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AutoSys Workload Automation vs GoAnywhere MFT comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

AutoSys Workload Automation
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (8th)
GoAnywhere MFT
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Infrastructure Software Management solutions, they serve different purposes. AutoSys Workload Automation is designed for Workload Automation and holds a mindshare of 12.2%, down 18.3% compared to last year.
GoAnywhere MFT, on the other hand, focuses on Managed File Transfer (MFT), holds 8.9% mindshare, up 5.9% since last year.
Workload Automation
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
 

Featured Reviews

Muralidhar Burla - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, reliable, and easy to expand
The reporting system, currently, could be better. In the reporting system, currently, if you want to see or generate the job dependency, you can have a flowchart right now that shows job flows. We can see from the job flow in that graphic representation, however, I would like to see them work more on that, maybe, to make it better and more robust. We'd like more details about the job success versus failure. Right now, we just get statistics. We'd like something that generates job names along with the accounting. There also needs to be more customized reporting. It would help a lot. The solution could use more monitoring.
Earl Diem - PeerSpot reviewer
Key to our workflow and our workload automation strategy, helping us trade and consume files
File monitors are one of the most valuable features. We have about 400 file monitors running in GoAnywhere. They monitor the NAS locations where files arrive, and they kick off workflows. When a file arrives, GoAnywhere will identify that the file is there, move it to a consumption zone, then reach out to our enterprise scheduler through a REST API call. The solution helps centralize the exchange of data between systems, employees, customers, and trading partners. It's very central and that's pretty important. We generally move about 3,000 files a day, between our partners and internal workflows. My team really likes the intuitiveness of GoAnywhere's user interface. For example, my automation team has a file coming in from a bank, a file that needs to be unzipped, reformatted, re-zipped up, and then put into another folder where another team is going to consume it. Because of all the progressive elaboration—the project started a year ago—the format of the file is not the same. We addressed it with GoAnywhere instead of having the producer of the file change the format. That's how flexible it is for us. And looking at the comprehensiveness of GoAnywhere's workflow features, we use it pretty extensively for working with files. Stonebranch is our enterprise automation platform, but we don't really do any file work with Stonebranch. We chose to use GoAnywhere, our MFT tool, to move and manipulate files. The solution also connects to popular ICAP servers and that's pretty important to our security guys when it comes to preventing malware and other malicious content from entering our organization. The connection to popular ICAP servers, so that content is inspected for sensitive information like credit cards, is pretty important. We're a financial institution and a lot of the data we work with has PAN data and card numbers in it, coming in from partners.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CA Workload Automation AutoSys Edition is one of the most powerful schedulers that you have on the open systems, or going between Window servers; to be able to schedule and take advantage of the different powers that the automation has with it."
"We don't have to manually run things anymore. We can have the work that a team of 50 people would do, all inside of one platform."
"The features that I have found most valuable with AutoSys are that it is scalable, easy to use, fast, and always available. That's very important because if it's not steady then it's a real problem. So, at this point, we are satisfied with it."
"It is a fairly stable solution."
"The aggregator reporting utility which tells us our throughput in lag and latency."
"It has helped to simplify cross-dependency between MVS and Open systems jobs."
"​It scales very well. We can add jobs and remove jobs. We do not have problems maintaining the product across multiple environments and multiple servers.​"
"Running anything in crontab, you need to put a lot of logic into it to make it work. With this product, you don't have to worry about it. You have the schedule object where you put all the dates or holidays in it, and it does it for you."
"When we were doing the demo, we took one project from the old system and got it running in GoAnywhere in less than 30 minutes. That says a lot. I've written queries and understand code, so I'm not a novice. Still, I think that's pretty impressive for a software product to be able to deliver a functional use case in half an hour."
"Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT offers robust security as its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of MFT is the security it provides for our data. MFT allows us to add additional authorization and passwords to any file attachments we send via email, and also to limit the number of times the recipient can download the file."
"The security and vendor management features are helpful in terms of providing access to data."
"The use of this product has helped improve our organization and its ability to send or receive. It has done this by allowing us to remove any homegrown process and centralize needed actions."
"It streamlines the files. Anyone can go pick up the file that we give access to. It is great."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to call a workflow from another workflow. That really gives you an edge by increasing reusability and speeding up development time. You can create a workflow which is a type of template and then call that workflow from any other workflow... It has sped up development time by 80 to 90 percent."
"Scheduling is valuable. You can schedule a transfer for any time you want. It can be hourly, daily, monthly, or yearly. You can transfer the file on AWS, Azure, or SharePoint."
 

