Fortra’s Automate vs. IBM Aspera on Cloud

It's great for repetitive or regularly scheduled activities like reports or file transfers. However, it's not so good for on-demand activities. It doesn't support task shortcuts to run specific tasks. If it did it would be perfect.

Incentivized

It is best suited to products and companies which extensively use IBM cloud and other cloud hosted services by IBM. This is because since the existing interface is a little challenging to use, IBM's own products and platform is well integrated with IBM Aspera on Cloud and there's relatively little work for the integration team

• Very detailed task builder. Easy to read step by step a task's operation even if you don't have much programming knowledge.
• Scheduling for automation jobs is very flexible. Allows us to create all kinds of job schedules as needed.
• Organization of jobs, tasks, conditions is done well. Allows us to easily manage our items.

Incentivized

• Ease of use: the Graphical User Interface doesn't require technical know-how to operate
• Delivery Receipts: this allows us the confidence to know our files have reached our customers
• Activity Monitor: lets you know how much data you have used, which is important for budgeting reasons.

Incentivized

• A reporting capability on tasks: enabled, disabled, by folder, by trigger, etc. Currently there is none.
• An "OR" in their conditional statements - currently there is only "AND".
• Some kind of temporary backup when changing a task - separate from the current back up/restore functionality (which works well).

Incentivized

• Track upload/download usage OVERALL to know how much space is left
• Track cloud storage overall to know how much space is left
• More easily send single links to users for download, rather than full access (I know it is possible, but it is not intuitive)

Incentivized

It's just very easy to use, extremely versatile, and very reliable. It's hard to find use cases where it won't work.

Incentivized

Support is very helpful and responsive, although using the tool is very user-friendly, so I hardly use the service.

Incentivized

The support from IBM is fast and reliable. Very knowledgeable engineers provide you with the support on Aspera. We had a very good experience when opened tickets and we were able to get our issues resolved quickly. Most solutions are provided within a day so you can expect a quick turnaround time. Overall, the support has been very good.

Incentivized

The service provided by the authorized vendor was excellent. It was a good collaboration between the vendor IT team and internal IT team. They provided us with a timeline and we verified and approved that timeline. Daily stand ups and weekly meetups were conducted to update the internal team on progress. They were able to deliver all deliverables on time also, they conducted both alpha testing and beta version testing in time. Overall, they were able to complete the implementation in the given timeline.

Incentivized

Incentivized

Aspera comes with IBM cloud so there isn’t really a choice. Since it’s built-in, it integrates well and there was no need to buy another solution. Therefore, I did not consider other options. It worked fine, gave access files, push data securely, and did it faster than standard HTTPS.

Incentivized

• It's been a net positive as AutoMate requires less eyes on specific tasks so that people can focus attention elsewhere and do more analysis.
• Less manual work also decreases the chances of mistakes and/or missed jobs. Since Automate can schedule everything, send email notifications, etc., there is less time wasted.

Incentivized

• Aspera has changed the way we do business. We are now able to share huge file sets electronically, saving on external drives, shipping costs, time, and effort.
• Our industry is very slow to commit to electronic alternatives to physical media. In less than three years, the positive results of using this service have caused over 70% of our user base to fully commit to electronic delivery, with the number of physical fulfillments quickly being driven toward zero.
• Transfers within our own company, which formerly relied solely on FTP/HTTP transfer drives that would take days now take minutes with Aspera. Our software team relies on the speed and accuracy of the transfers.

Incentivized