Fortra&#39;s JAMS vs Stonebranch comparison

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Fortra's JAMS

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

We performed a comparison between Fortra's JAMS and Stonebranch Universal Automation Center 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 notable for its effective tracking and visualization of job dependencies, along with its capability to establish warnings and notifications. It is also adept at managing intricate scheduling needs and offering comprehensive logging. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center demonstrates exceptional performance, provides graphical representation, and offers intuitive features.

Fortra's JAMS has areas for improvement in its user interface, search function, exception management, and reporting features. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center would benefit from cloud integration, improved analytics, and the addition of a mobile application for task monitoring.

Service and Support: Fortra's JAMS product has been highly praised by customers for its exceptional customer service, highlighting the support team's responsiveness, knowledgeability, and helpfulness in promptly resolving inquiries. Customers also appreciate the availability of comprehensive documentation and training resources. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center also receives positive feedback for its customer service. Users describe it as very good and excellent, emphasizing the support team's extensive knowledge and constant availability to assist.

Ease of Deployment: Fortra's JAMS received positive feedback for its initial setup, being described as straightforward and easy. Users found it simple to follow the instructions on the webpage and were able to deploy tasks quickly. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center's setup was considered average in terms of ease. Some users faced difficulties due to the complexity of the infrastructure.

Pricing: Fortra's JAMS offers an initial license cost in the first year, along with an annual maintenance cost. Users find this pricing to be fair and reasonable when compared to other options. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is considered more cost-effective than its competitors, receiving positive feedback regarding its pricing.

ROI: Fortra's JAMS has been praised for its value and cost-effectiveness, as it not only saves time and increases productivity but also offers visibility into job failures. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center has achieved substantial cost savings when compared to previous tools.

Comparison Results: Fortra's JAMS is the preferred product over Stonebranch Universal Automation Center. JAMS is praised for its straightforward and easy setup process, ability to handle dependencies between jobs, automation capabilities, support and interactive agents, code-driven automation feature, flexibility in scheduling, and extensive troubleshooting logging.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortra's JAMS vs. Stonebranch Report (Updated: January 2025).

Fortra's JAMS vs. Stonebranch

January 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Stonebranch

Ranking in Workload Automation

15th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Fortra's JAMS is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 5.1%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Rob Grafrath

VP, Enterprise Systems at Capio

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.

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Earl Diem

Sr. Manager - Performance and Automation Engineering at PSCU Financial Services

Allowed us to develop workflows without having to train and develop very specialized skillsets

The Universal Agent is the most valuable feature. Being agent-based and being able to go across multiple technology stacks, which is what our workflows do, Stonebranch gives us the ability to bridge those disparate technologies. It enables us to remove the dependency-gap with the agent so we know the status of the workflow at each step. Workflow development in Stonebranch is straightforward. There is something of a learning curve, but it's not very steep. Being able to develop workflows without having to train and develop some very specialized skillsets to use the tool is very useful. Stonebranch absolutely helped enable digital transformation in our company and it still is. In our automation efforts, we're pushing everything to Informatica and, as we move those ETLs, we're automating the entire workflows. In phase-one and phase-two, there were 244 jobs migrated in from other ETL platforms to Informatica, and we've automated all of those. We have almost 200 jobs remaining. We're going to have something approaching 450 workflows in Stonebranch when we're done.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"JAMS has improved my organization by taking a myriad of manual processes and allowing us to automate them. It enables our folks to focus more on tasks that require their human intelligence and their creativity and less on just mundane tasks. It increases efficiency, accuracy, and consistency."

"The planning capabilities are most valuable."

"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."

"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."

More Fortra's JAMS pros

"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."

"When it comes to agent technology and compatibility with other vendors, from a platform perspective it was the one vendor that fit all the platforms that we have, from your old platforms - mainframe, NSK, IBM i - to the new ones, going into cloud and container"

"The tasks are incredibly capable, and as long as you name them with a nice, uniform naming convention, they are very useful. You can create some interesting workflows through various machines, or you can just have it kick off single tasks. All in all, I really like the Universal Task. You can do some mutually exclusive stuff, such as an "A not B" kind of thing. It has a lot of capabilities behind the scenes."

"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."

"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."

"The ability to monitor tasks that are on the open-system side as well as our mainframe side gives us a one-window view of all our processes."

"We lean a lot on the multi-tenancy that they offer within the product, the ability to get other people to self-manage their estate, versus having a central team do all the scheduling."

"I love the Universal Controller. It's been great for us. We host it on-premise... It's High Availability, meaning there's failover from one server to the other if one goes down."

More Stonebranch pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."

"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."

"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."

"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."

More Fortra's JAMS cons

"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."

"I have a request regarding our agent on the mainframe. It may time out when communicating to the Universal Controller, when the mainframe is extremely busy. That can cause a task which is running at that time to not see the results of the job that ran on the mainframe. It happens sporadically during times of really busy CPU usage. We're expecting that enhancement from them in the fourth quarter."

"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."

"One hiccup we've had is due to the fact that we have other internal scheduling tools. We're able to talk to them, but we have trouble with some of the networking between them, so we're still trying to work out the kinks there."

"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."

"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."

