We use the solution for kicking off Oracle products such as the PeopleSoft Process Scheduler, and then we also use the solution for managing files on the Windows infrastructure.
Rocket Zena offers scheduling and dependency mapping, intuitive interface, and containerized deployment. It simplifies workflow automation, enhancing efficiency across platforms.



| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Rocket Zena | 3.0% |
| Control-M | 11.4% |
| AutoSys Workload Automation | 6.8% |
| Other | 78.8% |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control-M | 4.4 | 11.4% | 98% | 202 interviewsAdd to research |
| MuleSoft Anypoint Platform | 4.0 | 2.5% | 92% | 62 interviewsAdd to research |
Rocket Zena offers flexible pricing tailored for enterprise needs. The vendor provides a competitive standard package with premium add-ons for advanced features. User feedback indicates that the solution delivers strong value for its cost, though some suggest considering the total investment required for full functionality. Budget considerations should account for initial setup, ongoing support, and potential customization. Pricing transparency from vendor assists in making informed decisions.
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 5 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 96 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 26 |
| Large Enterprise | 162 |
Rocket Zena's strengths lie in its scheduling capabilities, graphical interface, and efficient deployment. It supports users in task management with cross-platform scheduling, streamlining repetitive tasks through automation. The web-based client facilitates process visualization and workflow management, while the notification system enhances task handling. Users can manage mainframe, Linux, and Windows environments while integrating with SAP and Oracle, ensuring comprehensive automation and efficient job execution.
What are the key features of Rocket Zena?In industries like finance and manufacturing, Rocket Zena plays a vital role in scheduling batch jobs and automating file transfers. It helps adapt task scheduling to business calendars and integrate with existing platforms, ensuring a smooth workflow that meets business objectives.
Rocket Zena was previously known as ASG-Zena.
Fraternidad Muprespa
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| IT Solutions Manager at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees | 4.5 | We use Rocket Zena for managing Oracle products and find the FTP file transfer feature valuable. While the current version's graphical interfaces are complicated and documentation is lacking, we have achieved ROI through process automation and reduced stress on our team. |
| RPA Developer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees | 4.0 | I use Rocket Zena for file transfers, RPA, and email scheduling. Its user-friendly interface and helpful notifications are great, though server communication needs improvement. Zena's informative tools facilitate effective process management, making it essential for my tasks. |
| Sr. IT Product Manager at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees | 4.5 | I used Rocket Zena for 15 years for task automation, praising its intuitive diagram UI. We're reluctantly moving to Control-M as Zena is off support, despite its stability and my preference. |
| System administrator at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees | 4.5 | We use Rocket Zena to schedule various scripts, finding its web-based client and whiteboard features valuable for process visualization. While the task stacking in the web interface is cumbersome, the overall time savings make it indispensable for our company. |
| Mainframe System Programmer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees | 4.0 | Rocket Zena is an easy-to-use mainframe-based job scheduler ideal for file transfers, automation, and managing jobs. While its licensing and support are beneficial, I wish it were available on the cloud to expand its usability beyond on-premises platforms. |
| DevOps Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees | 3.5 | We use Rocket Zena for SFTP transfers and job scheduling, finding its containerized deployment efficient but with a learning curve. Improvements in the UI and direct RPM package solutions would enhance usability. Rocket Zena increases efficiency and automates complex workflows. |
| Enterprise Business Intelligence Administration and Management at a government with 11-50 employees | 4.0 | I find ASG-Zena stable and reliable for dependency-based scheduling with good visualization. However, its disjointed mapping and agent licensing are issues. My organization is migrating from this mainframe product for better control and future architectural alignment. |
| IT Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees | 5.0 | I've used ASG-Zena for ten years for batch job scheduling, finding it stable, scalable, and reliable. While initial setup was complex, it keeps our business running 24/7. I highly recommend it, though UI improvements are desired. |

We use the solution for kicking off Oracle products such as the PeopleSoft Process Scheduler, and then we also use the solution for managing files on the Windows infrastructure.
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.
The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer.
With the current on-prem version of the solution we use now, the graphical interfaces are complicated and a bit difficult to work with, but I understand the new web cloud version is much more user-friendly.
The documentation has room for improvement. With the solution, it is really difficult to find any sort of guide or documentation on the full capabilities of Rocket Zena. At least to our knowledge. We haven't seen much support from that.
I have been using the solution for three years.
I appreciate the solution's stability. Rocket Zena has been up to date with the support and certification.
