AutoSys Workload Automation vs OpCon vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

Broadcom and SMA Technologies are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Broadcom is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.0, while SMA Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.1. Broadcom holds a 10.2% mindshare in WA, compared to SMA Technologies’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of SMA Technologies users who would recommend it.

AutoSys Workload Automation

Read 84 AutoSys Workload Automation reviews

6,583 Views
5,793 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

OpCon

Read 59 OpCon reviews

1,926 Views
1,733 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

AutoSys Workload Automation

OpCon

Tidal by Redwood

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AutoSys Workload Automation, OpCon, and Tidal by Redwood based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation.

To learn more, read our detailed Workload Automation Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Workload Automation

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 867,349 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AutoSys Workload Automation is 10.2%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpCon is 1.7%, down from 2.1% 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 (%)
AutoSys Workload Automation	10.2%
OpCon	1.7%
Tidal by Redwood	4.7%
Other	83.4%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Antony Askew

Technical Lead at Natwest

Helps us manage complex workloads, reduce our workload failure rates, and save us time

The visibility and control features are somewhat limited. This is a recognized weakness, but thee vendor is currently revamping the user interface to address it. While the current UI is a bit outdated, it's undergoing improvement. AutoSys Workload Automation has some areas for improvement, particularly in housekeeping and product maintenance. These tasks are currently quite manual and labor-intensive for our team. Additionally, the reporting and forecasting functionalities could be more robust. One area for improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation is that it comprises several distinct tools configured to work together. This necessitates familiarity with multiple tools for effective solution management. Consequently, it can sometimes lack a sense of cohesiveness as a unified solution.

Read full review

Jose Rivera Hernandez

Senior VP of Technology at Triangle Credit Union

Helps automate all kinds of jobs and it's worth the price because it saves a lot of time and money

One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has failed, and they restart it on their end, so now, we have the job restarting twice. There were times when we came into the office in the morning, and we had two files because the job ran twice. I do not know if the system can prevent a job from running the second time. If a job has run successfully, or it is running, it should not run again.

Read full review

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

"CA Workload Automation AutoSys Edition is one of the most powerful schedulers that you have on the open systems, or going between Window servers; to be able to schedule and take advantage of the different powers that the automation has with it."

"The most valuable aspects of AutoSys Workload Automation are its performance, scalability, and ease of getting started for new users."

"The most valuable feature of AutoSys Workload Automation is batch processing."

"Inherit Dependencies feature reduces scheduling errors for holiday processing."

"The flexibility in solving job scheduling challenges allows us to successfully integrate an acquired business’ fiscal close with our own, even though there is a lot of variance as to when they run in the calendar month."

"We use technical support all the time. We would be lost without them. They're fantastic. Really good job. We're able to reach the right person to help us out right away."

"Without this product we would have to manually submit jobs and it would take longer. There would also be a much greater possibility of jobs running wrong and/or not at the right time."

"AutoSys significantly reduces manual effort."

More AutoSys Workload Automation pros

"Manual processing has been automated 99 percent by OpCon. With new processes, we give it at least two weeks manual so we can write down the details of how to do the steps, then we automate it. Within a month, it has been automated, then it's no longer a manual process."

"The automation of processes is the most valuable feature. One of the major hurdles for us over the last few years, before we found OpCon, was to make our nightly process happen automatically. Being a bank, we have nightly update processes that have to happen for posting transactions, for example, and it was a huge load off our department to have that automated."

"Auto-scheduling is the most valuable feature. We have the ability to schedule [batch jobs on our Unisys mainframes] seven days in advance, so we know exactly how we're running every night."

"I rate OpCon support 10 out of 10. I've never had a problem with them. I've always been able to get answers quickly and always seem to find a knowledgeable person to assist with any questions."

