Control-M vs Fortra's JAMS comparison

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28,077 views|10,237 comparisons
98% willing to recommend
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2,149 views|668 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 11, 2023

We performed a comparison between Control-M and Fortra's JAMS based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

Features: Control-M offers valuable features such as Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, Role-Based Administration, file transfer integration, and forecasting. Fortra's JAMS provides job dependency tracking, automation capabilities, warnings and notifications, PowerShell integration, ease of use, centralized management, auditing capability, and extensibility through custom execution methods.

Control-M can improve in areas such as enhancing microservices and API integration, addressing bugs in the web interface, developing a lighter web version, and integrating with third-party tools. Fortra's JAMS could use improvement in terms of intuitiveness, search capability, browser version, source control features, documentation, ACL clarity, connectivity issues, notifications, and compliance with the GPG program.

Service and Support: Control-M's customer service is divisive. Some customers have praised the support team for being prompt and knowledgeable. However, others have expressed their dissatisfaction with the slow response. Fortra's JAMS customer service has been consistently well-reviewed. Customers appreciate the team's responsiveness and expertise.

Ease of Deployment: Users found it easy to install the software for Control-M. Fortra's JAMS had a relatively quick and simple setup process, with users following instructions on the webpage. Some manual conversion of jobs and scripts was required for Control-M, however, once set up, it became the heart of operations. Upgrades and migrations for Control-M were smooth. Some users of Fortra's JAMS had minor challenges during setup but were able to seek assistance from JAMS support.

Pricing: Control-M is seen as having high setup costs due to additional expenses like infrastructure and salaries. Pricing and licensing can be confusing and are important factors for users to consider. In contrast, Fortra's JAMS is praised for its fair and reasonable pricing. It offers unlimited licensing and scalability options, making it a cheaper alternative compared to products like Tivoli and Control-M.

ROI: Control-M has proven to be more cost-effective and efficient, with reduced job duration and improved data management. It also offers centralized connection profiles and automation. Fortra's JAMS has saved time, increased productivity, and provided cost-effectiveness.

Comparison Results: Control-M is the favored choice when comparing it to Fortra's JAMS. Users appreciate Control-M for its user-friendly and efficient setup process, useful integrated guides and instructional videos, seamless agent upgrades with no downtime, and valuable features like Managed File Transfer and Role-Based Administration.

To learn more, read our detailed Control-M vs. Fortra's JAMS Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The initial setup is straightforward.""Control-M has helped us resolve issues 70% to 80% faster. It provides us with alerts instead of having someone go to that particular server and check the logs to determine where the issue is. We can simply click on the alert information, then everything is in front of us. This provides us with time savings, human effort savings, and process savings.""In our bank, all new applications need to be implemented with Control-M. We try to look for the best way to establish communication between both products. One of the new features for us is Application Integrator. It is a very interesting feature because it lets us integrate with those applications that are not included in Control-M. By using Application Integrator, we can easily integrate new technologies. With the help of Application Integrator, we recently integrated with Blue Prism, which is a robotic product. We could integrate such processes into Control-M. Now, we are working with Ansible, and we are putting Ansible automated processes into Control-M.""The feature we use most in Control-M is related to the file transfer module. It is quite advanced compared to the other tools like Automate, etc. The new version which has come of same MFT has a lot of advanced features which makes it very easy to work with. There is less need for written programs and more GUI-based stuff.""The initial setup is largely straightforward.""I find Control-M for SAP and Control-M for Informatica good. You can connect to the Linux or Windows servers, and you can run multiple jobs.""You can let users access the system and manage jobs: self-service.""It gives us the ability to have end-to-end workflows, no matter where they're running."

More Control-M Pros →

"We also use the solution’s Interactive Agents. If we need to push something to our dealer portal, we can just drop a file in a folder and it goes. Running interactive tasks helps me users focus on business processes since I don’t have to take care of running the jobs manually.""The planning capabilities are most valuable.""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.""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 for us is that it's DR-ready. With respect to disaster recovery, it has the built-in capability for failover to our DR site. If all of the required ports are open, it can be done seamlessly.""The interface is good, and it's very easy to define and create jobs. If a job is not running or there is an error, the solution will send an email. That's all very good and very useful.""I didn't know about JAMS because I don't have a person with any challenges with the purchase administration. The feature or the user interface is user-friendly because of the readable icons or very descriptive icons. Though I'm a beginning user of JAMS, I had no issues using it.""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."

More Fortra's JAMS Pros →

Cons
"Consider adding a mobile application for remote management.""Their technicians should be more involved when we're applying new technology to Control-M, such as cloud. We're working with cloud right now, with AWS, and getting the attention of a technician, sometimes, can take some time. It would be nice if they had somebody assigned to it. Dedicated support.""While they have a very good reporting facility, the reports that I'm asked to produce, a lot of times aren't necessarily what we need.""There's a lot of room for improvement and I think it can be more user-friendly.""There is definitely room for improvement. Version 9.0.20 actually comes with a web-based interface, but there are still a lot of things unavailable with it. There will eventually be more inclusions added into the web interface, but there is still a long way to go.""For installing or upgrading the PeopleSoft and SAP plugins, currently there is no way to do it via Control-M Configuration Manager. So, we are installing or upgrading the plugins, like PeopleSoft and SAP, manually. If BMC could provide an option via Control-M Configuration Manager to upgrade these plugins, it probably would reduce a lot of manual work as well as ease our work. This is one improvement that I personally want to see, because it would help our way of working.""The main area that could be improved would be documentation, just like every other software product out there!""The company has been working with BMC on the MFT. There are still some things about MFT which don't work the way that we want with our needs. So, we would like to see that improved."

