Job Scheduling and Workload Automation for the Modern Workplace

Job Scheduling and Workload Automation solutions were designed for different goals, but they’re closely related and share some functionality, and when combined into a single platform can provide powerful orchestration from a single point of control.

What is Job Scheduling?

Job scheduling is the process where tasks are executed at a scheduled time or when a specific event occurs. Job scheduling tools automate tasks, eliminating the need for manual kick-offs, which gives IT more time to spend on higher-value projects and reduces delays.

Traditional job scheduling tools were developed to automate batch jobs that ran on homogeneous mainframes from vendors like IBM and Oracle. This legacy continues today, with native job schedulers being used to automate tasks for specific applications or platforms (for example, Microsoft Windows Task Scheduler). However, the number of disparate tools and operating systems used by IT teams has grown in recent decades, with many IT teams managing complex, hybrid-cloud managed environments. As more organizations moved into the cloud and used AWS, Azure and other SaaS applications, automation initiatives became more complex and the need to be scalable also become more important. In response to this, modern job scheduling vendors provide prebuilt integrations with numerous applications and systems to support the orchestration of cross-platform batch processing – which is where the relation to workload automation begins.

What is Workload Automation?

Workload automation (WLA) solutions are used to manage data and dependencies across disparate tools such as managed file transfers/ETL automation tools, business process applications, enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, BI platforms, and more.

WLA solutions often provide universal connectors and/or powerful REST API adapters that make it possible to integrate virtually any tool into an end-to-end process, without the need for custom scripts.

In Gartner’s Market Guide for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms, industry analysts note that service orchestration and automation platforms “do not represent a new market, rather a transformation of a mature market for workload automation tools that aim to manage and automate a complete business process.”

Enterprise workload automation solutions designed for process orchestration can include a range of capabilities that simplify IT automation. Capabilities can include:

• Workload scheduling and management
• Batch Monitoring and alerting
• Service level agreement (SLA) management
• Process mapping
• Change management
• Resource provisioning
• And more

These capabilities, when paired with REST API adapters and monitoring dashboards, give IT a single point of control from which to streamline real-time data processes and simplify regulatory compliance across automated environments. It also makes automation more scalable and empowers both IT and business users to create and run automation initiatives across the organization. Ongoing optimization is also easier, as all the data and trends are easily monitored in a powerful dashboard.

Powerful Job Scheduling With Workload Automation

Workload automation (WLA) solutions support job scheduling, but most job schedulers do not support workload automation. For example, WLA includes load balancing to make sure resources have enough CPUs to complete jobs – job scheduling tools often do not.

In addition to time-based triggers, WLA solutions also support event-based automation, job constraints, and variables to pass data to downstream scheduled jobs.

As IT environments become increasingly complex, and as the need for rapid integrations and real-time data grows, the basic capabilities of traditional job schedulers (and other point solutions such as cron jobs or custom scripts) are no longer sufficient to meet business needs. As a result, IT teams are implementing WLA solutions to automate, monitor, and orchestrate cross-platform processes without having to rely on custom scripts or multiple scheduling solutions.

For example, SThree, a leading international staffing company, once relied on Microsoft Windows Task Scheduler as their sole automation tool, until the company’s global expansion made for an increasingly complex IT environment. This prompted calls for workload automation and enterprise job scheduling software to automate their manual, script-driven processes and manage dependencies between diverse business applications, with flexible scheduling options that could orchestrate workloads across time-zones.

(You can read more about SThree’s case study to see how the IT team automated its manual provisioning requests.)

Trends in Workload Automation and Job Scheduling

Customer expectations are rapidly changing. In order to stay ahead, IT teams must be able to rapidly integrate and capitalize on new technologies.

The move towards workload automation and away from traditional job scheduling software is a direct result of these latest trends. The need for simplistic task automation, completed in homogeneous silos, has given way to complex business and IT processes that have to be orchestrated across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

For this reason, industry analysts expect basic IT process automation to evolve into broader automation strategies that centralize the control of automation across silos.

As part of their 2023 predictions research, Gartner industry analysts found that 80 percent of their clients are planning to increase or sustain hyperautomation spending, using low-code automation, AI and other methods to achieve their goals in the face of economic, supply chain and personnel issues.

This becomes especially important in the areas of DevOps and big data/Hadoop automation as businesses rely on real-time data management in order to optimize customer experiences and make faster business decisions.

Managing resources across virtual and cloud environments has also become an issue for many IT operations teams as cloud costs can quickly spiral out of control.

In order to better meet these needs, Gartner has identified a trend toward IT automation platforms that unify workload and infrastructure automation.

They’ve found that organizations are using business process automation and workload automation tools that readily integrate with virtually all applications, systems, and technologies, allowing IT to orchestrate processes and resources across the data center, IT infrastructure, and business systems.

As new technologies and the need for data-driven solutions accelerate the pace of digital transformation, organizations will continue to move toward workload automation solutions that centralize and coordinate the automation of enterprise applications.

Job Scheduling Software Capabilities

There are a number of workload automation solutions out there. But what key capabilities should you be on the lookout for? Below, we’ll take a look at ActiveBatch which offers one of the more complete suites of capabilities available on the market.

Drag-and-Drop Workflow Designer

ActiveBatch includes hundreds of prebuilt integrations for commonly scripted actions that users can assemble into end-to-end workflows, making it easier to manage dependencies between technologies and applications. There are also integrations for third-party applications, databases, and platforms, plus, a web services API and powerful REST API adapter. Basically, virtually any tool or technology can be integrated. 

Flexible Date/Time Scheduling

ActiveBatch incorporates granular date and time-based scheduling (calendars, fiscal year dates, time zones, custom tags, etc.), and supports scheduling workflow orchestrations based on the custom business day..

Resource Provisioning

IT needs to provision virtual/cloud machines on the fly in order to meet dynamic workload demands in real-time. To do this, ActiveBatch analyzes historical and real-time data to anticipate resource demands, intelligently distributing queues to minimize slack time and reduce idle machine resources.

Monitoring and Alerting

ActiveBatch supports dozens of customizable alerts that notify appropriate parties or systems when a specified condition has been raised within a workflow.

There is also support for monitoring and alerting for workflows tied to SLAs or business policies. Users can set warning and critical thresholds (based on absolute and relative deadlines) and establish customized alert notifications and automated remediation actions for an impending SLA breach. The intuitive user interface and dashboard makes visualization of all workflows easy when manual monitoring is required.

Self-Service Business Automation

Some workload automation solutions, including ActiveBatch, provide an intuitive user interface that allows help desk and business teams to execute daily and ad hoc processes and promotes better workload management. IT sets up the environment and empowers various business units to run and monitor specific jobs and plans based upon departmental or individual requirements. This allows business users to run and monitor processes as needed, such as provisioning virtual machines or producing end-of-day reports, without waiting for IT.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to simplify your data warehousing with workload automation?

Schedule a demo to watch our experts run jobs that match your business requirements in ActiveBatch. Get your questions answered and learn how easy it is to build and maintain your jobs.