"Previously, we would receive a file from a vendor, then we would have to go through and make changes to individual accounts in our core system. There are probably between 10 to 20 accounts any given week. It probably took around five minutes for it to run through the report and make all the changes, and that was if there was nothing complicated with all very straightforward changes. Now, that is done in 30 seconds."

"Reliability is always important, and the reliability of the system is outstanding."

"Coming from the Control-M world, one of the things I like about OpCon is that I can sometimes do complex tasks with simple jobs."

"We have found it scales very well. We run thousands of thousands of jobs every day, and sometimes thousands of jobs in a few hours."

More OpCon pros

"From a management standpoint, when using the solution for cross-platform, cross-application workloads, I've never had a problem with the application. It's very interactive, especially with the different security levels that they offer."

"It has been super stable. There are no complaints on stability. We would not be using it if Tidal wasn't stable."

"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."

"By leveraging machine learning algorithms, Tidal Automation can use this data to optimize turbine settings and improve overall efficiency and performance."

"It saves times due to automation. With some files, we do hundreds a day for a particular vendor. This would be hard to do manually. Also, the speed at which we can do this is excellent."

"The feature that I find to be valuable, as I'm working with other folks, is the ability to cross-schedule across platforms, and the flexibility that comes with that."

"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."

"The versatility of being able to run on many different types of servers is valuable. There is also a versatility of different services that you could run jobs on. It's highly versatile. You can run a lot of different types of scripts on a lot of different types of servers. It interfaces with all of them."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

"Most AutoSys Workload Automation customers are moving because of cost; it is more cost intrusive."

"AutoSys Workload Automation could improve in the Linux environment. The previous versions of the AutoSys Workload Automation let you take the profile of the user that you were using to run the tasks that you're going to automate, but in the latest versions, you can't do that, you need to make more definitions and it's a little bit difficult. It was easier in the previous versions."

"They could do better supporting it. They have too many of the same type of products, so sometimes it doesn't get as much attention as it should."

"This product needs to improve its graphical user interface."

"I would like to see the Service Orchestrator, a B2B product, and maybe a process audit."

"The GUI/Workstation is weak and needs to be improved. CA is working on this right now."

"In terms of what should be in the next release, I want integration and AI and so on. I'd like easy reporting where you can compare information, for example, "that job normally takes three minutes and last time it took six minutes or 10 minutes." Then you can get the information to the engineer of which job is taking more time than normal - understanding strange behavior compared to the baseline."

"It lacks support and integration with cloud computing platforms."

More AutoSys Workload Automation cons

"The logs are a little daunting to look at the first few times, however, as you begin to understand what you're looking at, it becomes easier."

"The image-scanning features need improvement."

"The UI refresh rate is really bad and needs improvement."

"It does not have the ability to interact with third-parties via the web/Internet. We have certain processes where we have to interact with a third-party on a website, and unfortunately OpCon just cannot do that."

"The one area it needs some help in is the mainframe area because that is not its strength. They support the mainframe but it's not something that they are good at."

"There is room for improvement needed around setting up the calendars and frequencies. I would like more flexibility in what jobs run. Sometimes, with frequencies, I can't find what I want to without putting a little more labor into it."

"The way to view a schedule is called perch view, and that's not always the greatest. It can be quite slow."

"I would like to see OpCon being accessible using a mobile app."

More OpCon cons

"To better fit their unique needs, the solution should give more customization options."

"One of the weaknesses of the product is, when something happens, it's difficult to find out the root cause. There are a lot of logs you can take a look at in Tidal. Sometimes, they are useful, but other times, they're not. That is mostly relegated to the administrative team. Users for the most part don't see that and don't know anything about that. They just know they have a problem, then it's up to the administrative team to see what happened and figure out the problem."

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

"Tidal's adaptability and user-friendliness could be increased by integrating it with additional programmes and platforms."

"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."

