Automic Automation Reviews

To automate our processes, they run on batches.

Performance has been very good, actually.

Having automated, real-time notifications. If something is not available it's automatic where or whom to notify. And it's continuous processing.

There are a lot of ways it helps us, especially on the operations side, that it doesn't require manual intervention, that's one of them.

Ease of migration to a newer version.

Regarding stability, so far it's working fine with us.

So far scalability is good.

It's rare that we use technical support. Usually we take care of it, and if support is required they're able to get back to us right away. We're satisified with the support.

Straightforward.

It works for the company, so far. Most of our team is familiar with it, so I think we are going to have it for a long time, which is a good thing. 

It's not the only application that we have, we also have the other version. I came from a different company that ACI bought, and ACI had the other version of the Automic Workload Automation. So now we have two, they have the operations manager, we have the application manager.

In terms of looking at vendors, what's important is the reputation of the company.

I gave it a 10 out of 10 because, so far, I haven't had an issue with this product. And it works for the company.

If you need some automation, especially in batch processing, it's easy to handle and also the support that they provide is excellent, so I don't think you are going to have a problem with it.

We have been using CA products, for maybe 20 years, for managing workloads. 

It will improve how we function. It is just meeting a functional need in a maybe more agile way; it is faster. People put labels on it: Agile or DevOps. Really what they are doing with the new product is improving your transformation and making it quick.

The frustration that we have probably had in the past is where CA tools run for a period of time, then they get deprecated, and you have to build a new one. What we like about Automic, they are new to the CA family, and there seems to be an ease of the migration. So, there is lot more automation going from the old product to the new product.

During the PoC, it was easy to use.

At the moment, it is as scalable as we need it to be.

We spun it up during a weekend.

It ticked all the boxes. We were looking at WLMD, Automic, or CCM to have more future proof capability than what we would like. You have got the functionality and everything like that. What we would like seemed to be a strategic product, whereas maybe in the past it was a lot of by-products, use it and throw it away. So that appealed to us.

We actually got to physically use the product before saying, "Yes."

We also looked at BMC PATROL, and I think two things impressed me versus BMC:

1. The tool fit and the migration were a lot more automated.
2. CA company engagement.

Try the solution. Give it a go. It has worked for us.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Focused on SaaS products.

Our primary use of this product is to automate our ERP system.

• ECUs
• Easy scheduling
• Reliability

The benefit of this particular solution is that we are familiar with the product already. Therefore when implementing this system, it will have a lot of the same characteristics as the old one. So it is the ease of transition made easier rather than going to a new automation system.

The stability is very good. We have not had any crashes or downtime with it in our testing. We are very happy with it and it runs pretty fast.  

We are a small organization. We do not run that many jobs, so we do not plan on scaling it up much.

I have used technical support and the community, as well. I have found to get answers quickly to solutions that worked - asking both the technical support and the community.

We actually have an older product AppWorks 6.0 that we currently use, and we are transitioning from AppWorks to Automation several months from now. We are currently in the developmental stage. 

The current solution we have is not supported, which is why we are switching.

I was initial in the initial setup. It was complex. We had a person come in from CA and assist us with the setup. It went smoothly. It took us about a week to get it up and running. However, it has been up and running, and we have not had any real issues with it since. 

We still actually have not implemented this version as it is in its test phase.

It would be good to have some dashboards that come with the package rather than it be a cost to add them on.  

We looked at this solution and we also look at another company. The reason we went with this solution is because we had been working with them for a long time and we trusted their products. For us, our learning curve would not be as steep.

They have gone from UC4 to Automic to CA in a very short amount of time, so they changed their face a lot. With those changes, they are actually doing a lot more technical advances. I think that they are a product that is continually growing, which is good.

Look at this product. Give it a shot, but also understand what your needs are. Look at several products before coming to a decision on what you want to do to resolve your ERP issues.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: A partner who is truly interesting in helping us meet our goals and who can provide a solution in a fast, reliable timeframe.

• Check-out
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Just that the basic functionality works.

It saves State assets, for starters. Saving State assets is part of my job, and it's important. So that's how it's improving State work. We have a tool that secures and controls State assets.

Certainly, the Visual Studio plugin has a lot of room for improvement.

We need to improve communication. It's a mistake to send all the work over to India, that's my personal opinion. I think there's a real problem with communication in India. I've been on the phone with these folks and wasted my time, where we don't even understand what they're saying. I think the development of this tool should be brought back to the United States. I think it's a mistake to have it done it in India, where a real communication problem exists.

20 years.

Absolutely.

The scalability is not as much of a problem.

Escalation comes from the technical team in the United States to Level 2 in India.

We switched over 20 years ago.

Setup was complex due to the complexity of the tool.

If we had a choice to choose again, we'd choose something different.

