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IBM Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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
Tidal by Redwood
Ranking in Workload Automation
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 6.2%, down from 8.4% 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
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Workload Automation6.2%
Tidal by Redwood4.7%
Other89.1%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Ilhami Arikan - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Steve Mikula - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is easy."
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"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."
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"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 solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis."
"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."
"Tidal integrates with other third-party systems, which makes it easy to connect and exchange data."
"It has been super stable. There are no complaints on stability. We would not be using it if Tidal wasn't stable."
"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 most valuable feature is the job scheduler, where you can schedule thousands of jobs to execute at specific times."
"With other tools, you do not have the ability to schedule jobs on their own. You need to create a group and then assign everything to that group. Only then will the job be able to execute. In Tidal, you can schedule a single job and there is no need to create a group. That's what I like the most."
"For us, the calendaring system is very robust. Some of the teams have very specific requests for when they need jobs to run. That's been really valuable, because a lot of times, when people run scripts, if they run on a holiday, they're going to fail... A couple of times a month it probably saves us work and the necessity of logging in from home and checking to make sure everything's okay."
"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."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly, and a lower cost would be beneficial."
"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."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."
"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."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"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."
"I know they are working on it, but there needs to be better reporting. Currently, there are only three or four reports that we can get off of the system. That needs to be improved. They already have a solution to this in the new version. I.e., a schedule of all the jobs running for one day, specifically calling out what dependencies that job relies on. It would be like a flow chart of how the day's jobs would run."
"It takes a lot of time to learn the product. I have admins and developers who are working on the products for the last three to four years and still don't know all the functionalities. Tidal has really great things about it, but people are focused on their day-to-day job and the solution is not intuitive."
"Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation."
"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 solution needs more advanced reporting and data visualization capabilities to enable deeper analysis of job performance and trends."
"They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting."
"Tidal Automation could be further integrated with other systems used in the operation of tidal energy systems, such as weather forecasting tools, energy management systems, or asset management software."
"Some users have complained that the initial setup process is complicated and time-consuming, while others have suggested that the software could offer more freedom in customizing processes."
 

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."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"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."
"We pay maintenance annually through Blue House of about $9,000. That's for our two environments: production and test."
"Our licensing model for Tidal is on an annual basis. It is very good and works well for us. Tidal's licensing is very transparent and simple. It lets you know, for the amount you use, that's the price that you pay. So, we buy X number of licenses, and we know that this is where we are. I'm very happy with that. I saw the licensing modules on other platforms, and I didn't like them. Other companies and solutions would calculate the connections, adapters, and instances. I think that's the reason that BMC was pretty expensive: They just didn't understand what our needs are."
"Their pricing seems very fair. It is more than the other solutions, but the functionality and the support are very much there. You pay for the job scheduler, and then they have certain things that are built into it, such as the FTP processes. If you then want to do JD Edwards jobs, you need an adapter. If you want to do SQL jobs, there is another adapter. Similarly, if you want to do Oracle jobs, there is an adapter. It is like there is the base and then there are the adapters for the jobs that you want to do, but it seems that's also how they pay for each of those adapters and keep them up to date."
"There have been pricing increases, but with the reduction that our company obtained from Tidal this year, the pricing has become very acceptable for this type of product."
"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."
"There are project, system, and server costs. Some of the things that they are doing is introducing new products. They are introducing what they call their Repository, which is a way for you to move a job. That doesn't cost anything to us, because it is reusing a tool called Transporter. The repository is the successor to Transporter, so we already own it and are sort of grandfathered in. But that new product requires a server and database, so now we have to go out and get a server and database. So, there is a cost there."
"They work with you on licensing. So, it has been great. Everybody has different licensing, but I've had good luck with the licensing. They've been very accommodating. You basically need to buy a license for each physical server, but then you're allowed an unlimited number of virtual servers."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise38
 

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...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Workload Automation?
I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product. However, the cost is a concern. The product features a master-slave setup that ensures continuity during failures....
What do you like most about Tidal Automation?
Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?
The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.
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...
 

Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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