Magic Quadrant for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms

Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

Key features and pros and cons of top Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms products:

BMC Software - Leader

Pros:

Product strategy: BMC provides a wide range of out-of-the-box integrations with all major ERPs, data platforms, applications and major cloud platforms. The vendor continues to add integrations both organically and through customer requests, delivering 70 new integrations in 2024. BMC also enables integration builds by partners or clients using a low-code approach.
Innovation: BMC has continued to drive innovation through JaC and data orchestration capabilities. Developers can automate deployment and rollback of job changes by defining workflows as code and integrating them with CI/CD pipelines. This accelerates iterations and reduces the risk of errors during deployments. Similarly, a growth in the company's data orchestration capabilities has led to the development and release of integrations focused on data pipelines, such as Airflow and Snowflake. This allows customers to easily use Control-M with data pipelines.
Geographic strategy: BMC has a global footprint and a strong value-added reseller (VAR) and partner program. It has global partner sales teams focused on growing the company's network and strategic partnerships dedicated to hyperscalers, as well as other strategic relationships, such as with Amdocs, Dell Technologies and PwC.

Cons:

Pricing: Control-M can be expensive for large, complex deployments. Pricing remains complicated for clients to navigate, although changes in pricing to include additional licensed components have been observed.
Customer experience: Customer satisfaction with account management and contract renewal is reported as more problematic compared with other vendors in this research. Customers have reported varying levels of satisfaction when engaging with BMC for proofs of concept and renewals.
Product scalability: Clients evaluating the SaaS offering should assess the volume of jobs that they need to support and grow against BMC's roadmap for increased job execution limits. Although the Helix SaaS offering has improved its job execution limits since introduction, it still lags behind other leaders in this Magic Quadrant.

Broadcom - Leader

Pros:

Product capabilities: Automic Automation offers better scalability than other Leaders in this Magic Quadrant, and can meet high volumes of complex workloads across a broad set of verticals. It supports zero-downtime upgrades and has a long record of execution and extensive security features.
Observability and intelligence: Automation Analytics & Insight (AAI) can provide insights across a heterogeneous vendor environment into complex, cross-vendor workloads. This feature enables customers to predict outcomes of SLAs before they impact the business, reducing risks and costs.
Geographic and vertical footprint: With a global presence, Broadcom can extend both sales and support to most geographies and industry verticals. This allows for the largest enterprises to engage with Broadcom across their operating environments.

Cons:

Customer experience: Customers have reported variability in their interactions with Broadcom and its partners on topics such as licensing, renewals and technical support needs.
Innovation: Broadcom has been comparatively slow to provide additional integrations and support for advanced hybrid environments. The Automic SaaS offering was released significantly later than competitors in this space.
Product confusion: The Broadcom automation product family has many products, which can lead to confusion in the identification and selection of the most appropriate tooling.

HCLSoftware - Leader

Pros:

Deployment options: HCL Automation Orchestrator Suite can be deployed as a self-hosted or SaaS offering. The SaaS offering can support data sovereignty and regulatory requirements for data location. The fully containerized offering supports scaling to meet high-volume execution demands and improved upgrade experience. This has enabled the creation of its SoFy proof-of-concept environment, which allows for rapid evaluation of HCLSoftware products.
Innovation: The Clara AI-Assistant and AI Data Advisor (AIDA) product features enable AI- and machine learning (ML)-driven efficiency and productivity. Clara has a strong roadmap that expands its capabilities to include more operational use cases. AIDA improves the planning (including what-if analysis) and optimization of workloads executed with ML and enhances the experience of managing the platform. Both Clara and AIDA are available at no additional cost.
Geographic strategy: HCLSoftware has a solid geographic footprint, with a global presence that allows it to extend both sales and support. The established structure allows for the largest enterprises to engage with the vendor across their operating environments.

Cons:

Marketing execution: Automation Orchestrator Suite is not as visible in the market as competitor offerings. HCLSoftware continues to invest in the marketing of the product suite, but customer awareness remains low.
Licensing model: HCLSoftware provides consumption-based licensing by default. This requires active governance to ensure that spend is managed and can make forecasting spend uncertain.
Reliance on software partners: HCLSoftware and IBM have a strategic partnership to deliver the Workload Automation product. Clients report a lack of clarity about this partnership, causing confusion and concern related to their investments into a long-term product roadmap.