We've been plugged into the product for 20 years now, so it's a little difficult to do that, although I have teams or agencies now, that are breaking away and they're going and using other tools now. I got one agency using TFS. I've got another agency using GitHub, so I'm seeing the breaking down of this whole process. A lot of it has to do with the stability of the Visual Studio plugin, which has not been very good.

Don't use the Visual Studio plugin. Go and use TFS. It's more seamless and it's a bigger tool. It will cost you more money, but you won't have some of the complexities, in terms of folks being able to do check-outs and check-ins. This Visual Studio plugin has been very complicated for the State of New Hampshire. It's caused a lot of problems. It's made me lose a lot of customers. I lost 81 customers last week alone. They don't like the product and I understand why. They have people in India developing it, who don't understand English, most of the time.

Even when you try to convey your message to them, there's all kinds of problems with dialog and interpretation that sometimes you get what you ask for, and sometimes you don't. Most of the time, you don't. You end up going back and forth, and back and forth to get any fix, then you get another re-fix. Then, you get another re-fix.

It's very hard to transfer the feeling when you have a platform that came to handle infrastructure issues, but at the end of the day, they are making real changes and impacting our business level, which is amazing, because it's very uncommon. That's it, basically.

We started this engagement with Automic working on basic scheduling. If you can just imagine an organization, which has around 10,000 written processes in Visual Basic or old code, and now we need to maintain these processes. They are very core processes because they are handling interactions between our customers to us; they are transferring data from our customers into our system. It's several thousands of PDFs, invoices and shipping notices, etc.

Up to the phase where we met with Automic, we just used manual stuff that we wrote to handle it. While using Automic, we created one mechanism of transferring data, and that's it. We need to just replicate it to other customers, and then you have thousands of Automic processes that are working by using only a single design for the rest of the customers, so we don't need to write code anymore.

By the way, another impact that we had using this process by transferring these invoices from one FTP site to another FTP site is the generation of invoices. In order to generate invoices to thousands of customers, we did some old code style process. We designed the process in the Automic, which basically does it faster.

Invoices: It's important they're faster, because at the end of the day when the driver needs to leave for the customer, I need to make sure that he will leave the logistics site as fast as he can. If I'm printing, 1,000 invoices in four hours, or if I'm printing 1,000 invoices in two hours, it makes a difference in my business process.

This is the must have in these processes for the customer, because if you are using Automic at the infrastructure level, then you have a problem because you are missing a whole step. Why? Because at the end of the day, the biggest impact that we have had when we started using Automic was when we embedded our digital processes with the tool. Today, Automic is the tool that helps us to manage all our digital strategy.

When you are going to some kind of a digital journey, you must have some kind of a tool or robotic platform that will enable you to manage the full cycle flow of the customer experience to a level of the data in the operational system process. When you are talking about putting the customer at the front of your business, if you don't have some kind of automation tool that enables you to integrate between the system, monitoring, enterprise data, analyses, trigger and action, and then to the multi challenge platforms, you don't have a digital strategy, and you need some kind of an orchestration behind it. This is what Automic is doing for us.

Today, this is the impact. In our business, we have a lot of operational costs. Let's say, we have 255 call center representatives and they are doing thousands of service transactions while speaking to our customers. By using Automic as an engine to our digital contact center, I'm doing almost 45,000 transactions per month, but it's on technology. It's our digital platform, which is orchestrated by Automic and some other tools, and few technologies behind the process.

So, if you're looking for the real impact, you must look at the integration of the Automic into your business application, in your customer journey, and into the digital process. This is what most organization are experiencing today.

We are in interruptive era at the moment, and everybody is looking how to reach customers, and how to manage a low cost operation and their digital strategy, because you need to invest a lot of resources. Instead of doing it in coding stuff and managing stuff behind the scenes, you need some kind of automation.

By the way, if you are the customer receiving an instant message from me, so an SMS, you have to understand that behind the scenes, there is a business process that somebody needs to manage, control, and make sure you are receiving this SMS. We, at O.P.S.I., are using Automic to do it because it is closing the full cycle.

We are always talking about leveraging the power of big data by automation, and we have a gap, but we didn't really implement it yet (the automation), which they have a great solution for, so the business continues in the cloud. We are not there, but we need to be there, and I think it's a little bit hard in our area.

Our area with the CA solution for DR is not really concerning directly to Automic, but to all of the DevOps, a word which is something that everybody is trying to touch on today in their daily business. There is also some gap that's a little bit hard to understand or to implement because not all the organizations are the same. When you are adopting DevOps, you may need to be more flexible in your processes.

But once again, we are not really using that because it is a little bit hard for us. We have rapid changes now in our digital strategy, because, at the end of the day, my business is to do service, and we are trying to improve in the service area and to be very near to our customer business needs. We didn't really make it to cope with the Automic road map, because we have a road map.