"It would be ideal if they had the exact same features as the CA Workload Automation DE series. It would be helpful to have calendaring options."

"It's not available on the cloud, so they should take that due to safety, security, and scalability."

More Stonebranch cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For what it does, the product is priced very well."

"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."

"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 priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."

"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."

"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."

"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."

More Fortra's JAMS pricing and cost advice

"I don't have pricing information, but I do know it's cheaper than our old legacy system. Other than the standard licensing fees there are no additional costs."

"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."

"Stonebranch is cheaper than Control-M, so many companies are using Stonebranch."

"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."

"The price of the solution is at a medium level compared to the competition."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

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...

How would you compare Stonebranch Universal Automation Center vs Control-M?

Hi Doug, I am looking at the same, or at least a very similar issue. Have a customer who is leaving z/OS on which he is using IWS to go to Linux, and the question now is whether to pick up IWS (TWS...

Control-M vs Fortra's JAMS

Comparisons

Compared 26% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 20% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 14% of the time

VisualCron vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 9% of the time

Rocket Zena vs Fortra's JAMS

Compared 8% of the time

More Fortra's JAMS Competitors

Control-M vs Stonebranch

Compared 33% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 19% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

Automic Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 2% of the time

More Stonebranch Competitors

Product Reports

Download Fortra's JAMS product report

Fortra's JAMS

February 2025

Download Stonebranch product report

January 2025

Also Known As

No data available

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Overview

Fortra's JAMS is a powerful tool for workflow automation, batch job scheduling, file transfer, and centralizing tasks, enabling streamlined job management and monitoring from a single console across multiple servers and systems.

Widely used for scheduling SSIS jobs, SQL Server stored procedures, Python scripts, and FTP jobs, Fortra's JAMS offers comprehensive solutions for data manipulation, reporting, backup tasks, and job coordination. Organizations automate file movements, database maintenance, and nightly processes, providing a centralized platform for job management and monitoring across servers and environments.

What are the most important features of Fortra's JAMS?

Planning Capabilities: Efficiently plan and coordinate job schedules.
Job Dependency Management: Manage dependencies between jobs to ensure proper execution order.
Batch Scheduling: Automate and schedule batch jobs seamlessly.
Single Pane of Glass: Centralized console for tracking all automation tasks.
Interactive Agents: Deploy agents for interactive job management.
Natural Language Scheduling: Create schedules using natural language commands.
Custom Execution Methods: Implement custom methods for job execution.
PowerShell Integration: Integrate with PowerShell for enhanced scripting capabilities.
Exception Handling: Robust handling of job exceptions to minimize disruptions.
Monitoring and Historical Views: Comprehensive monitoring and historical job views for better oversight.
Extensibility: Extend the platform to meet specific needs.
File Watching: Monitor files and trigger jobs based on changes.
Complex Scheduling: Handle intricate scheduling requirements for diverse scenarios.

What are the main benefits of using Fortra's JAMS?

Centralized Control: Manage all jobs from a single console.
Efficiency: Increase efficiency by automating repetitive tasks.
Scalability: Easily scale job management across multiple servers.
Reduced Errors: Minimize human errors through automation.
Improved Monitoring: Benefit from robust monitoring and alerting options.
Customizability: Tailor workflows and schedules to specific needs.
Integration: Seamlessly integrate with a wide range of applications and systems.
Time Savings: Save time with efficient job scheduling and execution.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, Fortra's JAMS enables seamless automation of critical tasks, ensuring data integrity, compliance, and operational efficiency. Whether it's automating nightly batch processing for financial transactions, managing data flows in healthcare, or coordinating manufacturing processes, Fortra's JAMS provides a robust solution to enhance productivity and reliability.

Fortra

Stonebranch automates enterprise-level workload and task scheduling across platforms like Linux, Windows, and mainframe, managing thousands of daily tasks for improved efficiency and visibility.

Stonebranch enables organizations to streamline job scheduling by replacing older systems with a robust solution that automates complex workflows, batch processing, and secure file transfers. Its compatibility with multiple platforms and enhanced visibility aid teams in efficiently managing business processes, database interactions, and IT workflows. Equipped with a Universal Controller and Agent, it provides seamless integration across diverse systems, empowering users with greater control over their tasks. While it fosters digital transformation, there are opportunities for enhancements in areas like graphical workflow overviews and API functionality.

What features does Stonebranch offer?

User-friendly interface for intuitive navigation
Robust agents ensuring reliable task execution
Comprehensive workflow automation tools
Platform-agnostic compatibility for diverse systems
Secure file transfer capabilities
High scalability for growing needs
Effective error handling features

What benefits should users expect?

Improved efficiency in task management
Streamlined processes reducing operational complexities
Enhanced visibility and control over workflows
Seamless integration with existing systems
Support for digital transformation initiatives

Organizations in industries such as finance and healthcare implement Stonebranch for its ability to automate complex processes, manage mainframe and distributed environments, and securely transfer sensitive data. Its platform-agnostic nature caters to the demanding needs of these industries, providing a reliable backbone for essential operations.

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital

Nissan, Coop, United Supermarkets, Groupon, CSC, Orbitz, Johnson & Johnson, BMW, Qantas.