IBM - Leader

Pros:

Hybrid operating environment support: IWA is part of IBM's overall workload automation strategy to support hybrid operating environments. It is capable of managing workloads, from the mainframe to the cloud and beyond. The Automation Hub feature allows users to quickly build integrations that they need.
Deployment options: IWA can be self-hosted, deployed on mainframe z/OS, on the cloud or as a SaaS. It supports data sovereignty and complies with regulatory requirements for data location.
Geographic strategy: With a global presence, IBM offers direct sales and support in most geographies. The vendor's established structure allows for the largest enterprises to engage with IBM across their operating environments.

Cons:

Reliance on software partners: IBM and HCLSoftware have a strategic partnership to deliver the IWA product. Clients report a lack of clarity about this partnership, causing confusion and concern related to product innovations and support for IWA.
User experience: Customers have reported that the user interface is complex and find it overwhelming to navigate. They also expressed that IWA has a steep learning curve and mastering the tool's functionalities can be time-consuming, requiring significant training and practice.
Cost: Many clients report struggling to differentiate a Processor Value Unit (PVU) licensing model from consumption-based models. They report that licensing and implementation costs of IWA can be significant, especially for larger enterprises.

Redwood Software - Leader

Pros:

SaaS experience: Redwood has been delivering SOAP capabilities as a SaaS offering for over 10 years. This has resulted in significant revenue increases due to wider adoption of SaaS solutions.
Enterprise integration expertise: RunMyJobs' integration catalog is extensive and continually updated with new content delivered by Redwood and/or requested by its customers. Integrations are available directly in the platform, enabling customers to add an integration with a click. Redwood has a strong relationship with SAP to deliver functionality.
Geographic strategy: With a global presence, Redwood can extend both sales and support to most geographies. The established structure allows for the largest enterprises to engage with Redwood across its operating environment and meet data governance and sovereignty requirements.

Cons:

Innovation: Redwood's planning and optimization capabilities are robust; however, it lags behind other leaders in this market in providing advanced AI capabilities.
Product portfolio: Redwood has been acquiring SOAP vendors in targeted acquisitions, leading to confusion and concern in the market about the selection of a SOAP and the future for an acquired platform.
Customer experience: Customers have reported frustration in their interactions with Redwood due to a lack of flexibility during licensing and renewal negotiations.

Stonebranch - Leader

Pros:

Integration catalog breadth: Stonebranch has a broad set of integrations that span both workload and workflow orchestration targets and systems. The catalog continues to expand, especially as additional use cases drive customers' technology adoption.
Service execution: Stonebranch offers transition services and implementation assistance to help clients migrate and convert to it from every major job scheduler or workload automation solution on the market.
Product strategy: Universal Automation Center provides a robust solution for multiple use cases, including data pipeline orchestration. It supports real-time data flows by relying on event-based triggers and empowers data operations by providing dashboards, analytics and proactive alerts. This includes JaC support and extensive migration/promotion capabilities.

Cons:

Innovation: ChatGPT integration is a positive feature addition, but Stonebranch's expansion of AI capabilities remains behind other vendors evaluated in this research.
Market awareness: Stonebranch remains relatively unknown compared to other vendors in the Leaders quadrant. This presents adoption challenges among organizations that may not be comfortable with selecting an emerging vendor.
Persona support: The current design of the product is oriented primarily toward IT operations professionals. Clients should be aware that Stonebranch's capabilities for business technologists trail other Leaders in this Magic Quadrant.

Rocket Software - Challenger

Pros:

Geographic strategy: Rocket Software has a global presence, offering direct sales and support in most geographies. It has an ecosystem of over 750 partners globally to work with customers on increasingly complex modernization challenges.
Mainframe support: The Rocket Workload Automation and DevOps Orchestration suite provides a centralized solution that lets customers integrate workloads from mainframe to cloud. Rocket Software is one of the few vendors that directly supports mainframe job scheduling.
Innovation: Rocket's AI Predictive Pulse empowers constant observability of automations, providing insights and intelligence to ensure efficiency, speed, cost savings and mitigation of SLA misses. This capability is delivered with Digitate.

Cons:

Marketing execution: Rocket's rebranded ASG Technologies acquisition is not well-known in the market. While the vendor continues to invest in marketing its product suite, customer awareness remains low.
Product strategy: The lack of an integration marketplace to allow customers to extend their capabilities is a challenge. Similarly, Rocket's AI roadmap is focused primarily on initial productivity use cases, but not on more advanced capabilities.
Deployment models: Rocket does not provide a SaaS solution, supporting only self-hosted deployments. This is a barrier to customers that are looking for SaaS efficiencies.