We definitely have plans to increase the usage. We constantly look for ways to improve. Automated assistance with DNAC will continue to be a part of that.
The customer service is pretty responsive. Every time we've had a problem, someone's been available to be on the phone with us.
Positive
The implementation was completed with the help of a consultant.
Our department has seen a return on investment with the solution. We rely on Rocket Zena for a lot including automating overnight processes. The solution definitely helped release some of the stress on our engineers and administrators.
I give the solution a nine out of ten.
We have, to my knowledge, about seven or eight users. A lot of them are part of my team and we use the solution for PeopleSoft. Some database administrators use it for database backups, and scheduling backups, and then our server team may use it for other reporting purposes.
I usually tell others about the flexibility of the solution, the powerful tools that Rocket Zena has to connect with different applications, and its stability.
I recommend new users definitely request demos of the solution and consider support from Rocket Zena as part of the implementation process. This will ensure that they are able to get the most out of their investment.
I learned that with Rocket Zena, there is always additional functionality that I'm not aware of but I can always reach out to support and explain to them what our ideas are and they make it happen with a patch.

I have been using the solution for file transfers, scheduling my RPA processes, and email scheduling.
There are some RPA tasks that I need to use on a daily basis. They have to be scheduled for 4:00 AM Indian Standard Time when nobody is working. We can schedule our tasks for any time and Zena gives us a notification that the task has been completed.
It has saved me a lot of time because I'm not having to go through the tasks and run them manually. I can schedule them and they run in seconds. It's helped improve my productivity a lot as well. By scheduling one task I can do another task at that same time. We have some processes that need to be executed every five minutes during the day. It has helped me save that time as I can schedule them using Zena. No programming is required, only some basic knowledge, which is in the Zena manual, is sufficient. Because there is no programming it has saved me a lot of time.
So far, I have achieved 98 percent accuracy with this product. It has increased the accuracy I have achieved for my client. They no longer have to look at jobs. Before, they would keep a watch on every process and task that was running. Now they don't have to. The notification goes to them and to the developer as well. We have a good accuracy rate.
It has helped free up a lot of time. For example, there is a process that takes five to six hours to handle 600 to 800 files daily. We have automated it through Zena, so whenever a file comes into the folder, we just trigger the job and the file is processed within no time, meaning within two to three seconds. Earlier, a file used to take two to three minutes when a human was involved. Now, it is automated through Zena. Those five to six hours have been reduced to a one-hour task with 90 percent accuracy and no human intervention is required. It has freed up developers, my managers, and the engineers too.
And in terms of process consolidation, there is one FTP process where we needed to connect to the FTP, copy a file, and paste it into a different server. But there was no fixed time for when the file would come into the folder. There, the solution has helped us a lot. Whenever the file comes in, the system uses the FTP option and copy-pastes it to the other server. That is saving us a lot of time and those files that are copied and pasted to the other server are very important files for the client.
That process used to take 30 to 40 minutes of manual work to check things and we get three to five such files daily. Now, Zena checks the conditions we have set and fulfills them. If something is wrong, the file goes to a different location and we get an email about a failure in the process.
We have achieved a very good level of optimization so far. Processes we used to run manually are all automated now. Even the morning and evening email notifications to clients and employees are very easy. We focus more on the productivity side rather than on daily, mediocre work.
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. Most of the time, I use it to create RPA tasks and schedule them. Whenever a task fails or is completed, I get a notification.
It operates in layman's language. It's very easy and convenient for users who are very new to technology.
The graphical user interface is very usable and most of the features and functions are displayed on the screen. You just have to click and see the options and you get to know what they are used for. There is a very good help option for whatever you need to know about the tool. With it, you will get to know about the product thoroughly: how to configure it and how to use it from start to end.
The solution is very informative when using Zena Client and Zena workstation. There is very good communication between them. The results of tasks can be added as an attachment to an email. If I am not in front of my system, I can get a log and output where I can see if it was completed or, if there was an error, what the error is, and where it failed.
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. We need improvement there because sometimes there are delays between the server and the agent part. There needs to be more focus on the agent: how to read the logs and agent notifications.
And a feature I would like to see is a notification if a server is not working.
I have been using Rocket Zena for the last two years.
It needs to be more stable. I can't say it's very stable right now. If a policy change happens in a server, there is a disturbance in the Zena server. Stability-wise, they need to work on it.
The scalability is good. We have 20 to 25 processes running daily, and each is scheduled to run every five or 10 minutes. That means we have about 700 to 800 processes running daily on that server.
