We performed a comparison between Fortra's JAMS and IBM Workload Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortra's JAMS is praised for its efficient handling of job dependencies and its automation features such as File Watchers, notifications, and code-driven automation. IBM Workload Automation is highly regarded for its ability to incorporate additional features upon user request, trigger jobs in multiple nodes, and maintain stability in monitoring batch applications.
Fortra's JAMS could enhance their user interface, search functionality, exception management, and reporting features. IBM Workload Automation requires improved navigation, job dependencies, daily schedule updates, and reporting visibility.
Service and Support: Customers have expressed satisfaction with Fortra's JAMS customer service, describing it as responsive, knowledgeable, and always helpful. The support team promptly addresses concerns and provides solutions to different problems. IBM Workload Automation's support is also highly praised, especially for assisting with issues that are out of customers' control. Nonetheless, some difficulties may arise in pinpointing the cause of specific problems.
Ease of Deployment: Users find the initial setup for Fortra's JAMS to be uncomplicated and user-friendly, as they are able to easily follow instructions on the webpage and deploy tasks efficiently. The initial setup for IBM Workload Automation may pose difficulties for individuals unfamiliar with IBM tools; however, with guidance, it becomes relatively easy.
Pricing: Fortra's JAMS has an initial investment in the first year, along with a yearly upkeep fee. Users consider the pricing reasonable and budget-friendly and appreciate its flexibility to accommodate expansion. IBM Workload Automation's pricing structure is personalized to each customer's agreement, varying between five and a thousand licenses based on usage.
ROI: Fortra's JAMS has been commended for its impressive return on investment, offering time savings, enhanced productivity, and cost-effectiveness. IBM Workload Automation's ROI is more uncertain and necessitates thorough research and analysis to gain a clearer comprehension.
Comparison Results: Fortra's JAMS is the preferred choice over IBM Workload Automation. Users appreciate JAMS for its user-friendly setup process, efficient handling of job dependencies, automation features, interactive agents, code-driven automation, flexible scheduling options, and detailed logging for problem-solving.
"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."
"The code-driven automation for more complex scheduling requirements frees up time because it's really easy to use... It's almost like a stand-alone software that we can't live without."
"We looked at other companies, like VisualCron, that were cheaper, but one of the main sticking points was the fact that they wouldn't have provided a central location for us to monitor across all servers. That was one of the biggest selling points of JAMS."
"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"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."
"JAMS handles exceptions fairly well but there are some areas where it might improve a little bit. It has to do with being able to automatically handle exceptions, out-of-the-box, rather than having to code them."
"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."
"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."
"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."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"The UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"Slow down on the releases a bit. I fully understand that IWA functionality is increasing at an amazing rate, but trying to keep up with the upgrades is rough."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools."
Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews while IBM Workload Automation is ranked 14th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews. Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0, while IBM Workload Automation is rated 8.2. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, Tidal by Redwood and VisualCron, whereas IBM Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Tidal by Redwood. See our Fortra's JAMS vs. IBM Workload Automation 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.
