ActiveBatch Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood

Any large business or organisation that wants to manage their workload effectively and with the least amount of room for error might choose the ActiveBatch Automation tool. Being a consultant I feel that It aids in task automation and has the flexibility to change in response to varying company requirements. It helps to save huge time by doing all the repetitive tasks on daily basis. During the patching activity the schedulers can be stopped. It also help by alerting us if any system/job is down so that SLA can be saved. Overall ActiveBatch Automation stands as a dependable cornerstone for ensuring the seamless operation of our tasks.

Incentivized

1. Tidal Automation is a super robust application for Regular SQL tasks or other file maintenance which in-turn can help employee's to free up their time which they spend on working on repetitive tasks. 2.This has significantly reduced the time and effort required for setting up and managing workflows, ultimately increasing productivity. 3. Although we faced few problems while integrating the software with existing systems and was time consuming.

Incentivized

• Makes scheduling easy to understand, follow, and rerun jobs when necessary.
• Allows for cross-team coordination of scheduled tasks which reduces errors.
• Makes stopping jobs easy when needed for server/database downtime.
• Scripting enables us to easily change email addresses for failed job alerts.
• Nested plans/jobs make creating and changing dependencies simple.

Incentivized

• Tidal Automation is good in it's integration with Oracle ERP
• Tidal Automation was robust enough to perform all the workloads smoothly on SAP Integrations.
• Tidal Automation has the robust HA and DR features
• Tidal Automation has the best and simple user interface.
• Tidal Automation documentation is the best compared to other Workload Automation solutions in the market.

Incentivized

• String handling / parsing. I find myself using PowerShell to do a fair amount of text parsing (particularly if manipulations are needed) - not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly a place where ActiveBatch could be improved.
• Debugging - or lack of it! With no stepping debugger, it can be a longer process than many other programming / scripting environments: rather than simply stepping through and observing state changes, I find myself inserting logging steps to excess, then having to clean them up once the error is found.
• The perennial - Documentation! While a near-universal complaint for *any* software, ActiveBatch's developer documentation is somewhat spotty - just where I need detail, I find summary-level info. There is lots of documentation (as there should be for a tool with such a wide range of applications), but it is in mixed formats (some PDF, some CHM), and the descriptions of specific fields within job steps is often little more than I can get in a tool-tip in the GUI. Allowable ranges, expected formats for string data, and similar helpful details are inconsistent.
• The KnowledgeBase at ASCI's web site often has examples which answer the questions I have, but not always - and not always under the search terms one would think to use.

• Still a bit slow when navigating. If you close a job you have to wait a few seconds to open another one. Even when you made no changes.
• When viewing a job and make no changes, the "ok" button changes the last modified date as if you made a change. No big deal, but wastes time when troubleshooting a problem and looking into what jobs were changed last.
• You can see the parameters column in the "job activity", but not in "Job definitions".
• Can't search the parameters field in the filter.
• Changing a variable name does not change it on the job. It still works because Tidal Automation uses the ID number. It just causes confusion when you see a variable on a job and can't find the variable under "Variables". On top of that, Tidal Automation does not show the ID column under "Variables" making it even more difficult to find the variable.

We are on the fence. The increased pricing for renewals is staggering. With new automation options like Microsoft's Power Automate and Event Driven Ansible on the field, there are other options now available.

We can easily add new plans/jobs in our batch schedules. Also, coordination with reporting and QA jobs is simple to do. Building schedules, restarting jobs, triggering dependencies is easy to understand. The system is very stable and allows us to easily see overall processing times.

Incentivized

My colleague contacted them directly, I only know hearsay on this but it was not good.

Incentivized

Having provided consulting services for years on Tidal by Redwood, I recommend going with a solutions partner or consultant to deploy it. I believe there are sizing and tuning guidelines that should be followed for environments of scale. I believe they are not critical when first lighting up the product, but if you are not aware of them you will encounter performance degradation after a few thousand job objects are added.

The workload automation solution is based on the specific needs of an organization, as well as the features, capabilities, and costs of various solutions. A thorough evaluation process and consideration of these factors can help ensure the selection of a solution that aligns with overall business objectives and meets the specific needs of the organization.

Incentivized

Tidal by Redwood excels at performing complex workflows, event-driven automation, and compliance-focused procedures in big companies with varied IT infrastructures. This includes claims, policy, and billing processes are included in this. The sending of our documents and checks to our printers for automatic printing has also been automated with TA. The majority of our regular file transfers to and from our company are done utilizing TA and SFTP. Key characteristics:- Control over access and security. Resource management and error correction. Tools for reporting and observing. Capacity for extensive automation and job scheduling. Scalability for large enterprises. Orchestration of workflow for intricate operations. Uses:- A good fit for big businesses with complicated IT environments. Ideal for managing dependencies and automating complex operations. effective at organizing cross-platform and system functions. strong support for governance and compliance.

Incentivized

• ActiveBatch can automate intricate procedures and minimise manual involvement, which can boost an organization's production and efficiency.
• Organisations can save money by using ActiveBatch to automate operations, which lowers the expenses of manual labour and potential mistakes.
• Implementing ActiveBatch could come with hefty up-front expenses including licencing, instruction, and consultancy fees, which could have a short-term negative impact on ROI.

• It has a positive impact on factors like increase in productivity, easy to implement as there some options pre-built in it which automates and perform.
• It also reduces human error mostly as it involve less manual performance and tool is time saving in this perspective.
• It also has negative impacts like cost of the tool as its expensive and if it's not properly utilized it may lead huge revenue loss as all will be scheduled per plan.
• We have to continually monitor its effectiveness to ensure a positive return on investment.