We have three users, all developers, who work on a total of 11 servers.
Their technical support is very good and helpful. They try to understand each problem. Most of the time, it is a licensing-related issue.
Once, I had a problem with the Zena server. I raised a complaint and within five minutes I got a call from their team and they provided me with an instant solution.
Positive
Zena is the first product of this kind that I have used.
Initially, the setup was really complex for me because I didn't know about the tools' components, that the Zena Client and Zena workstation are two different things. But they work in a similar fashion. Some of the features on the Client are not present on the workstation.
At first, I found it a little difficult because I didn't have any idea about how to create a diagram or process using the Client, but I could see it in my workstation. But once you get to know more about Zena and its functionality, it becomes very easy to create different use cases. It took me about one and a half weeks to cope with the Zena Client and workstation.
Their customer service made the migration of our servers and products very easy and convenient for us.
Since we started using it there has been no maintenance required. Once there was an issue with the licensing, but no maintenance.
We got help from the vendor's sales consultant.
The pricing and the licensing are good. It is affordable and can be used to improve and optimize productivity.
I create diagrams to automate how different processes should be working. The process of automating jobs is not great and not bad. It's average.
Overall, on a daily basis, Zena can be used for various applications. If you have tasks you need to trigger it is very easy to use. I would tell someone who is concerned about the time or money it takes to switch to Zena to buy it. It is very convenient and easy to use, and robust as well.

It's mainly for scheduling and automating tasks. It's a scheduling tool. We have jobs to run in the middle of the night. We have something called Night Cycle that promotes data in the middle of the night. We use this tool to basically create a process that:
After it's all done, it brings up the applications again.
My understanding is that we are using its latest version, and one of the reasons we're moving away from it is that it is off the support. So, I don't know if they're still continuing on, but I'm pretty sure we have the latest version
The only other tool I could compare it to currently is Control-M. I have worked with other automation tools in the past but not as much as Rocket Zena. In terms of comparison with Control-M, its user interface is way better than Control-M. 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.
There is a limit of 6,000 components in a particular process. The processes that we've developed have a lot of components, but there's a limit, which is fine, but it would be great if it just didn't have that limitation. I understand the system limitation and so forth, but it would be great to not have this limitation.
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. For processes, Rocket Zena has four bubbles. It's green if a process is running and nothing has failed. It's yellow if something inside a process has failed, but the rest of the process is running. It's red if a process has failed, and it's blue if a process is complete. If there's something yellow, you can dig into a process and eventually find the error. For alerts, there's another screen, and this alert screen has everyone's alerts. Generally, I only have a view of the components that are owned by my department, but when I go to the alerts screen, the alerts from everyone in the company are there. Because I am not on the admin side, I don't know if this is something that wasn't set up properly on the admin side or if it is something that could have been improved in the tool.
They can improve the UI loading time, at least in dev. It takes a long time. It could be because it has got so many components. It literally takes two or three minutes before it loads and you start using it. They can make some updates to get it up and running faster.
It has been 15 years. We have been using it since 2007.
In production, it went down maybe once a year. It was pretty stable.
It's pretty easy to scale up and down. Anytime we got more servers, we would just install more agents. So, it was pretty easy.
In terms of its users, everyone in the enterprise has some sort of Zena footprint for automation processes. If I have to put a number on it, we have a couple of hundred people. The production support folks and the scheduling folks used it daily.
We worked with the admins a lot, and what they would do is they would install the Zena agents on the servers and then they would create the Zena agents on the actual so that we are able to view them from the Zena workstation. The only challenging part about getting set up on the server was that, for example, if in production you had four servers and then in dev and test you had two servers, you would have to create an agent list and then have the underlying agent that points to the agent list dummy it up. So, they would be dummy agents so that when you promote from dev to test to prod, you would be promoting the same number of components even though the underlying components in the lower-level environments, two of them, would be the same server. It's the enterprise setup it has. I don't think it had anything to do with the tool. As far as setting up the tool, I don't think it was that difficult. They install the agent. We set up the agent on the server, and then we all needed to start executing processes. Overall, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of the setup.
We had internal Zena admins that would set everything up.
We're currently using Rocket Zena operationally, but we're transitioning over to another tool called Control-M because of the decision the company made. I am not sure why the decision was made to move to Control-M. Everyone is wondering the same. We don't want to move to Control-M. My understanding is that Rocket Zena just fell out of support. I don't know if they stopped updating their product or whatnot, but that's the reason we've been told for moving to Control-M.
