IBM Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

IBM and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. IBM is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.3. IBM holds a 6.9% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

IBM Workload Automation

Read 33 IBM Workload Automation reviews

3,667 Views
2,361 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Tidal by Redwood

Read 37 Tidal by Redwood reviews

2,525 Views
1,207 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Workload Automation

Tidal by Redwood

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

IBM Workload Automation and Tidal by Redwood compete in enterprise workload management, with Tidal leading due to its flexible reporting features and superior long-term value, despite being costlier.

Features: IBM Workload Automation offers a cloud-native architecture supporting hybrid workloads, scalable solutions, and seamless integration capabilities. Tidal by Redwood features advanced scheduling, robust analytics tools, and comprehensive reporting with detailed job analysis.

Room for Improvement: IBM Workload Automation could improve by enhancing user-friendly reporting, broadening analytics tools, and simplifying its complex configuration. Tidal by Redwood might work on reducing setup complexity, integrating cost-effective solutions, and expanding third-party software compatibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Workload Automation provides flexible deployment with extensive documentation, while Tidal by Redwood ensures a straightforward implementation process supported by exceptional customer service, making it an attractive choice for minimal disruption and fast integration.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Workload Automation presents moderate setup costs offering strong ROI through efficient processing. Tidal by Redwood demands higher initial investment but offers superior long-term ROI with enhanced functionality and customer support, justifying the expenditure for feature depth and service quality prioritization.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood

April 2025

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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

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tidal by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

10th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 6.9%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 3.9%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes

Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"IBM Workload Automation provides good performance and monitoring."

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

More IBM Workload Automation pros

"The most valuable feature is the job scheduler, where you can schedule thousands of jobs to execute at specific times."

"Tidal Automation allows organizations to automate complex workflows and processes, reducing the need for manual intervention and improving operational efficiency."

"Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution."

"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."

"Tidal helps administrators and users to see the information that is relevant to them in that single pane of glass. They can see jobs running, they can see job history, and they can see job progression. If you look at alternatives like Airflow and clouds, you'd have to design your own UI to monitor the progress of the different jobs that you've created in Airflow. So Tidal is huge for us."

"The job dependency is something that you cannot have in a regular, simple cron job or simple scheduler dependency. The event-driven jobs are core for us, as we really need that. Therefore, we really need Tidal with its ability to run thousands of jobs per day."

"We wouldn't be able to do many of the complex scheduling that we do today without it. For us, it is a mission-critical app. Because if it doesn't work or has a problem, then SAP doesn't function. It is that critical. So, it's an essential tool for us to manage and run SAP jobs."

"Especially in the newer versions of Tidal, the segmentation of user permissions enables us to give people operator permissions for their jobs, to rerun jobs, but view-only for other groups' jobs. We're able to keep people from hurting themselves or other groups accidentally. The permissioning is really good."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

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

"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."

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

"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."

"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 performance of the previous versions could be better."

"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."

"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."

More IBM Workload Automation cons

"One area for improvement is the command-line interface and the API to bulk-load jobs. It's a little bit kludgy, but we still manage without it. They're working on it and it's getting better all the time. In addition, the documentation for their API for creating jobs needs to be updated. It's a bit of a learning curve."

"Their software installation and update process could use some improvements. I'm pretty sure they're working on that, but that's definitely an area where it could be streamlined a lot. There's still a lot of manual work that you have to do with the schedule when you deploy masters or do the agents."

"The UI might have the potential to provide a more polished and user-centric encounter, promoting seamless engagements and simplifying the navigation process for individuals interacting with the software."

"We've had some quirky stuff happen on an occasional basis where a job does not take off. For example, a job we expected to be finished by 3:00 a.m. is sitting there and not executing when we come in in the morning. We have to go all the way back to the dependencies and then we can see that one of the dependencies has become unscheduled, for some reason. No changes were made to the schedule but this prerequisite job has, all of a sudden, become unscheduled. I have brought this up with Tidal's support but they have never had an answer for it."

"There are several improvement points that our team has provided to the vendor."

"The product’s UI is outdated. They should work on this particular area."

"The software's performance and scalability could be improved, particularly when dealing with large-scale workloads or complex business processes."

"When we patch to the next version, there is often a little thing that breaks. It has rarely been a big deal, but I always seem to have to follow up on one tiny issue. It would help if they had some better QA testing of their patches."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

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

"The solution's pricing is affordable."

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

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

"I have had no issues with the licensing."

"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."

"The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality."

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

"The licensing model's flexibility is awesome. The way it's licensed for us is that it's licensed per master and then per agent. We have an enterprise agreement, so we have unlimited agents, and we have it on 500 devices."

"We pay maintenance annually through Blue House of about $9,000. That's for our two environments: production and test."

"Our yearly licensing costs are between $10,000 to $20,000. They have always been reasonable with us. I like that non-production licensing is about half the cost of production licensing. Licensing is by adapter typically. We have had scenarios where we have had to take an adapter from one environment to another, and they've allowed us to do that. They have made it a very reasonable process. There's definitely a feeling that they will work with you."

"If you are willing to shop around to other vendors, you can possibly get a good price on your support license."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

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 needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach. For example, IBM still refers to machines as 'workstations,' whereas other systems, like Control-M, use m...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?

We use the solution for network automation.

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 and configuration of the software is a bit complicated. Providing the training vi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 29% of the time

HCL Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 19% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM Workload Automation Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 43% of the time

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 23% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 7% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 5% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation

April 2025

Download IBM Workload Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

April 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

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

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

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood

April 2025

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