I recently presented findings from my EMA Radar for Workload Automation (WLA): Q1 2016 report. The recording for the webinar is now live here.
A number of questions were asked that we did not have time to address on the live event. These are presented in this blog post with my answers. Last names and email addresses of those asking the questions have been hidden.
Q&A Session for EMA WLA (Workload Automation) Radar: A Review of Top Workload Automation Tools
Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2016
‑Paul K – 12:43 PM
Q: Dan, do you see a trend of enterprise level organizations seeking lighter weight, SaaS based versions of these schedulers?
A: I have not seen a trend of enterprise level organizations going SaaS for all central operations. However, I have seen some cases where one part of a company may want to try something different than the official tool, and SaaS was an easy way to do something non-standard. Most of those I have talked to that are heading down the SaaS path for WLA are either small and mid-sized or one part of a larger enterprise.
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‑Davide M – 12:45 PM
Q: what is, in your experience and meetings with customers, the main reason that usually prevents the use of conversion facilities?
A: The desire to clean up historical job streams and restructure, or at least review in detail, what has been running rather than to just port the jobs as they exist. Many users told me they had lots of long standing issues and they took the opportunity to rebuild job streams as part of converting either from an existing enterprise tool to a new one, or when moving from scripts and disparate features from many applications and databases to a full enterprise class WLA solution.
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‑Kaitlin O – 12:45 PM
Q: Other than offering Hadoop integration, what are WLA vendors doing to help automate big data processes?
A: There are a number of things including integrations to other non-sql data bases, improved managed file transfer integrations, extensions, and add-ins to other business intelligence tools like Cognos, SAP, Teradata, etc. Beyond integrations to big data tools, some products include application specific job forms to enable users to easily build big data jobs and include them in composite workflows. Another area how the workflow execution is integrated real-time with the big data tools to provide accurate statusing of workload progress and support complex operational actions for big data jobs.
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‑Neville K – 12:41:17 PM
Q: Based on the threat of cyber warfare and the potential for network outages, do you rate the ability to distribute workflows as something to look for? Will a product along the lines of the dead-man-walking $U product make a resurgence?
A: I think there are many benefits of distributing workflows to public cloud, and business continuity is certainly one of them. One concern is that, while workloads and their agents are distributed, in many situations the console is still located on-premises and centralized. So the console would need to be handled as a part of the greater business continuity plan. Certainly good web based access and other self service tools will help to keep folks connected in the case of a disaster.