I've looked at Control-M. We're going through this huge learning curve. The flow diagram is not intuitive at all. Nothing about Control-M, at least from what I've seen so far, is as intuitive as Rocket Zena. Control-M is boxy. It doesn't have the same visual aesthetics as Rocket Zena. We seem to be moving to a worse tool.
It does take a while to learn, but once you learn it, it's fairly easy to navigate your way around it. Once you master it, it's a pretty good tool.
We've recently started moving into cloud environments. I don't know if Rocket Zena supports cloud environments. That's one thing I would caution on. If there are scheduling jobs that you need to run on the cloud platform, do your homework and make sure that they will execute on the cloud.
I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use Zena to schedule various Powershell and batch script jobs within the company. Some of them are PowerShell scripts. Zena schedules jobs within SAP. It's integrated with our servers and applications.
We don't have any workflows going across multiple stacks. Ours are pretty isolated to specific applications and areas. We can organize folders and groupings within our Zena console for each area. We have them organized by business areas like finance and HR or the server where they run.
Before we had Zena, we scheduled jobs in different ways, and it wasn't centralized. Some were manually kicking off jobs. People were scheduling tasks on desktops and servers and using that functionality for business processes. Zena pulled everything into one integrated area to make everything more manageable and give us greater insight into what is happening. It's an improvement over people independently scheduling their tasks with various methods.
Our process is better documented now that we have Zena. When someone wants to schedule a job, they submit a request through our ticketing solution that goes to the batch scheduling team. The entire process is documented, so we know who requested the job and what they want to do. It tells us if they wrote the script or if a developer wrote it. We have all that documented.
Zena increased our completion rates and freed people from the need to monitor or launch jobs manually. It's automated, and we get an email notification or text message if a job fails. It significantly reduces programming time by automating repetitive tasks. We often use Zena to schedule multi-step jobs. That saves a ton of time.
It's automated, which reduces human error. It does a great job. I can't think of an instance when a job failed unless the script had an error. I've only been managing Zena for probably three years, but I imagine it reduced the costs of our automation workloads.
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.
The whiteboard is handy when setting up processes and scheduling tasks, especially large ones. It helps you visualize the processes you're building so you can see what you're doing a lot easier than if you were just using a text-based system. It's a critical feature when you're building or troubleshooting jobs. You can see what you're doing and take out or add steps as needed.
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.
Some of the documentation in the knowledge base can be hard to navigate. You have to search through lots of products to find the correct version of your product. Sometimes when you have that, you still get documentation or knowledge-based information for something unrelated to what you're using.
We have been using Zena for at least eight years.
I rate Zena a ten out of ten for stability. We have rarely had any issues with it since we implemented it. Sometimes we might forget what we need to do because we haven't had to touch it in a while.
We have a relatively small system, but you could scale this much larger. We only have about six people creating jobs, and around 20 people use Zena's reporting feature to monitor jobs.
I rate Rocket Zena support a nine out of ten. Rocket Zena support has always been excellent. We would submit a ticket to them saying our production upgrade is happening on this date, so they are aware. They respond quickly.
Positive
Setting up Zena is straightforward because we use the controller. The only part of the setup that gives us trouble is the SAP agents and associated JCO files. Integration with SAP is never straightforward. It's hit or miss, and you need some experience to troubleshoot it.
We have a document that we've customized to our environment. However, the agents will not always install and activate even when we follow that document. We need to work through it, uninstall it, and reinstall it. It has taken a lot of trial and error within our system. There's not a lot of documentation on Zena's website about using SAP agents. During our last upgrade, it took less than an hour to deploy 20 agents, not counting testing time and initial installation.
We do everything in-house, but we've had it for eight years, and this is not our first update or migration. We have a little experience.
The time savings and accuracy Zena provides for scheduling jobs far outweigh the cost. If we didn't have Zena, we would spend a lot more hours trying to run and monitor and take care of the jobs that need to be executed. I think Zena is a valuable tool. Most people in our company would agree with that.
Over the years, we've cut many tools due to costs, especially after 2020. Everyone was looking for ways to manage costs, but we never considered getting rid of Zena. That speaks to its value.
I rate Rocket Zena a nine out of ten. When implementing Zena, you should consider how you want to structure your jobs. For example, do you want to group it by division or by the server where the job will run? Initial planning can be helpful. If you don't have that and start building lots of jobs without structure, it's much harder to manage as the number of jobs grows.

It's a scheduling product, and it's used for scheduling jobs. For example, instead of doing manual transfers, I can schedule file transfers from one system to another during weekdays. I can schedule a job to transfer a file from one system to another from Monday to Friday in the evening.
