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AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 13, 2026

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

JAMS
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AutoSys Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Control-M
Ranking in Workload Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
200
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (2nd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (2nd), AI IT Support (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.7%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AutoSys Workload Automation is 7.1%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 12.5%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Control-M12.5%
JAMS2.7%
AutoSys Workload Automation7.1%
Other77.7%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
PK
Assistant VP at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Experience significant automation with robust integration and user-friendly interfaces
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancements in the R24 release. The web UI needs some improvement. Cloud integrations are limited to 25 or 30 configurable plugins and integrations to the cloud. They can improve in that area. They have separate tools, not AutoSys Workload Automation, such as Atomic and other SaaS-based solutions that can run inside the cloud. AutoSys Workload Automation can be configured in the cloud, but it requires a substantial number of VMs depending on the load. For on-premises deployment, it is a very good solution. They need to increase their footprint in the cloud and improve the web UI. They are making excellent progress in the R24 release.
RP
Batch Admin at NBC Universal
Brings data together from multiple platforms and optimizes cross-environment orchestration
The features of Control-M that I like the most include the ability to easily integrate or bring in different platforms into Control-M. For instance, AWS, mainframe, TWS, and something that's running on Autosys can all be brought into Control-M, converted to how Control-M runs it, and then the batch can be executed. This centralizes various applications in Control-M, which doesn't just have to handle batch processes, but also other tasks like reporting on required data. I find this functionality very useful and the setup is impressive, with more advancements yet to come. With Control-M, my company has achieved several measurable improvements since I started. The metrics indicate that the number of failures has dropped, and we have addressed the issue of excessive false alerts that I encountered when I joined. Previously, we received an overwhelming number of alerts daily, but now we manage to maintain that at a normalized level, perhaps around five to fifteen alerts, depending on running core batches and their setup.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our company is based on data. Everything we do is data-driven, so it has been very valuable having one place where we can process all of the data and do batch schedules with chunks of data."
"I appreciate JAMS for its readily available templates that allow me to create and deliver stand-up presentations within minutes quickly."
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"Previously, we manually managed file transfers by writing our scripts. The automated MFT feature is great for me and the company. It helps us know where the files are going and enables us to track errors if anything fails. It also makes the connection seamless for third-party vendors."
"I like how you can add new execution methods on the fly. It isn't overly complex to add Python script support to an execution method in the JAMS system. The scheduling is excellent. You can schedule a maintenance window and take that resource unit out of everything. It halts all of the jobs."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."
"The scheduling and execution of jobs are the most valuable features. The scheduling is important because if there is a task we want to execute at 4:00 AM, there's no way we will have someone who can manually run the job. In addition, we execute 100 to 200 jobs per day, and manual intervention is not an option."
"The overall product is fantastic. I love it. It has been a fantastic, solid product. If I have one tiny bit of a problem with it, the support team gets in touch with me right away. I don't know if I've had another service that has been as fantastic as the JAMS support team."
"The scheduling feature allows us to know when jobs are going to run and makes sure they run in the order needed."
"We use technical support all the time. We would be lost without them. They're fantastic. Really good job. We're able to reach the right person to help us out right away."
"We have ended up using it as a Tier 1 application supporting other Tier 1 applications."
"The CA workload agent has gotten much better. For our organization it's important for us to communicate in a secure fashion between the host and the other platforms, and we are able to do that with our CA product"
"Automic Automation Engine provides us the ability to map logic using a scripting language, giving us an advantage where practically all automation problems can easily be implemented within the Automation Engine."
"There are no challenges in the sense that Autosys is a robust product with good performance."
"Inherit Dependencies feature reduces scheduling errors for holiday processing."
"Its stability and reliability, that it's been there for 20 years and 30 years, and it's always been the number one scheduler."
"Scheduling has changed from basic to more complex as our developers get acquainted with the ability and flexibility of the product."
"My organization has been able to script scheduled jobs in Control-M to potentially replace legacy products that are at end of life or end of service. The previous backup applications that were being used for specific files, folders, or applications were no longer being supported, therefore being able to use Control-M to replace that has been very valuable."
"In general, the ability to check all your processes in a unified view that Control-M provides is what I appreciate the most about it."
"Control-M offers great value to businesses by providing an option to see different flows and control and orchestrate the sequence of the execution."
"Control-M is a critical part of our operations."
"The most effective feature of Control-M is the API integration."
"What I like best about BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is that it makes transfers more secure and faster. It has a recovery feature during failed file transfers."
"The solution is stable and provides good performance."
 