Around two to three years.

Yes. If Automic will be your automation platform or the orchestration platform, then you must build it in a high availability mode, which is what we did together with the guys from Automic. Now, this system is basically available 24/7. If one connector is failing, we have an HA connector that will replace it, so you must design the platform to be stable. The platform itself, it's stable. But once again, if you need to work 24/7, there is no way. I am working with the Custom Authority, and the Custom Authority in Israel is a very challenging organization. There is no way that we wouldn't be able to transfer data to customs, because if you don't transfer data, then we wouldn't be able to deliver to our customers abroad, so we need to be working 24/7 because a lot of stuff is being done automatically behind the scenes.

No, after we implemented, we didn't have any issues with the system. It's the core system today. It's one of the most important systems in our operation today, and once ensured that we had a high availability solution from them, then we started working 24/7 with no issues.

At the end of the day, I think there is an integration between good product, stable product, and a good delivery team. This symmetry, it makes stuff work well. When you're testing platforms, you know your enterprise, you have data functionality, and you have the delivery concept. At the end of the day, when you do the statistics of what you've tested, you need to decide. What helped us to decide, except from the function, the way the system works, was the approach of the guys from Automic, how they approach our business, how they help us do the analyses. They care. They just care.

I don't want to say just care. When you care about something, then you feel the difference. Then you are coming with all these big solutions and big company solutions which have tremendous platforms, but once again, they are too big, too robotic, and forgot the customer at the end of the day. It's one of the things that makes their stuff different for us.

Basically, here in Israel, we have very good support. The guys from Automic are assisting us, there is the world wide web, and we have a project manager that we work with. From the global perspective of how they help us, I think that we are pretty covered, and they are always trying to push new stuff, but once again, if we are thinking about improvement, it's a very big platform. We don't cover it all at the moment, and we are doing it step-by-step.

We had a few solutions. Most of them were code reading oriented, but it wasn't the platform. We didn't have any other platforms. We had tested another platform in that time, a very big one, which is not really relevant to this discussion, because I don't have anything bad to say about them, only from the point that they were too robotic for us. I think that Automic came with a very good approach in the delivery level. It's important, because when you're working at the delivery level, you can see the ROI that you will receive from the implementation.

It's a very good product and has a very good delivery level. Especially the guys that designed the solution over here are focused on the issues in the top 10 painful issues that we had, while resolving them during a very fast implementation. It gave us the boost to go with the digital area, the application area, and the business strategy area.

When I'm saying they care and were very focused on the issues, in three months, the implementation of the system was running right. Instead of going through all the processes and trying to upgrade all of them, or change the way we work in a rapid movement of things during the implementation, once the system and the change model was up and running, we did two things:

• Good mapping process of the pain points
• Good mapping process on new projects.

Then we stared to just transfer new projects to this platform. Then, in parallel, we took all staff for the scheduling, which is the simplest way, and in two to three months, we upgraded most of the scheduling items that we needed to handle. Then, the organization saw that we rapidly changed the way we were experiencing a problem, integration, etc.

From the implementation point of view, it was straightforward, very simple, and not complicated. Of course, you always have issues with creating various servers and SQL licenses. You must handle the server optimization because you have a lot of traffic, so you need to do an optimization of the right resources. We have a private cloud on our site, so it's easier for us to do the optimization of resources in the process, which is great. Then, you eliminate more issues when you're implementing a new platform. It's tricky and complicated, but we are an organization that works with a lot of legacy systems, which has very big systems, which usually has a lot of troubles and issues in transforming between platforms, between different applications with a legacy code. So, when you have the opportunity to work on a shelf platform, on an advanced platform, then it's very easy.

It's very important to see who does the delivery for you, and what's their approach. If the approach is simple and easy, not too rushed, then you can manage the process to receive the best results. It's important because this is what made the implementation very easy at the end of the day for us.

Once again, from a technical point of view, there were no issues.

Control-M from BMC was one of the applications which we looked at or tested. IBM also has some solutions in this area, and HP in the DevOps orchestration. They have very good platforms, very good approach, very scalable, very stable, and from my personal experience and perspective, it just helped my business grow and cope with all our digital challenges.

We started the concept of working with Automic when we looked for a tool that would help us to automate our business. It started in the infrastructure level, because everybody wanted to automate their infrastructure stuff to do basic scheduling and standard things that you are doing in an organization, especially in the IT department.

Basically, we are divided between infrastructure and business applications, so in my IT department where the infrastructure recedes, we have thousands of processors that were created there manually by coding with all kind of windows applications or something like that. In Israel, we are the biggest company who is doing deliveries and managing a global supply chain operation, so we have a lot of legacy systems. It's a 25 year-old company, and we have a lot of legacy systems and a lot of old code from the past years that we need to manage or handle.