We also use it for monitoring and managing jobs. If there is any issue, we can also restart a job. It's not just used for file transfers; it's also used for many payroll tasks and projects.
It does automation. You can choose the time and date you want to run a job. You can stop a workflow so that you can run the jobs later in the day as well. If, for example, you are not working in the morning, you can specify that you don't want to run the file in the morning and Rocket will not let it run. So, it's also a workload automation tool to avoid repetitive and manual tasks.
It can also be customized to your calendar. For example, we know we won't be working on December 24th, so we can schedule it to skip sending us data files on that day. It can be scheduled to only send information on business days and not on holidays.
It helps to schedule jobs and avoid manual, repetitive tasks. Jobs get done automatically. We can specify the time and date to run a job.
I like the whole product, but specifically, I like the licensing. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product.
It's very easy to use. It's much easier to use than other products like ESP, for example. Technical support and the price are also very good.
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.
Control-M is available on the cloud. Rocket is only on-premises now. You can have Azure Cloud, download, and set up Control-M from there, and you can set it up from there. I would also like to have Rocket on the cloud. This will also help Rocket in getting a bigger client base.
I have been using Rocket Zena for the last five or six years, but only recently, I got the chance to do more with this product when I did the update from scratch and the customization.
It's very stable. They are supposed to be coming out with a new version at some point around March that will have more improvements.
It does have the possibility to scale but I don't believe it can handle a big workload. I believe you would need to purchase more product options in order to handle increased workloads.
If you have a two lakh job running on the system, then Rocket Zena couldn't support it.
Their technical support is very good. I recently contacted them, and they were very supportive and helpful. We are very satisfied with the support we get.
Positive
I've used Control-M, which has a GUI. It can be run on Windows, UNIX, and mainframe. Rocket Zena is more command-based, and you have to use the mainframe platform only. That's the main difference, but Rocket is more understandable, compatible, and very easy to use.
I did the installation and update part for the client. We ordered the product from the Rocket Zena site. We then downloaded, installed, and customized it, and made it ready to use for the client.
For upgrades, you can't do them straight from Rocket Zena. You have to first update the OS' latest available version available in the current system. Only then can you do the Rocket upgrade.
The implementation takes around two weeks. Upgrades are around five to six hours.
The deployment requires around two staff members. Rocket Zena doesn't require much maintenance, max around once a year.
Its price is very good. It's not very high. Even a small company can use Zeke.
There are many competitors such as ESP and AutoSys.
I would rate Rocket Zena an eight out of ten. I wouldn't give it a perfect ten because I would like for them to add the option for it to be supported on the cloud. I would also like for the scaling options to be better for companies with a higher workload.
We use Rocket Zena for SFTP transfers between the servers or to the customer. Export or import of data to a database is scheduled with Rocket Zena. We also run external scripts and schedule backup jobs with Rocket Zena.
It has been beneficial to have a central scheduler that is solely used by all teams to schedule jobs.
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.
We use Rocket Zena’s containerized deployment with Docker (automated with Kubernetes). It is great, but there is a learning curve. We have a single server on the OpenShift cluster, on which we have a Rocket Zena agent installed. We don't have rocket Zena inside the containers or on the nodes themselves, but on the centralized server. That server will run jobs to all the other Docker nodes from that one single point of view. It is better when using Rocket Zena because we don't really have to have Rocket Zena on so many servers, which can lead to small configuration problems and the need to maintain Rocket Zena in more places.
Containerized deployment with Docker saved us time. If you want to troubleshoot an issue, you can redeploy the same container. If you find infrastructure as a code and you have everything re-deployable as a container, when there is an issue or you need to roll back, you can easily redeploy the container. You don't have to reinstall it.
We use Rocket Zena to manage complex operational workflows, end-to-end, across multiple technology stacks. We have a standard, single place where we can have automated workflows. This standardization across different platforms makes it easy to both write new workflows and troubleshoot what is and is not working. Considering that it can be a big mess and very hard to understand what should be done, this simplification of processes is important to our organization.
Rocket Zena's cross-platform job scheduling helped save programming time by automating repetitive tasks. It also helped improve accuracy when running jobs.
Since everything is done by Rocket Zena, and we do not have to manually schedule some jobs on the operating system level, it freed up our engineers to focus on more value-added work. We have seen a 10% increase in time savings.
Rocket Zena helped us consolidate our processes, solutions, and tools. It is important to us and that's why we use it across all our platforms.
