ActiveBatch by Redwood vs IBM Workload Automation comparison

ActiveBatch by Redwood and IBM are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.4, while IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0. ActiveBatch by Redwood holds a 2.4% mindshare in WA, compared to IBM’s 6.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ActiveBatch by Redwood users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of IBM users who would recommend it.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Read 35 ActiveBatch by Redwood reviews

1,616 Views
487 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Workload Automation

Read 33 IBM Workload Automation reviews

3,669 Views
1,560 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

ActiveBatch by Redwood

IBM Workload Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch Workload Automation and IBM Workload Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

Features: ActiveBatch Workload Automation provides a wide range of valuable features such as versatility, ease of use, prebuilt jobs, real-time scheduling and monitoring, intelligent automation, scalability, REST API adapters, and an exceptional user interface. IBM Workload Automation prioritizes client voting for additional features, triggering jobs in multiple nodes, and batch application tracking.

ActiveBatch Workload Automation has areas that could be improved, such as licensing, user interface, trigger reliability, monitoring dashboard, documentation, support services, and integration capabilities. IBM Workload Automation has faced performance problems in past versions, difficulties with navigation, and limited reporting visibility.

Service and Support: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has been praised for its excellent customer service, particularly its reliable technical support. However, there are concerns about the service model and the availability of the hotline. IBM Workload Automation is highly respected for its support, with customers recommending its lab advocacy program for detailed code support.

Ease of Deployment: The setup process for ActiveBatch Workload Automation is straightforward and uncomplicated, without any significant challenges. However, there is a minor requirement for additional documentation during the file import. The initial setup for IBM Workload Automation can be difficult for individuals who are not familiar with IBM tools, however, with help, it becomes relatively easy.

Pricing: ActiveBatch Workload Automation offers a versatile licensing structure that eliminates the need for agents on all servers, whereas IBM Workload Automation's cost is based on the customer's agreement.

ROI: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has received positive feedback for its ability to generate positive results and financial benefits. Users have reported a significant increase in net revenue. There is a lack of specific user reviews and ROI data for IBM Workload Automation. However, it is known for its focus on optimizing workload management processes and enhancing efficiency.

Comparison Results: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is highly recommended over IBM Workload Automation. Users appreciate ActiveBatch's straightforward setup process, adaptability, ease of use, ready-made jobs, intuitive interface, real-time monitoring, scalability, and an extensive collection of prebuilt job steps.

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

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. IBM Workload Automation

June 2025

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Helped 856,873 peers since 2012

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

ActiveBatch by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

8th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (9th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (11th)

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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.4%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 6.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Shubham Bharti

Senior Analyst at Capgemini

Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation

Occasionally, I find myself contemplating if there is room for improvement in the user interface (UI), and envisioning that with certain enhancements. The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application. New users might encounter a minor setback due to the absence of readily accessible training videos, which could have otherwise proven to be an invaluable resource in aiding their initial familiarization with the platform, potentially hindering their seamless onboarding process and delaying their ability to harness the software's full range of capabilities to its utmost potential.

Read full review

Alberto-Ezquerra

Information Technology Solution Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

An intuitive dashboard with user-friendly interface and a holistic view that automatically schedules the production workload

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.

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

"Since we are no longer waiting for an operator to see that a job is finished, we have changed our daily cycle from running in eight hours down to about five. We had a third shift-operator retire and that position was never refilled."

"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."

"Error Handling is one of the best standout features of ActiveBatch."

"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."

"What ActiveBatch allows you to do is develop a more efficient process. It gave me visibility into all my jobs so I could choose which jobs to run in parallel. This is much easier than when I have to try to do it through cron for Windows XP, where you really can't do things in parallel and know what is going on."

"It has helped with scheduling complex jobs with simple scripts."

"ActiveBatch's Self-Service Portal allows our business units to run and monitor their own workloads. They can simply run and review the logs, but they can't modify them. It increases their productivity because they are able to take care of things on their own. It saves us time from having to rerun the scripts, because the business units can just go ahead and log in and and rerun it themselves."

"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood pros

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

"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."

"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."

"IBM Workload Automation provides good performance and monitoring."

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

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

"Technical support from IBM is very good."

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

More IBM Workload Automation pros

Cons

"The thing I've noticed the most is the Help function. It's very difficult, at times, to find examples of how to do something. The Help function will explain what the tool does, but we're not a Windows shop at the data warehouse. Our data warehouse jobs actually run on Linux servers. Finding things for Linux-based solutions is not as easy as it is for Windows-based solutions. I would like to see more examples, and more non-Windows examples as well, in the Help."

"They could provide an easier installation guide or technical support to the organizations during the installation process."

"The product should be improved by providing a customization option."

"I can't get the cleaning up of logs to work consistently. Right now, we are not setup correctly, and maybe it is something that I have not effectively communicated to them."

"There are some issues with this version and finding the jobs that it ran. If you're looking at 1,000 different jobs, it shows based on the execution time, not necessarily the run time. So, if there was a constraint waiting, you may be looking for it in the wrong time frame. Plus, with thousands of jobs showing up and the way it pages output jobs, sometimes you end up with multiple pages on the screen, then you have to go through to find the specific job you're looking for. On the opposite side, you can limit the daily activity screen to show only jobs that failed or jobs currently running, which will shrink that back down. However, we have operators who are looking at the whole nightly cycle to make sure everything is there and make sure nothing got blocked or was waiting. Sometimes, they have a hard time finding every item within the list."

