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IBM Workload Automation vs Stonebranch comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Stonebranch
Ranking in Workload Automation
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
26
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 Stonebranch is 4.8%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Alberto-Ezquerra - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Siddharth Matalia - PeerSpot reviewer
Good GUI and has helpful support but needs a mobile app
This was a migration project where we provided our database, the previous one, and there was a tool that automatically converted the awarded job into Stonebranch. All the conversion was done from the Stonebranch side, and we got a person as well from Stonebranch during migration. There was a person who worked with us a decade back for the AutoSys install as well. He was well aware of our environment, so he helped us a lot. It was easy. It was not that complex. It is much more GUI. That said, we are looking for how the various automation can be done since, through command lines, you can create a number of jobs. While you are creating a single job, it takes 15 minutes with the GUI, however, if you go for the command line, within two or three minutes, your job gets completed. We have built our own solution for automation using some REST API and all those various integrations. It is working for our organization right now. However, we are requesting some kind of solution from Stonebranch. They should have been providing that to us already. For deployment, three or four people were engaged with the setup on their side. To manage everything, they provided us with a person who required help to manage it. Eventually, since it was a cloud platform on their side, if there is some configuration necessary, which they do it. They get a notification, and they fix it very immediately if there is an issue. The response time is very good from their side, and we don't have to worry about maintenance.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"It offers features like MDM and a Windows workstation, although there are some technical dependencies. It is more user-friendly and also includes failover and failback capabilities. While both systems offer high availability, Control-M's high availability is superior to AWS's."
"The initial setup is easy."
"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 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."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"We lean a lot on the multi-tenancy that they offer within the product, the ability to get other people to self-manage their estate, versus having a central team do all the scheduling."
"I have found the agents to be so much simpler, when compared to ESP."
"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."
"We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line."
"I can name the aliases on the agent, so if we need a passive environment for an agent, that's one of the nice features. If our primary goes down, I can bring up the passive one and I don't have to change anything in the scheduling world. It will start running from that new server."
"The Universal Agent is the most valuable feature. Being agent-based and being able to go across multiple technology stacks, which is what our workflows do, Stonebranch gives us the ability to bridge those disparate technologies. It enables us to remove the dependency-gap with the agent so we know the status of the workflow at each step."
"The ability to monitor tasks that are on the open-system side as well as our mainframe side gives us a one-window view of all our processes."
"Stonebranch performs well, and the graphical representation is excellent. Overall, it requires more technical effort from our teams, but the solution is intuitive, so anybody can use it."
 

Cons

"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."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"To improve IBM Workload Automation, I suggest enhancing automation features further, as more automation would be beneficial. The product is good enough for my current customers, but improving technical support and pricing would be welcome. We often need quicker responses and better solutions than we can manage manually. These improvements would make the product even better."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"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."
"It would be ideal if they had the exact same features as the CA Workload Automation DE series. It would be helpful to have calendaring options."
"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."
"It can't handle negative written codes."
"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."
"It can be hard to manage the task monitor."
"It's not available on the cloud, so they should take that due to safety, security, and scalability."
"There is a component called the OMS, which is the message broker. We rely on infrastructure, resiliency, and availability for that piece. If that could change to be highly available just as a software component, so that we don't have to provide the high-available storage, etc. for it, that would be a plus. It would just be cheaper to run."
"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"The price of the solution is at a medium level compared to the competition."
"I don't have pricing information, but I do know it's cheaper than our old legacy system. Other than the standard licensing fees there are no additional costs."
"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."
"Stonebranch is cheaper than Control-M, so many companies are using Stonebranch."
"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
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Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
Stonebranch Universal Automation Center
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
Nissan, Coop, United Supermarkets, Groupon, CSC, Orbitz, Johnson & Johnson, BMW, Qantas.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Workload Automation vs. Stonebranch and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.