The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface.
It would be nice if Zena could provide a solution directly with RPM packages instead of us having to install it manually and then craft RPM packages ourselves.
I've been using this solution for a little over a year.
After the upgrade in April 2021, Rocket Zena has not been stable. We have done some emergency patching and are hopeful that the latest patch will improve the stability.
Our point of contact at Rocket was not able to answer our questions and had to ask the development team in the US for help when we had an issue that we needed to solve ASAP. As a result, it took more than a week to get an answer. When we were finally able to jump on a call with a technical person, then all our questions were answered quickly and clearly. The technical support is good when we get to a knowledgeable person, but at times, it can take a while to get higher-level support.
I would rate Rocket Zena's technical support at six on a scale from one to ten.
Neutral
I did not do the initial setup myself, but from seeing the procedure and from understanding how it's installed, I can see that it is quite complex. You have to understand the architecture of all the different components, how the different Rocket Zena schedulers are set up within one server, and how multiple Rocket Zena agents are set up and connected to the Rocket Zena schedulers. Because of the lack of ready-to-install RPM packages, we have to manually craft them as well with a binary tool. From an infrastructure point of view, it took one day to deploy the solution.
We have about 100 users consisting of developers, admins, and engineers.
Rocket Zena does what it's supposed to do in our company, to centralize the processes and jobs. It has been fairly stable up to the latest update, and the interface is a bit outdated, though it is still okay. Therefore, I would give Rocket Zena an overall rating of seven out of ten.
We use it across mainframe Linux and Windows environments for batch and full workflow dependency. We do a lot of ETLs, so there are a huge number of dependencies, such as, get the flat file from an SFTP or call a script to pull the data out of a data structure. If you don't have the data, then nothing else should run.
It has replaced every single Windows Task Manager or Task Scheduler.
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.
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.
It has been there in our organization for about five years. I have been using it for about a year and a half.
It is very stable and reliable.
Scalability is a bit hard because we're using up more licensing than the agency that originally implemented it. It has an agent licensing model versus a core model, which is another reason why we're in the process of looking at a CA product.
ASG-Zena is controlled through a sub-agency division and is actually managed by a third-party vendor. Anytime we want something changed or updated, we have to actually go through a long chain and so many people, which then impacts the midday running or overnight running of the processes. There's another agency that has just recently implemented a CA product, which only needs to do one schedule. They bought this big package, and all they need to do is one schedule. We're going to take over their product and its implementation. Next year, we're planning on migrating all of our around 300 schedules from ASG-Zena to CA, primarily because we will have direct control.
We currently have five users who are referred to as developer users. They monitor the systems and schedules, pick up on when something fails, and then make corrections to whatever they need to. There are three administrators, and only these administrators can restart a schedule.
I haven't used their technical support.
It is a very stable product, and it has a long-term history of reliability. However, in our organization, we're moving away from mainframes. They just do not fit with where we're going architecturally. My advice would be to not go for mainframe solutions because mainframes are dead.
I would rate ASG-Zena an eight out of ten.
We are looking to use Zena for automation on the mainframe but for now, we use it for scheduling batch jobs but only for Migos applications. We're looking to expand it for application planning on the mainframe.
We want it to mitigate human errors and do end to end batch processing. We only use it now for Linux and Windows. We want to use it for various platforms. Our IT Infrastructure is very diverse and we want Zena to replace human intervention.
I have been using ASG-Zena for around ten years.
It's pretty stable. We want it to also work with another ASG product for file transfers.
It's scalable. It works on various platforms which is important for us. We don't want a solution that only works on Windows. We have a complex IT infrastructure.
We have around ten applications running on it.
We have a good relationship with their local executives. Their support is good.
We didn't previously use a different solution. ASG meets all of our requirements.
The initial setup was pretty complex. We had big plans for it. We got the whole package but later on, the business realized they only needed a certain part. It's under-utilized in my company.
A partner did the installation for us. The deployment took around six months.
The installation required four of my team members and six employees from the partner. Four employees currently do the maintenance.
Our licensing costs have changed since we bought it. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing.
I would rate it a ten out of ten because we are happy with it.
I would recommend using this solution on Linux or AIX because the performance is better. It's more secure and stable.
We haven't had any problems since we installed it. It runs as expected, we haven't had any critical problems. It helps keep the business running 24/7.
There is a lot to learn from it. Zena can be used in many applications.
In the next release, I would like the user experience to be improved. The user interface should be more appealing to gen-z.