We performed a comparison between IBM Workload Automation 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: IBM Workload Automation offers the advantage of allowing users to suggest and create new features through client voting. It also stands out for its ability to trigger jobs across multiple nodes and its easy tracking of batch applications. Rocket Zena excels with its user-friendly interface and diagram feature, making navigation simple. It also offers simplicity in Linux configuration, cross-platform job scheduling, and FTP file transfer capabilities.
IBM Workload Automation could benefit from improvements in performance, navigation, job dependencies, daily schedule updates, stability, reporting visibility, and API integration. Rocket Zena could enhance visibility into connections, agent monitoring, component limitations, UI loading time, intuitive UI design, installation process, task stacking, documentation, platform availability, communication between servers and agents, and notification feature.
Service and Support: IBM Workload Automation is praised for its technical support, which is highly recommended by customers. However, there may be difficulties in determining the origin of certain problems. Rocket Zena's customer service and support receive positive feedback, with their technical support being knowledgeable and responsive.
Ease of Deployment: IBM Workload Automation's initial setup can be difficult for individuals who are not familiar with IBM tools or application development. Rocket Zena's setup differs depending on the user, with some finding it simpler for beginners but others finding it complicated and necessitating comprehension of various elements.
Pricing: The setup cost for IBM Workload Automation is determined by the customer's contract and can vary depending on the number of agents installed. Rocket Zena is seen as cost-effective and affordable, making it a suitable choice for small companies. The decision to switch from Control-M to Rocket Zena was driven by its lower cost.
ROI: IBM Workload Automation's ROI is uncertain due to the lack of user feedback and real-time data. Rocket Zena has proven to be advantageous for the department by saving time, enhancing accuracy, and delivering a positive return on investment.
Comparison Results: Rocket Zena is the preferred option when compared to IBM Workload Automation. Users appreciate Rocket Zena's simplicity, efficiency, and user-friendly interface. They find it intuitive and easy to use, especially in comparison to other similar products. The diagram feature, cross-platform job scheduling, and web-based client are highly valued by users.
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"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."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years"
"I have used other tools with similar capabilities; it's the ease of use."
"The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer."
"I like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"In the latest upgrade, Zena added a web-based client. The more I use it, the more I like it. It's an excellent interface. They do a good job of steadily improving the solution to make it more useful."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"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."
"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."
"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."
"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."
"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."
"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."
IBM Workload Automation is ranked 13th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews while Rocket Zena is ranked 12th in Workload Automation with 9 reviews. IBM Workload Automation is rated 8.2, while Rocket Zena is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Rocket Zena writes "A continuously evolving, stable solution, with responsive support". IBM Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and ActiveBatch by Redwood, whereas Rocket Zena is most compared with Control-M, Rocket Zeke, AutoSys Workload Automation and ActiveBatch by Redwood. See our IBM Workload Automation vs. Rocket Zena report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
We monitor all Workload Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