"With the client, we have had certain issues. The user interface for Tidal is a little slow. A lot of people would love this tool if they had a faster user interface. The drill-down functionality should be much quicker than what it is pulling out now. If I fill out some data, then it takes awhile to get that data back onto the screen. It's not as fast as we were expecting."

"The job failure alerts can be updated with more details for better troubleshooting."

"I don't know if Tidal wants to get into the business of monitoring long-running jobs, but that could be a feature for the future: a job launching and monitoring tool. Using Tidal for monitoring doesn't seem like a good fit, but if they could offer something that did that as an add-on or include it, it might be helpful."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Validate how many agents you need beforehand."

"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."

"People need to pay attention to how they use their ESP agents on the distributed platform. That's where some of the cost comes in, based on how many you need or how many you use."

"It is overpriced."

"CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all."

"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."

"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."

"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."

More AutoSys Workload Automation pricing and cost advice

"It used to be per machine, so we had X number of devices licensed. Now it's not. If we had a lot of machines, the new license might've decreased the cost. Unfortunately, we didn't see the same gains."

"I believe our cost is about $150,000 annually."

"OpCon cost us $80,000 in 2017 money, and that included everything: support, installation, onsite assistance during the conversion, etc. It's been a worthwhile investment by far."

"Yearly, we're paying about $62,000. OpCon has an all-inclusive feature and module license, but you pay per task."

"Yearly, it's around $30,000."

"If we choose to purchase consulting hours, that is an additional cost. However, we've been lucky enough that we've not used all of our allotted consulting hours. Therefore, that is not something that we have had to purchase a lot of. The last time that we purchased consulting hours was roughly two years ago. We purchased a block of 10 for $2,500. It was $250 per hour."

"While the base pricing is reasonable, the à la carte options are making the overall cost more complicated and potentially problematic."

"There are different add-ons, like the Self Service or Vision model. It all depends on what agents you have in your environment. We have a mainframe and Windows, and while I think SQL is free, SAP or anything beyond that has different connectors that might need a license."

More OpCon pricing and cost advice

"...it is a pretty affordable scheduler tool that lets us do a lot. You get a lot of bang for the buck... The licensing model is hugely flexible."

"The solution enables admins and users to see the information relevant to them, but this is bundled as an add-on that we would have to pay for."

"Right now, we are in a good position with the licensing model that we have with the Tidal vendor. So, we won't have any issues. even if we double in our current production. Initially, Tidal provided us some specs where if you have these number of jobs, then you come under this category. They usually provide a range of jobs from 2,000 to 10,000. You can use these specs for your infrastructure. Whether you have 2,000 or 8,000 jobs, Tidal should support it."

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

"Our annual maintenance cost is competitive for what we have and what they do."

"The solution has no hidden costs. It helps me to plan forward into the future. I know that I can add another 100 or a thousand jobs, and that's how much it will cost me today."

"This solution is a bit expensive in the current world where everybody is trying to cut down on certain things."

"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."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

46%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

45%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Non Profit

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	13
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	77

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	29
Large Enterprise	19

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

Questions from the Community

How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?

Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful b...

See all answers

What do you like most about AutoSys Workload Automation?

The most valuable aspects of AutoSys Workload Automation are its performance, scalability, and ease of getting starte...

See all answers

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

The solution is costly. The pricing is based on the number of users, which for me, translates to approximately $120,0...

See all answers

What do you like most about OpCon?

My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and pro...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpCon?

I am the one who signs the contract. In the beginning, when I started working here, it seemed very expensive, but aft...

See all answers

What needs improvement with OpCon?

One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically...

