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Fortra's JAMS vs Redwood RunMyJobs comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

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
Redwood RunMyJobs
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Fortra's JAMS is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redwood RunMyJobs is 4.4%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Shubham Bharti - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized management, allow for prioritization, and easy to set up
Once I had solid hands-on experience with the software, it wasn't tough for me to learn this application. Everything was easy and flawless. The only issue at first was that we had to manually delete or raise the event in order to run some of the events and wait for jobs, even if the file was kept at the correct AL11 position. Eventually, after contacting the Redwood support team, we were able to resolve this problem. We experience sporadic connection failures while executing jobs in other systems, such as AS400, and after the work is finished at the AS400 end, the Redwood system keeps attempting to get the status from the AS400 system. This attempt cannot be manually controlled. We could set up a system where, after a certain amount of time, the job would be abandoned if the server hadn't responded.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution."
"The alerting in it is really targeted... you can set specific alerting so that if jobs in a given folder fail, certain people are alerted. You can also set security at the folder level, so that only people in those areas can go set them. That means that the alerting and security can be set at a very granular level."
"The dashboard is intuitive."
"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 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."
"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."
"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 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."
"It conjures simplicity from the depths of complexity, effortlessly shouldering burdensome workloads."
"One of Redwood Software's features that I liked was its event-driven automation, which allows IT teams to respond to real-time events, alerts, and notifications from numerous systems."
"Redwood is of value to our organization due to of its ease of use and the ability to automate and orchestrate any platform that we utilize today."
"We can create and test micro-workflows to find defects sooner."
"Multi-platform scheduling makes it easier this way rather than accessing one platform at a time."
"It saves us a lot of time and money by doing jobs automatically."
"In Redwood Automation, we can easily fetch the daily reports from the system as per the client's requirement and track the status of every job which is running, aborted, or canceled."
"Redwood helps us to schedule batch jobs on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis to keep the business running smoothly."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."
"JAMS lacks source control features. Our previous solution had job control language, but JAMS doesn't. When migrating between versions, JAMS doesn't migrate all the data, like job change history, etc. Also, the scheduler doesn't have a way to make jobs invisible, so you can temporarily turn a job off if you decide not to run it today."
"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."
"I would like a simple web interface that I could give to my team to go in and kill jobs or see why jobs died so that we don't have to drill down deeper into the application and know everything about it. It would be good to have a really clean web engine that would say here are the jobs running. We can then click to see the time running and whether any of them fails and other similar things. I know they have one, but it's not very simplistic."
"I would like to see the ability to interface with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, but they're still in the research phase. They need to ensure everything's legit and safe. The report designer and dashboards could also be improved. We're running 7.3, so I don't know if they have updated the reporting in 7.5, but I think the reports and dashboards could be better."
"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."
"The dashboard provided can be made more visually appealing and could include more critical data that would help associates in one glance get the required information."
"It has limited reporting features; some basic reporting features are missing."
"Redwood Software has a high price tag, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that might not have the funds to engage in a complete automation system."
"Due to the abundance of competing automation technologies available on the market, connectivity with any cloud platform can be improved."
"The product could be better in terms of its monitoring and alert service."
"We need the automatic creation of incidents for failed jobs."
"It lacks some of the common reporting features. I'm a bit surprised that there aren't some standard reports to be able to extract any data on usage. They've described to us that customers have different reporting needs, so they let them develop those, but reporting is a common need. It would be helpful to have it as part of the solution."
"There is a lack of resources and product documentation which, if included, would help to gain more knowledge about the application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"Definitely check how many single processes you want to run and count them as jobs. That is how you would work out your pricing on JAMS. For example, if you're running a number of commands and you can put them all into one script and run that script, you can count that as one job."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"It initially surprised me because we went from an application that was priced by connection to agents/the number of agents to an application that was priced based on the number of job executions. At that time, many of the products we looked at were also priced on job execution. That seems to be more common in the business or in the vendors that provide solutions out there, but that was probably our biggest difference."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition?
In Redwood Automation, we can easily fetch the daily reports from the system as per the client's requirement and track the status of every job which is running, aborted, or canceled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition?
As compared to Control-M and UC4, the setup cost and pricing of Redwood are far less as they are delivering good functionality at this price point.
What needs improvement with Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition?
There are fewer cons in Redwood as compared to other tools available in the market. That said, it would be a great thing if they would provide a few new features, like a health dashboard and a few ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition, Redwood Business Process Automation - Workload Edition, RunMyJobs, Redwood RunMyJobs
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
AMD, American Home Shield, Avaya, Burberry, Centrica, City of Dallas, The Container Store, Core & Main, Daikin, Dart Containers, Deere, Energizer, Epson, Halliburton, Keen Foodware, National Gypsum, Rockport Group, Ryder, Technicolor, The University of Michigan, Virgin Money, Whitbread
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra's JAMS vs. Redwood RunMyJobs and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.