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Fortra's JAMS vs Redwood RunMyJobs comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

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

Fortra's JAMS
Ranking in Workload Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redwood RunMyJobs
Ranking in Workload Automation
2nd
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 January 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Fortra's JAMS is 1.6%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redwood RunMyJobs is 4.5%, up from 2.6% 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.
MaheshKumar6 - PeerSpot reviewer
Future-proof and powerful with great support
Improvements include: 1) Cost of the Software. Redwood is more expensive than most of the other Automation Software available today; they could make it budget-friendly. 2) It has limited reporting features. Some basic reporting features are missing. 3) There is no option to extract data in Excel. This feature could help in finding errors in the data. 4) Integration with ServiceNow is not supported. 5) The cloud platform compatibility is not up to the mark. 6) Security standards need to be improved. 7) Handling failure is not great; the workflow stops when a job fails and human intervention is required. 8) Configuration and set-up are difficult for someone with less coding knowledge. 9) They need to provide more documentation to assist new users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user-friendly and adaptable scheduler allows us to manage various scheduling scenarios."
"One of the things I like the most, as a SQL DBA, is the fact that we can manipulate tables in the background. Also, the fact that you can have your own views and work with the product the way it fits best is a very helpful feature."
"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."
"The most valuable aspect of JAMS is its robustness."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."
"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."
"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."
"Error handling and the recovery feature ensure that my job processes are not stopped if any error occurs."
"It saves us a lot of time and money by doing jobs automatically."
"Our team was able to integrate it with the ITSM tool as well as security monitoring tools to make the incident creation process automatically feasible."
"Redwood is more flexible and we can schedule the tasks based on different time zones."
"By automating the job processes it has saved us a lot of time and resources."
"This tool helps us to monitor the job related to SAP modules."
"There won't be a memory outage issue, as it uses its own server/ECC memory only."
"This program works with every browser."
 

Cons

"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"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."
"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."
"When looking at a folder in JAMS with many jobs, it would be good to have better information in the list display of what's inside those jobs. We get some information, but other important details are missing."
"The ACL or access permission area needs to be improved. When it comes to defining and providing security permissions, it's a bit confusing if you are new to JAMS. JAMS needs to improve the features for security access or permissions."
"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."
"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."
"JAMS doesn't allow us to implement SOC controls. We are a company that trades stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, so all our transactions are audited. It has a feature that saves the file for only a month but doesn't segregate the data between finance and SOC-related compliance."
"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."
"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."
"The documentation for this product is limited, which can be improved in the future."
"The addition of machine learning capabilities could help Redwood Workload Automation Software better predict job and workflow performance, detect anomalies, and optimize operations based on historical data."
"The user interface of Redwood can be improved a bit to make it more user-friendly and interesting."
"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."
"Having a graphical user interface for the dashboard would be great."
"Enhancing the user interface would make it more appealing and accessible to a wide range of users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"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."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"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."
"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
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
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 monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me. I also need better tools to adopt version seven. Another area for improvement would be the addition of source co...
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: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.