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 a...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs AutoSys Workload Automation

Compared 31% of the time

Automic Automation vs AutoSys Workload Automation

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs AutoSys Workload Automation

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs AutoSys Workload Automation

Compared 5% of the time

More AutoSys Workload Automation Competitors

Control-M vs OpCon

Compared 30% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs OpCon

Compared 11% of the time

VisualCron vs OpCon

Compared 11% of the time

UiPath Platform vs OpCon

Compared 8% of the time

Stonebranch vs OpCon

Compared 5% of the time

More OpCon Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 31% 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

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 2% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AutoSys Workload Automation

September 2025

Download AutoSys Workload Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

OpCon

August 2025

Download OpCon product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

August 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE

No data available

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Overview

AutoSys Workload Automation efficiently manages complex workloads across platforms, offering high availability and seamless platform integration. Its reliability and scalability are valued for enterprise-level automation, enhancing job management and reducing manual effort with robust scheduling and advanced security.

AutoSys Workload Automation is known for its user-friendly capabilities, effectively handling cross-platform job scheduling with mainframe integration. It supports high availability, ensuring reliable performance for critical operations. Despite enhancements needed in its GUI and integration capabilities, AutoSys remains effective for batch processing, file transfers, ETL, and managing dependencies across servers and applications. Improvements are suggested for deployment complexity and monitoring features. More effective licensing and scalability solutions, along with modern subscription models and cloud integration, could address cost and automation barriers.

What are AutoSys Workload Automation's key features?

Robust Scheduling: Automates job scheduling across multiple platforms efficiently.
Advanced Security: Ensures secure management of workloads.
High Availability: Maintains performance during critical operations.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly integrates with diverse systems.
Scalability: Supports growing enterprise demands.

What benefits should users expect from AutoSys Workload Automation?

Reduced Manual Effort: Minimizes manual task management.
Enhanced Job Management: Improves oversight and control over job processes.
Flexibility in Scheduling: Offers adaptable scheduling and monitoring options.
Reliability: Consistent job execution without failures.
Security: Protects enterprise-level operations.

In industries like banking, insurance, and retail, AutoSys Workload Automation facilitates 24/7 automated job execution, ensuring smooth task automation. It allows companies to manage enterprise workloads effectively, catering to batch processing, file transfers, and handling job dependencies in a consistent manner.

Broadcom

OpCon enhances automation with features like auto-scheduling and Corelation KeyStone integration, empowering users with self-service capabilities. Its intuitive interface and flexibility boost productivity, providing reliable automation and efficient file transfers.

OpCon is a powerful automation platform known for streamlining operations through features like auto-scheduling and robust integration capabilities. It facilitates seamless automation, allowing users to execute tasks without direct environment access and simplifies job dependencies. Users benefit from self-service capabilities, which enable easy task execution by non-IT staff, reducing errors and human intervention. With its modern interface, OpCon supports efficient file transfers and integrates effectively with multiple systems, enhancing productivity. While offering significant scalability, OpCon users suggest improvements in web functionality, script-writing, and graphical displays, along with enhancements in user authorization and notification systems. There is also a need for better template management, clearer logging, improved mobile accessibility, and expanded training resources.

What are OpCon's Key Features?

Auto-scheduling: Efficiently automates task scheduling.
Corelation KeyStone Integration: Allows for automation without direct environment access.
Self-service Capabilities: Enables non-IT users to execute tasks with ease.
Modern Interface: Simplifies job dependencies and task management.
File Transfers: Supports secure and efficient file management.
Flexibility: Integrates with diverse systems to boost productivity.

What ROI Can Users Expect?

Increased Productivity: Automation reduces manual task dependency.
Error Reduction: Streamlined processes minimize human intervention.
Scalability: Supports growing business needs effectively.
Time Savings: Frees up resources for strategic initiatives.

OpCon is widely used in industries like financial services, where automation and scheduling tasks are critical. Financial institutions rely on OpCon for core processing tasks, including reporting, automated workflows, and vendor file exchanges. The platform handles high volumes of jobs across platforms, ensuring efficient operations and reducing reliance on manual processes.

SMA Technologies

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

Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life

LOHR, Carnival Cruise Lines, Herbalife, Digital Federal Credit Union, Synergent, Frandsen Bank & Trust

Information Not Available

Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.