Cons

"Reduce the number of operational files. This would make the job of a system programmer supporting ESP easier."
"CA Workload Automation is not part of CA's strategic vision going forward."
"Pricing model for distributed should have an Enterprise option."
"Ease of implementation for upgrades."
"​CA installation processes are never anything but complex.​"
"We had a few issues, however, the issues were more on the infrastructure rather than with the application itself."
"Needs better documentation with fully explained examples for some of the job types."
"I am not sure whether it is our limitation or a tool limitation because we haven't yet explored it, but whenever we look for different types of reporting, we have some limitations in getting those. It could be because of the way we have set it up internally in our enterprise, but it would be helpful if we can customize the reporting features and some of the alerts that can go out. When we connect enterprise systems, each one looks for a different use case, and if we can get different types of reporting, it will be helpful."
"The application uses resources such as network connections to shared directories or SFTP connections. I would appreciate seeing utilization metrics for these resources."
"We did have some issues a couple of months back where we were having some unscheduled outages, and the support team worked with me closely and provided a solution that appears to have fixed the problem."
"Without knowledge, it can be challenging to manage as it uses XML files for configurations and has tricky variables. While it's not particularly intuitive for new users, it becomes easy once mastered."
"If the hostname has a dash in it then it does not work."
"There's one persnickety issue about NAS permissions. That is a problem we have run into with GoAnywhere. I would like to see more focus on compatibility with/enforcement of user roles and access permissions across NAS, among other things. We have filed a couple of tickets on that in the past."
"There are a number of built-in tasks in GoAnywhere. One, in particular, the write to CSV task, is slow. If you have, say, 100,000 records in your row set and you want to write them to a CSV file, it takes a long time. That definitely requires performance improvement."
"While the technical support team is knowledgeable, their response time for critical issues needs improvement. A response within one business day is insufficient for urgent matters."
"Improvement in support or product relies on being ingenious, supportive, and listening to its customer base."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."
"It is overpriced."
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."
"People need to pay attention to how they use their ESP agents on the distributed platform. That's where some of the cost comes in, based on how many you need or how many you use."
"CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all."
"Validate how many agents you need beforehand."
"It would be good for the company to explore a modular approach to selling the product so it could be cheaper and more attractive to users."
"The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies. It is good for startups or mid-scale companies."
"When it comes to secure systems that we have used, the price point can get a whole lot higher. You might end up saving in the short term with other solutions, but are you getting a secure product? Do you feel confident in that? Will you be able to get any support afterward? From my experience, based on the price point and the service that we got, it was a good value for our money."
"Its pricing is fair. It is not the most expensive, and it is not the cheapest. For what we get in our environment, the pricing model works pretty well."
"I get the invoices, and its price is fine and appropriate. It is well priced. Even if it was double the price, we'd use it. For us, it is indispensable. We're not going to go anywhere else. There are no additional costs. Its licensing is good. There is just one charge that we get. That's it."
"To have a solution like this for the price we're paying makes it cheap. Considering the time that it has saved us, and considering the development that we don't need to do, such as connectors and handling servers, the price is really affordable."
"Pricing is based on a one-time license."
"HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT is very reasonably priced for the value it brings."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
48%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...
What do you like most about AutoSys Workload Automation?
The most valuable aspects of AutoSys Workload Automation are its performance, scalability, and ease of getting started for new users.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AutoSys Workload Automation?
The solution is costly. The pricing is based on the number of users, which for me, translates to approximately $120,000 to $130,000 for a license period of two to three years.
What do you like most about Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
GoDrive eliminates the need to use the exchange server for file sharing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
The pricing is decent for mid-sized and small-sized companies. It is good for startups or mid-scale companies.
What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?
A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before. It has fewer features, though it is more intuitive. This was the compromise we had to make du...
 

Also Known As

CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere MFT, GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer,
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
McKesson City of Modesto, California Kwik Trip Northwestern University Charter Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, Redwood Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.