More Control-M Cons →

"There could be a better simulation for banning the termination. You have to simulate every one of the processes in order to have an idea for better planning. This kind of simulation is broken and needs improvement.""The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do.""The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be.""The tabs in the JAMS file transfer could be clearer. It would help us demonstrate to our client that JAMS not only automates jobs but also does fast transfers, and it's an alternative that supports and filters different kinds of platforms. Filtering file transfers will be highly beneficial to them.""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.""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 knowledge was hard-won knowledge. It was difficult to come by, and if I should ever lose this developer, then I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods quite 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.""The only thing that they could improve on is the fact that they don't have a browser version of JAMS. They've got all the bits and pieces there if you want to build your own web version of it. It does come with a web client, but it's pretty clunky. They could improve on that.""One thing that I know that the JAMS people said that they were working on that would be huge for us is a search capability so that you could search for tasks. It may be available in version 7 or in a future release of 7. I think that's on their roadmap. But right now, for us to do a search, we have to search through database queries."

More Fortra's JAMS Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Compare to other tools Pricing and licensing was more. It should be decrease."
  • "BMC does NOT have a great licensing model from my perspective."
  • "we are more looking for a better cost/license/performance model because BMC, while we could say it's the best, is also the most expensive. That is what we are probably most annoyed with. We are paying something like €1,000,000 over three years for having 4,000 jobs running. That's expensive."
  • "We have account based licensing. There are two or three types of licensing. One of them is based on the number of jobs, so we a license close to 4,000 jobs per day. The cost is based on the different modules, which we buy from them. If we a buy a hardware module, which we are presently using and integrating, that is an additional cost, but I'm not sure of the amount. Each module comes with a different cost."
  • "As we increase the number of tasks or jobs on the system, there are concerns about cost."
  • "We have a five-year contract with task-based licensing."
  • "This product saves hours in a day based on my experience working here versus other companies with manually operations."
  • "It works on task-based licensing."
  • More Control-M Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "This is a good product at a fair price."
  • "It's certainly a lot cheaper than Tivoli and Control-M. In comparison to them, you get a lot more bang for your buck. You get pretty much the whole functionality and more, in some cases, when compared to Control-M, but at a fraction of the price."
  • "It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
  • "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."
  • "Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
  • "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."
  • More Fortra's JAMS Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.
    Top Answer:JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs.
    Top Answer: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. Additionally, reintroducing… more »
    Ranking
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    Rating
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    5th
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    Views
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    Also Known As
    Control M
    Learn More
    Overview

    Control-M simplifies application and data workflow orchestration on premises or as a service. It makes it easy to build, define, schedule, manage, and monitor production workflows, ensuring visibility, reliability, and improving SLAs.

    • Accelerate new business applications into production—by embedding workflow orchestration into your CI/CD pipeline
    • Scale Dev and Ops collaboration, with a Jobs-as-Code approach
    • Simplify workflows across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform integrations
    • Deliver data-driven outcomes faster, managing big data workflows in a scalable way
    • Take control of your file transfer operations with integrated, intelligent file movement and visibility

    JAMS is an enterprise job scheduling and workload automation solution that manages IT processes – from simple batch processes and scripts, to cross-platform workflows that integrate jobs running on multiple servers and business applications. JAMS enables you to define, schedule, execute and monitor jobs from a single centralized console.

    JAMS can automate jobs on any platform - Windows, Linux, UNIX, IBM i, zOS, and OpenVMS and includes native application integrations to run jobs specific to databases, BI tools, and ERP systems. Its extensive automation features enable you to run jobs on any schedule, as well as trigger off the completion of other events. JAMS centrally monitors the status of all jobs, provides notifications of failure (or success), and maintains a detailed audit trail and log of every execution.

    JAMS helps enterprises eliminate the slack, security risks, and lack of visibility associated with trying to automate critical business processes with a jumble of homegrown, single-platform scheduling tools and scripts. Once jobs are centrally managed in JAMS, IT teams can rest assured that JAMS is managing the cross-platform workflows and delivering measurable results to the business.

    A Key Part of Fortra (the new face of HelpSystems) JAMS is proud to be part of Fortra’s comprehensive portfolio. Fortra simplifies today’s complex business landscape by bringing complementary products together to solve problems in innovative ways. These integrated, scalable solutions address the many challenges you face in streamlining your operations. With the help of JAMS Enterprise Job Scheduler and other solutions, Fortra is your relentless ally, here for you every step of the way on your automation journey.

    Sample Customers
    CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
    Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm34%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Retailer9%
    Healthcare Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Insurance Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm35%
    Government13%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Computer Software Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Healthcare Company10%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise80%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise76%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise63%
    Buyer's Guide
    Control-M vs. Fortra's JAMS
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Control-M vs. Fortra's JAMS and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Control-M is ranked 1st in Workload Automation with 110 reviews while Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews. Control-M is rated 8.8, while Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Control-M writes "We have seen quicker file transfers with more visibility and stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortra's JAMS writes "We can scale up our organization's scheduling and automation without having to add staff to the department". Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence and Automic Workload Automation, whereas Fortra's JAMS is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs and VisualCron. See our Control-M vs. Fortra's JAMS report.

    See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.

    We monitor all Workload Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.