Absyss - Niche Player

Pros:

User experience: Visual TOM includes a high-level, self-service capability for business users through a low-code interface. It supports mobile interactions and an integration into Microsoft Teams for better user experience. The workflow development environment offers a lot of capabilities for workflow control, allowing users to create and schedule workloads.
Licensing flexibility: Absyss offers flexible licensing options for Visual TOM and makes it available through subscription or perpetual licenses. It also supports volume-, agents- or job-based metrics.
Conversion support: Absyss has has a capability to automatically convert jobs from competing platforms to Visual TOM. Absyss self-reported 80% to 90% accuracy on automated conversions of BMC Control-M artifacts.

Cons:

Marketing strategy: Absyss' marketing predominantly targets users in Western and Northern Europe, and has a limited presence outside of these regions. The company's presence outside the French market is limited.
Deployment models: Visual TOM is not provided as a SaaS solution, supporting only self-hosted and cloud-hosted deployments. Customers can secure a managed option only through Absyss partners.
Innovation: Absyss' initial AI capabilities are limited in scope and capability, focused initially on productivity improvements. Its investment in innovation is more focused than competitors, given the size of the company.

Beta Systems Software - Visionary

Pros:

Product strategy: ANOW! provides a single platform to orchestrate a wide range of systems, from the newest cloud-based technologies like Snowflake and Databricks to mainframe, OpenVMS and other midrange systems. The tool provides over 450 out-of-the-box connectors for a variety of technology categories, including cloud services, databases, ERPs, OS, and extraction, transformation and loading (ETL).
Product architecture: Beta Systems Software has engineered its offering to leverage cloud-native architecture by using a microservices-based design that is scalable and accessible.
Innovation: The vendor has developed a unique Broadcom (Automic) scripting emulation that enables a more efficient migration process, as it removes the need for rewriting scripts. This is a product differentiator, as it helps customers focus on validating job execution outcomes.

Cons:

Geographic presence: ANOW! is predominantly known in European markets, but Beta Systems Software is investing to expand its geographic presence. This presents adoption challenges, as clients may not be comfortable selecting a vendor with limited installed base in their geography.
Observability and monitoring: ANOW! provides standard observability, monitoring and optimization capabilities, and limited AI capabilities compared with Leaders in this Magic Quadrant.
Market execution: Beta Systems Software targeted its product for large-enterprise customers, limiting its suitability for small businesses and midsize enterprises.

Fortra - Niche Player

Pros:

Product strategy: JAMS is built on open standards and doesn't use any proprietary scripting languages, allowing customers to use their existing script syntax to interact with the platform features and functionality. This reduces the level of effort required to adopt JAMS.
Product scalability: JAMS leverages a queuing capability to control, prioritize and load-balance jobs and setups executions across multiple agents for optimal performance.
Innovation: Fortra provides a robotic process automation (RPA) add-on with JAMS, offering these two solutions as a unified experience. Adding RPA capabilities enables end-to-end process automation that provides citizen developers with a low-code solution for creating workflows.

Cons:

Sales strategy: Fortra lacks a network of independent software vendors (ISVs) that extend the solution, or VARs that can sell, advise and support customers through their journey of acquiring and implementing the solution. This limits customers to Fortra's resources when it comes to deployment and adoption.
Product features: JAMS provides basic monitoring capabilities that lag behind other vendors in this Magic Quadrant. AI capabilities have not been included in the JAMS roadmap. The user interface needs updates to address reported user experience concerns.
Deployment models: The Fortra product is not available as a SaaS offering, limiting deployments to a self-hosted model.

Honico Systems - Niche Player

Pros:

Product strategy: BatchMan is deeply integrated within SAP and is able to control both SAP and non-SAP workloads. It leverages its Java file and data manager agents to control and orchestrate any workflow outside of SAP. BatchMan is easy for SAP administrators to adopt without the need for extensive training.
Operational efficiency: BatchMan runs inside of SAP, making it cost-effective for organizations with a primarily SAP environment. It has a minimal learning curve, integrates seamlessly with SAP and doesn't require extra hardware or software.
SAP expertise: Honico Systems has more specialists and experts in SAP than other vendors, making it a less complex alternative for organizations relying heavily on SAP solutions.