We started off looking for an automation tool that would help us to just upgrade old processes to some kind of a new system, and that is how we found Automic.

I work at O.P.S.I., which is an authorized service contractor for UPS in Israel. Basically, the first challenge is that we are not really UPS, we are just an ASC, an authorized service contractor, so we are totally independent and are working like a standalone company, but we have a lot of integration with the global UPS. We have UPS system and applications that we must use because it's part of the agreement.

Here in Israel, we are identified totally brown with the logo and everything. Just one issue, this is why I mention it, because when somebody is talking about us worldwide and in Israel, we mention our name as O.P.S.I., an authorized service contractor for UPS. People need to know that we are a subcontractor for them and not really a brown branch here in Israel. Basically, just to let you know, we have 155 authorized service contractors like us worldwide.

As for additional advice, just pick stuff where you can and go for the quick win. The first phases of this project must be dedicated to understanding the mechanism and the platform, because when you're going with the simple stuff, you have the chance or the opportunity to test the system. We had thousands of processors with thousands of challenges, but once again, we started with the infrastructure. We succeeded over there, then we went to the application.

We started at the lowest level of the implementation. After we learned the system, we learned how it behaved. We learned the ability of the system, then we went to the application. I think what has amazed me the whole time is that I have fully automated business processes in this difficult area, so it's an excitement because you started in transferring files from one server to another, then you are managing your digital business strategy with this platform (my CEO knows this platform).

It's not like you are installing some kind of a monitoring tool. When you are starting small, infrastructure and then application, then turning this application into a core system, it is something else. So my humble advice from my experience is to start small and start with the pain points. Learn the system, learn the capabilities, then slide to the business level.

The visibility into what normally a monolithic script would do with the audit trail and version control features makes troubleshooting jobs a breeze. I use to have to manually code in logging tricks into my scripts, then parse though these file to see what was happening during execution. With AWA, I simply view the last run, or any previous run, and can visually see what happened with the ability to drill down to a specific part of the workflow. Viewing past modifications to objects would require a third party version management product with a check-out/check-in process; with Automic, every save is shown in a tab on the object.

The main improvement is the time it saves in troubleshooting an issue. The common phrase, “There is a script somewhere that does that”, is no longer heard. A single pane of glass view and visual representation of workflows exponentially reduces time to recovery.

The direction of the product and the way that they add visibility into a script are amazing, but there are limitations in self administration automation and stability issues.

There are two main areas which I think the product needs to improve on:

1. Improving automated administration of the product itself. As an administrator, it is easy for me to manage another product using Automic, but when I want to manage the product itself, I’m forced to writing Java console apps using their API to do things. There are community provided solutions to help, but they are not tested enough to be considered production safe.
2. The stability of the product. It is very easy to take down the system. Even with HA infrastructure underneath, we still have constant outages.

Personally, I’ve use this product for 18 months. The organization has used it almost 5 years.

Yes, as mentioned before, we are constantly having issues due to bugs or things that should work, but don’t. In a high demand, time critical environment, it is not viewed as a reliable product requiring use of external means to continue when there is an outage.

No, it is extremely easy to scale up or down. Adding an Agent or an Automation Engine is simply connecting or removing it. Adding new workflows and tasks require no redesign inside the application.

To be honest, I have had to come up with the majority of the fixes to my issues, and the times that I couldn’t were known bugs. We are a company where an hour or two outages majorly impact us and their support SLAs do not come close to ours.

The company previously used AutoSys. To my understanding, they switched for cost reasons.

I was told that it took over six months and was difficult.

I don’t have much to do with this, but I’ve been told it is cheaper than the competition.

I wasn’t around for this.

Setting up a new installation is straightforward and easy. It is well documented on their site.

• Web based GUI is available that can be handled from any device including desktop/laptop/phones.
• $U works on various OS platforms and has integration with a number of applications such as SAP, ORACLE, FTP, etc.
• No server agent architecture but still has a central management system so that you can manage all $U effortlessly. And you can manage security and authorization easily.

Single tool used for all automation requirements to handle all types of jobs such as Oracle, FTP, SAP, etc.

Reporting facility could be better.

I've been using it for 2+ years.

No issues as such. Installation and management is easy.

No issues with stability. Highly stable environment.

No issues with scalability. Can handle large number of servers or batch jobs without issues.

Technical support is good. 10 out of 10. There is a web-based GUI to record all your issues and track them. Immediate help is available in crisis situations.

No.

Initial setup is quite simple. Also all required documentation is available as well as support is available from vendor.

Implementation was in-house.

Good solution for a complex environment.

Pricing and licensing costs are based on number of servers. It is up to budget and a small scale/mid scale organisation can opt for this tool.

No.

If you are looking for solution for all your automation needs within a good budget you should go for this tool. It has all the required features which can compete with all other scheduling tools in market.