S Muthukrishnan, Project Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees, writes about the improvements that have and have not been made to IBM Workload Automation’s latest version, V9.3:
“TWS is evolving from V8.3 to V9.3 on the features and no major changes on the architecture. The user experience side of the console is being improved in all these versions, however, the console is not very fast as expected.
It would be good if the TWS consoles and front end reporting explores different users like business, technology and application teams and seamless and faster experience like mobile apps.
If these supported applications would be provided without additional licenses, it would be good.”
Read more workload automation reviews from the IT Central Station user community.