Cons:

Product strategy: Honico may not be suitable for organizations with a heterogeneous operating environment due to its SAP-centric focus.
Geographic strategy: Honico has direct sales and support only in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Its strategy remains focused on serving clients only in Europe.
Deployment models: BatchMan is not available as a SaaS offering, limiting deployments to a self-hosted model that stands alone or within SAP.

Resolve Systems - Visionary

Pros:

Workflow expertise: The vendor has been delivering IT workflow orchestration capabilities for over 10 years and has deep expertise in enabling a user-friendly authoring and execution experience. Resolve Actions has a broad catalog of integrations to many IT systems, allowing greater coverage of workflows.
Product strategy: Resolve Automation as a Service (RAaaS) allows the Resolve team to either create (or co-create with their customers) workflows that enable IT orchestration.
Innovation: Resolve Actions enables AI-driven pipeline creation by leveraging native ML-based algorithms on tickets, events or log data, identifying recurring issues and high-priority IT scenarios.

Cons:

Workload automation: Resolve Actions has basic workload automation capabilities (as defined in this research), restricting the use cases that it can address. This limits the vendor's ability to displace competitors.
Marketing execution: Resolve Actions is less-well-known in the market than other competitive SOAP offerings. Customer awareness remains low for its primary use cases, although Resolve Systems continues to invest in marketing its product suite.
Sales strategy: Resolve Systems does not provide strategic SOAP vendor displacement services or tools to help customers migrate from their existing SOAP vendors. This creates a challenge against competitors that more coherently blend workload and workflow automation.

SMA Technologies - Niche Player

Pros:

Support for banking/financial services: SMA Technologies has focused on the SOAP market, particularly with regional financial institutions, and developed a great deal of expertise. The vendor provides extensive support to banks and credit union customers.
Product strategy: OpCon provides customers a central dashboard with a clear view of their systems' health, including SLA monitoring and automated actions to keep things running smoothly. It also provides self-service to help nontechnical users manage their workflow automation without IT intervention. RPA integration is available to perform automation work for repetitive activities.
Innovation: Deploy is a module built into the OpCon platform to help apply DevOps practices to maintain and change workflow definitions. This ensures changes in the environment are seamless, fast and safe. As changes are promoted from development to testing to production systems, the OpCon Deploy change management system assures consistency and smooth transition.

Cons:

Industry strategy: SMA's vision is focused on innovation and execution in the banking/financial services verticals, which dictates the capabilities in which the vendor invests. SMA's capabilities align with the SOAP market today, but a gap will grow between customer expectations and product capabilities. This narrow focus also limits the number of integrations that are available outside the technology stack for these verticals.
Observability/monitoring: OpCon's monitoring capabilities are basic. It lacks desired additional capabilities, notably optimization or predictive abilities, which are critical for identifying the impact of workloads that are not meeting service levels. It also lacks AI capabilities to support advanced troubleshooting and optimization.
Deployment models: OpCon is not available as a SaaS, supporting only on-premises and cloud-hosted deployments, and a managed services offering. This is a barrier to customers that are looking for SaaS efficiencies.

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

A: BMC Software, Broadcom, HCLSoftware, IBM, Redwood Software, Stonebranch

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

A: Leaders need to stand out with a deep understanding of the SOAP platform market and a proven track record of strong execution in delivering high-performing solutions. Their vision can influence and shape the market's direction with their thought leadership and continuous innovation. Leaders also have a feature-rich and well-defined product roadmap. They continuously anticipate their customer needs and expand and evolve their capabilities to deliver value. These vendors need to have a wide global presence and strong market penetration across geographies, verticals and organizations of all sizes. Leaders in this market differentiate themselves by meeting their customers where they are, providing them with a unified solution that continuously evolves. This helps customers manage their complex workloads and workflows as they modernize and adopt modern ERPs, SaaS, cloud-native infrastructure and applications. A few of the most distinctive capabilities of Leaders in this market are: Their ability to provide a broad range of out-of-the-box integrations and their versatility to quickly build new integrations or enable customers or partners to do it themselves. Support for multiple personas from business and IT with self-service capabilities. AI, analytics and insights to optimize operations, cost and value delivery from the SOAP platforms. Leaders are well-positioned to remain dominant as this mature SOAP platform market evolves.

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

A: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms in 2024

Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

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