"A cloud option is not provided as a free feature, making it a costly solution for smaller organizations."

"Some improvements can be made to the user interface."

"An area for improvement in ActiveBatch Workload Automation is its interface or GUI. It could be a little better. There isn't any additional feature I'd like to see in the tool, except for the GUI, everything looks good."

More ActiveBatch by Redwood cons

"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."

"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."

"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."

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

"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."

"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."

"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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows for lower operational overhead."

"I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way."

"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."

"ActiveBatch is currently redesigning themselves. In the past, they were a low cost solution for automation. They had a nice tool that was very inexpensive. With their five-year plan, they will be more enhancement-driven, so they're trying to improve their software, customer service, and the way that their customers get information from them. In doing that, they're raising the price of their base system. They changed from one pricing model to another, which has caused some friction between ActiveBatch and us. We're working through that right now with them. That's one of the reasons why we're why we were evaluating other software packages."

"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."

"I don't think we've ever had a problem with the pricing or licensing. Even the maintenance fees are very much in line. They are not excessive. I think for the support that you get, you get a good value for your money. It's the best value on the market."

"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."

"The pricing was fair. There are additional costs for the plugins. We have the standard licensing fees for different pieces, then we have the plugins which were add-ons. However, we expected that."

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

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

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

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

"The solution's pricing is affordable."

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

33%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

I'd advise users to start by knowing what the actual requirement is and thoroughly assess the automation needs. New users should take advantage of the demos and trial versions so they get an idea o...

See all answers

What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?

After upgrades we are facing a few issues and errors triggered, so focusing on this would be appreciated. Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referrin...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Workload Automation?

The initial setup is easy.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 18% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 15% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 12% of the time

Stonebranch vs ActiveBatch by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

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Control-M vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 27% of the time

HCL Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 20% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 6% of the time

Rocket Zena vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Workload Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood

June 2025

Download ActiveBatch by Redwood product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation

June 2025

Download IBM Workload Automation product report

Also Known As

ActiveBatch

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS

Overview

ActiveBatch by Redwood automates and manages batch processes, data integration tasks, and workflow scheduling. It's used for file transfers, data processing, server monitoring, and report generation, supporting both on-prem and cloud environments.

Organizations implement ActiveBatch by Redwood to automate complex job scheduling and data workflows, integrating seamlessly with FTP, SQL, PowerShell, and other systems. With features like real-time monitoring, error handling, and centralized management, users can significantly boost productivity while minimizing manual intervention. Its flexibility in supporting on-premises and cloud environments makes it adaptable for diverse IT landscapes. The tool simplifies workflow orchestration with an extensive library of pre-built steps and robust API integrations, ensuring efficiency in handling various workloads.

What are ActiveBatch by Redwood's key features?

Job automation: Automates routine and complex jobs.
Real-time monitoring: Offers instant insights into job performance.
Customizable workflows: Tailors workflows to specific business needs.
PowerShell integration: Supports advanced script execution.
Job triggering: Initiates tasks based on specific conditions.
File handling: Manages file transfers and processing efficiently.
Server management: Monitors and handles server tasks consistently.
API integration: Connects with various applications for streamlined operations.
Alerting: Provides notifications for critical job events.
Flexible scheduling: Enables detailed and adaptable job scheduling.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Centralized management: Simplifies oversight of all processes.
Productivity boost: Reduces manual effort and errors.
Time savings: Accelerates task completion and workflow execution.
Comprehensive visibility: Enhances monitoring of all job activities.
Reliable performance: Ensures consistent task execution.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business and IT needs.

In various industries, ActiveBatch by Redwood is used to streamline operations, whether in finance handling large-scale data processing, healthcare managing patient records, or retail optimizing supply chains. It addresses specific needs by offering robust automation, efficient job scheduling, and seamless integration with existing systems, driving operational excellence and efficiency.

ActiveBatch by Redwood

IBM Workload Automation helps companies manage operations, portfolio management, resource collection, and dependency scheduling. It facilitates transitions from legacy apps to web services, executing batch processing for tens of thousands of jobs daily with hundreds of users.

Teams rely on IBM Workload Automation to optimize backend workloads, maintain service levels, and offer support in remote environments. Its interface and job scheduler are appreciated for their value and effectiveness. Users benefit from batch automation, multiple node job triggering, stability, and batch app tracking. It provides a holistic view to resolve technical issues and leverage AI for updates. Its user-friendly interface simplifies workload management. Performance, monitoring, request features for adding functionalities, and workload management are key advantages.

What are the most important features?

Interface and Job Scheduler: Highly valued for managing processes efficiently.
Batch Automation: Facilitates the automation of batch processing tasks.
Multiple Node Job Triggering: Enables triggering jobs across multiple nodes.
Stability: Ensures a reliable and consistent performance.
Batch App Tracking: Allows tracking and monitoring of batch applications.
Holistic View: Helps in resolving technical issues and leveraging AI.

What are the benefits or ROI items to look for in reviews?

Performance: Enhanced system performance and monitoring capabilities.
Workload Management: Effective management of various workload types.
Request Feature: Ability to add new functionalities as needed.

IBM Workload Automation is implemented across several industries for diverse tasks. Companies executing high-volume batch processing, managing complex job dependencies, and transitioning from legacy systems find it valuable. Industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing utilize it to maintain operational efficiency, enhance system performance, and automate critical processes.

IBM

Sample Customers

Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital

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

Buyer's Guide

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. IBM Workload Automation

June 2025

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