Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Fortra's JAMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 30, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

AutoSys Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortra's JAMS
Ranking in Workload Automation
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AutoSys Workload Automation is 16.1%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortra's JAMS is 1.6%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Antony Askew - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us manage complex workloads, reduce our workload failure rates, and save us time
The visibility and control features are somewhat limited. This is a recognized weakness, but thee vendor is currently revamping the user interface to address it. While the current UI is a bit outdated, it's undergoing improvement. AutoSys Workload Automation has some areas for improvement, particularly in housekeeping and product maintenance. These tasks are currently quite manual and labor-intensive for our team. Additionally, the reporting and forecasting functionalities could be more robust. One area for improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation is that it comprises several distinct tools configured to work together. This necessitates familiarity with multiple tools for effective solution management. Consequently, it can sometimes lack a sense of cohesiveness as a unified solution.
Rob Grafrath - PeerSpot reviewer
We can scale up our organization's scheduling and automation without having to add staff to the department
The biggest area with room for improvement is the area that my organization benefits the most from using JAMS, and that is in custom execution methods. I happen to have a very good C# developer. Ever since we got JAMS, he has spent a lot of time talking to JAMS developers, researching the JAMS libraries, and creating custom execution methods. He's gotten very good at it. He is now able to create them and maintain them very easily, but that was hard-won knowledge. If I ever lose this developer, I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods as well as he can since there really isn't all that much help, such as documentation or information, available on how to create custom execution methods. I really think that they could benefit greatly by being much more transparent about C# development, maybe by making a JAMS cookbook or a developer portal where they could throw ideas at each other. One of my complaints with the marketing around JAMS is that it says things like, "It integrates with Teams". They talk about integrating with a lot of things, but marketing doesn't tell you that they are talking about JAMS running PowerShell jobs. Since PowerShell can automate things like SharePoint and Teams, that is how marketing gets away with saying it has so many integrations. JAMS doesn't have as many built-in integrations as they advertise. I think they should build more of them, and improve on the ones they have built.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of AutoSys Workload Automation is user-friendliness. If someone has some knowledge of the tool they can use it."
"The initial setup is easy."
"​It allows you to automate tasks, and reduce headcount, prevent errors, self-heal."
"It has helped to simplify cross-dependency between MVS and Open systems jobs."
"AutoSys Workload Automation is a stable solution."
"It gives us flexibility when doing releases. We can make changes for one day in a PDS member, since we stage our jobs by date, and the next day the normal job definitions are run."
"It is a fairly stable solution."
"Inherit Dependencies feature reduces scheduling errors for holiday processing."
"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge. Before JAMS, every group was keeping track of their own batch jobs. Nobody really knew what the other jobs were. So, if jobs failed, other groups wouldn't necessarily know. With JAMS, everything is done through a single scheduler. You can choose who to notify."
"It's a full-featured job scheduling tool. The part that I liked the best was the support team. This tool was new, and we were all learning it and setting up the different jobs that were complex in nature. Their support team was very responsive in helping us out through the setup and resolving the issues. They have been incredibly awesome."
"The feature or capability to import a job is most valuable. We can import an existing job from different platforms, and all the configurations get migrated as well without modifying the code, job schedule, etc."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"The ability to sequence jobs is excellent; it means we don't have to schedule them individually, and if one fails, it doesn't unwind the entire workflow."
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"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."
 

Cons

"We have to escalate through channels to get to somebody who knows what's going on. It takes time that we do not necessarily have.​"
"The graphical interface can be improved."
"AutoSys Workload Automation could improve in the Linux environment. The previous versions of the AutoSys Workload Automation let you take the profile of the user that you were using to run the tasks that you're going to automate, but in the latest versions, you can't do that, you need to make more definitions and it's a little bit difficult. It was easier in the previous versions."
"​A better graphical user interface, because we have a lot of people using the client utility, and we want to get them away from that.​"
"Pricing model for distributed should have an Enterprise option."
"It would be helpful to be able to monitor and manage workload windows so we could minimize downstream applications. This would allow us easier access to the applications."
"Reduce the number of operational files. This would make the job of a system programmer supporting ESP easier."
"They could do better supporting it. They have too many of the same type of products, so sometimes it doesn't get as much attention as it should."
"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."
"If there were a softcover book on how to really take advantage of all of JAMS' tools, I would buy it. I do better with training books than online searching, so a book would be helpful."
"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."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"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."
"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"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."
"It does validations when you try to delete an object and if there are any dependencies in place, the deletion process will not proceed... there is no information provided as to what it was that caused the validation to fail... it's quite a tedious process to find which object is getting in the way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."
"CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all."
"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."
"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."
"It is overpriced."
"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."
"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."
"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"All licensing models are a little overpriced, but JAMS offers a good value, especially given their support response times and ability to handle unforeseen issues like the SFTP transfers. I hope to find more use cases to get a better bang for our buck."
"The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"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 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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
47%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...
What do you like most about AutoSys Workload Automation?
The most valuable aspects of AutoSys Workload Automation are its performance, scalability, and ease of getting started for new users.
What do you like most about JAMS?
I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra. Previously, both Help Systems and MVP offered more favorable pricing and licensing terms. However, Fo...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
The error messages from JAMS need clarification, hindering our ability to resolve issues swiftly. The JAMS client requires attention. Its behavior can be erratic, and certain features lack intuitiv...
 

Also Known As

CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about AutoSys Workload Automation vs. Fortra's JAMS and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.