Cons

"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."
"If there were a softcover book on how to really take advantage of all of JAMS' tools, I would buy it."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"All my machines at work are Macs. JAMS client is a Windows-based thing. It is all built on .NET, which makes perfect sense. However, that means in order for me to access it, I need to connect to a VPN, then log onto one of our Azure VMs in order to access the JAMS client. This is fine, but if for some reason I am unable to do so, it would be nice to be able to have a web-based JAMS client that has all the exact same functionality in it. There are probably a whole bunch of disadvantages that you would get with that as well, but that is definitely something that would make life easier in a few cases."
"I'm not sure if they have fixed it in a newer version, but there is no global search in the version I have. If I have multiple sub-folders that are named for business units, like HR or IT, and I have to search for a job, I cannot search from the top. I have to go to the HR folder to search for a particular job, or to the IT folder."
"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."
"The client is horrible. Every time JAMS puts out a survey on what they can improve, I always say, "The client: When you are setting up jobs, it is quite horrible." The response has been, "Well, we are just using the Windows foundation," and I am like, "Why isn't it only your product?" We can get around it now that we know its quirks, but it is not the most user-friendly of tools out there. The UI is completely unintuitive. We had to go and open up a support ticket with JAMS just to get something back. It is not user-friendly at all."
"Improvements could be made in the service desk's knowledge and communication skills among engineers to better address customer needs and ensure issues are fully resolved."
"Upgrades to the GUI interface would be probably one of the biggest things they could do to improve."
"Autosys is still lagging behind some competitive products from a functionality perspective."
"The GUI/Workstation is weak and needs to be improved."
"In terms of what should be in the next release, I want integration and AI and so on. I'd like easy reporting where you can compare information, for example, "that job normally takes three minutes and last time it took six minutes or 10 minutes." Then you can get the information to the engineer of which job is taking more time than normal - understanding strange behavior compared to the baseline."
"The lack of documentation, that is an issue."
"Some of the reports are either a bit hard to understand or don’t give you what you might expect to see."
"There is a difference between a web interface and the thick client interface. We particularly like a thick client interface, and it has gone away."
"More benefits with the agent upgrades, and that's about it. Other than that we have no complaints with it. It's been awesome."
"Their technicians should be more involved when we're applying new technology to Control-M, such as cloud."
"Quicker adoption of the newest versions of the product by all would help work out the bugs sooner."
"Version compatibility is one of the very few areas with room for improvement, but it is a big issue with minimum support."
"The ability to work offline would be an improvement."
"There was an upgrade to the project, before it was moved to BMC. It could have been better if there was a demo on how / on the changes."
"It’s well suited for anywhere and anyone, but it comes with a cost; it is quite pricey."
"In my previous project, I experienced lagging with refresh times of six to seven seconds."
"I would like to see them adopt more cloud. Most companies don't have a single cloud, meaning we have data sources that come from different cloud providers. That may have been solved already, but supporting Azure would be an improvement because companies tend not to have only AWS and GCP."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"The pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"Take advantage of its scalability. You can start small. The initial cost is very reasonable. Once you have started picking up the tool and adopting it, then you can scale up from there and buy more agents."
"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."
"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."
"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."
"I don't have information on the exact licensing cost of AutoSys Workload Automation because that's managed by the tools and financing teams. For agents, it's close to $4,00, but for the server setup, it's usually a one-time license initially, and it's AMC which is paid every year and comes close to $8,000 to $10,000."
"We have a license till 2024. We are good and satisfied with it."
"Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers."
"Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more."
"This is an area where it is a little difficult to work with BMC. They want to do licenses by job, which is what we have. For example, the simplest is to license by job, but they can also license by nodes. While the licensing is simple to use, it might not be the correct licensing model for the customer. It is okay because we want to license by job, which is something measurable. At the end of the day, licensing by job is the most important."
"Pricing can be steep, but you get what you pay for."
"They are expensive. If we were a small company, it would be complicated because we have to have strong sales and operations to be able to afford a tool of this level. Being a large company, the cost-benefit is covered, but it is not within the level of cheap solutions."
"You must accept that BMC licensing can be very confusing. No one can easily understand how they calculate things, whether it is user-based, job-based, or server-based. The calculation is quite tough. How BMC calculates licensing is not easily available anywhere."
"The pricing is moderate, not too low or too high compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
5%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise77
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise157
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
My thoughts on the pricing of JAMS are that I won't say it is cheap, but it is cost-efficient, and that should be acc...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
An area that has room for improvement is related to the AWS RDS and database part, where they said that is in progres...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My use case is in batch scheduling and managing the batch jobs.
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 b...
What needs improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation?
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancement...
What do you like most about Control-M?
First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
From what I know about pricing, I would probably put Control-M in the expensive category, but you do pay for what you...
What needs improvement with Control-M?
We are not on the latest version of Control-M; we currently have version 20 and 21.
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
Control M, BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer, BMC Australia CTM
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
The Bank of East Asia, LINE Bank Taiwan, Coop, Air Europa, Carrefour, Itau Unibanco, Snam, Embraer, ANZ Bank, EDP, Dominio's, Tampa General Hospital, W&W Informatik GmbH, Veterans General, Up Sí Vale, Sky Italia, REWE digital GmbH, Raymond James, Railinc, Navistar, Management Science Associates, Colruyt, CARFAX, Banpara, Aspiag Service, Amadeus, AG Insurance, ING Bank Slaski
Find out what your peers are saying about AutoSys Workload Automation vs. Control-M and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
889,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.