IBM Workload Automation vs Rocket Zena comparison

IBM and Rocket Software are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0, while Rocket Software is ranked #20. IBM holds a 6.9% mindshare in WA, compared to Rocket Software’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Rocket Software users who would recommend it.

IBM Workload Automation

Read 33 IBM Workload Automation reviews

3,669 Views
1,560 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Rocket Zena

Read 8 Rocket Zena reviews

1,457 Views
394 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Workload Automation

Rocket Zena

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

IBM Workload Automation and Rocket Zena are competing in the workload automation category. Rocket Zena holds the edge due to its robust features suitable for diverse business needs.

Features: IBM Workload Automation includes comprehensive scheduling capabilities, integration with various platforms, and predictive analytics, making it ideal for large enterprises. Rocket Zena is recognized for flexible customization, cloud integration, and advanced workflow automation, delivering significant efficiency gains. Its adaptability to complex environments is its standout feature.

Room for Improvement: IBM Workload Automation could improve in areas like user interface simplicity, real-time adaptability, and dynamic job handling. Rocket Zena may enhance features such as initial user learning curve, on-premise support scalability, and further simplification of integration processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Workload Automation features a straightforward deployment model and is praised for its reliable customer service. Rocket Zena offers flexible deployment options and tailored support, ensuring unique business requirements are met. Its personalized approach facilitates smoother integration.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Workload Automation offers a cost-effective setup with a strong ROI due to its competitive pricing and support. Rocket Zena, though more expensive initially, justifies the cost with significant long-term benefits and efficiency improvements reflected in its ROI, which emphasizes sustained value delivery.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Workload Automation vs. Rocket Zena Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Rocket Zena

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 856,874 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

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

Rocket Zena

Ranking in Workload Automation

20th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

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 IBM Workload Automation is 6.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocket Zena is 2.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

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

JuanGonzalez6

IT Solutions Manager at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

A continuously evolving, stable solution, with responsive support

The visual whiteboard for design and execution included with the solution is very crucial to those who are new to Rocket Zena, especially so that the learning curve is minimized and they can focus on accomplishing the task. We process our system's payroll through Rocket Zena. The fact that it's a multi-process, multi-layered application, means that we can rely on the solution for kicking off processes, notifying user vendors of the steps, completions, error logging, and historic events from the previous run times. Rocket Zena's ability to automate jobs on the mainframe as a distribution workload automation solution is good. The solution continuously improves over time. We're eager to start the latest upgrade this coming year that'll put us on the cloud. Hopefully, this will improve the product even more. We can run things natively without the scheduler if needed. The solution working properly and up to date without the need for a mainframe scheduler is crucial. We use the solution to manage a few complex operational workflows end-to-end across multiple technology stacks. Rocket Zena does a great job of simplifying our cross-platform processes through automation. The solution helps speed operations up and keeps them automated allowing us to focus on other priorities. The solution helps increase our completion rates by working overnight to meet our SLAs. Rocket Zena completes 30 percent of our workload outside of our standard work hours. Rocket Zena's cross-platform job scheduling helped us save around 40 percent of programming time by automating repetitive tasks. We use the solution to transfer our current files and keep up with our infrastructure on a few automated jobs, such as refreshing our database which happens overnight. The solution helped free up around 15 percent of our engineer's time to focus on more value-added work.

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 project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."

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

"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 initial setup is easy."

"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."

"Technical support from IBM is very good."

"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."

More IBM Workload Automation pros

"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 like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."

"The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer."

"You can click Ctrl-G and bring a diagram view. You're able to view in a diagram format. The view that it provides is easy, and you can move to the left, up, or down. You can double-click on a certain process. It'll drill into that process and all of its underlying components. You can double-click on an arrow or a component, and it'll bring up a screen that'll have all the variables that are assigned to that particular piece, as well as the values at run time. So, the diagram feature of it, at least for me, is pretty valuable."

"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."

"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."

"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."

Cons

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

"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."

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

"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."

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

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

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

"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."

More IBM Workload Automation cons

"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."

"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."

"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."

"The documentation has room for improvement."

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

"The pricing and the licensing are good. It is affordable and can be used to improve and optimize productivity."

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

856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

33%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

What are some of the things you've done to recession-proof your tech stacks?

Automation can play a pivotal role here. Many users understood that during an economic downturn, they needed to achieve more with limited resources. Automation emerged as a powerful solution to fil...

See all answers

Do you have any tips for managing my company's modernization, without any disruptions?

Today, we will look at the legacy systems, the red flags that point at the system getting old and rusty, and the ways a reliable custom software. This guide: https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/legacy-s...

See all answers

How can hybrid cloud solutions benefit our organization’s infrastructure?

Hybrid cloud solutions can be really beneficial for organizations' infrastructure. The flexibility and versatility they provide can enable users the ability to adapt to changing business needs and ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Automic Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Workload Automation Competitors

Control-M vs Rocket Zena

Compared 50% of the time

Rocket Zeke vs Rocket Zena

Compared 17% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Rocket Zena

Compared 6% of the time

JAMS vs Rocket Zena

Compared 6% of the time

Stonebranch vs Rocket Zena

Compared 4% of the time

More Rocket Zena Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation

June 2025

Download IBM Workload Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

Rocket Zena

May 2025

Download Rocket Zena product report

Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS

ASG-Zena

Overview

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

Rocket Zena automates and schedules tasks across mainframe, Linux, and Windows environments, reducing human errors and managing dependencies.

Rocket Zena serves as a powerful tool for scheduling and automating tasks across multiple platforms. Its capabilities extend to managing batch jobs, ETLs, SFTP transfers, database backups, organizing workflows, running scripts, managing payroll tasks, and customizing schedules to avoid manual interventions. Users benefit from a user-friendly interface and efficient containerized deployment with clear process visualization through diagram and whiteboard features. The platform supports file transfers, automates workflows, saves time, and reduces errors, with straightforward licensing and commendable technical support.

What are the most important features?

User-Friendly Interface: Easy to navigate for efficient task management.
Cross-Platform Job Scheduling: Simplifies task automation across different environments.
Containerized Deployment: Ensures efficient resource use and deployment.
Diagram and Whiteboard Features: Visualizes processes clearly for better understanding.
FTP File Transfers: Facilitates seamless file transfer between systems.
Workflow Automation: Saves time and minimizes errors with automated workflows.
Straightforward Licensing: Offers clear and simple licensing options.
Commendable Technical Support: Provides reliable customer support and assistance.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Reduced Human Errors: Automation lowers the chance of mistakes in repetitive tasks.
Time Savings: Efficient scheduling and automation allow for quicker task completion.
Improved Process Management: Enhanced organization and visualization of workflows.
Dependable Support: Access to reliable technical assistance when needed.

Rocket Zena sees implementations in industries requiring robust task scheduling and automation such as finance for managing payroll and database backups, healthcare for handling ETL operations and workflow organization, and IT for running scripts and managing batch jobs. Adaptation to industry-specific needs showcases its versatility, although users seek improvements in scheduling mapping, UI navigation, and desire cloud availability.

Rocket Software

Sample Customers

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

Fraternidad Muprespa

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Rocket Zena

June 2025

Free Report: IBM Workload Automation vs. Rocket Zena

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Workload Automation vs. Rocket Zena and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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.