IBM Workload Automation vs JAMS comparison

IBM and Fortra are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. IBM is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8, while Fortra is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.8. IBM holds a 7.9% mindshare in WA, compared to Fortra’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Fortra users who would recommend it.

IBM Workload Automation

Read 32 IBM Workload Automation reviews

3,782 Views
2,526 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

JAMS

Read 34 JAMS reviews

1,859 Views
500 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

IBM Workload Automation

JAMS

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

IBM Workload Automation and JAMS are competitors in job scheduling and workload management. IBM Workload Automation is advantageous due to its extensive integrations and global scalability, while JAMS is favored for its robust automation capabilities.

Features: IBM Workload Automation stands out with customizable workflows, global scalability, and predictive alerting. It offers robust environment management suitable for complex IT setups. JAMS excels in cross-platform scheduling, extensive API support, and managed file transfers, catering to sophisticated automation and scheduling needs.

Room for Improvement: IBM Workload Automation could benefit from more streamlined training resources and enhanced user interface customization. Additionally, integration processes could be simplified. JAMS might improve by expanding integration capabilities with popular third-party applications and offering more intuitive setup guides. Enhancing its documentation could further assist users during deployment.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Workload Automation provides comprehensive deployment support and detailed documentation, aiding integration in complex environments. It receives positive feedback for customer service responsiveness. JAMS offers straightforward deployment, requiring fewer IT resources, making it ideal for businesses with limited staff, and is supported by a responsive team.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Workload Automation generally requires a higher initial investment but offers substantial ROI through extensive features and scalability. In contrast, JAMS appeals to organizations seeking straightforward job scheduling without needing extensive integration, promising swift ROI with lower upfront costs.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Workload Automation vs. JAMS Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. JAMS

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

IBM Workload Automation

Ranking in Workload Automation

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

JAMS

Ranking in Workload Automation

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 7.9%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JAMS is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes

Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.

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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.

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

"The solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis."

"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."

"It offers features like MDM and a Windows workstation, although there are some technical dependencies. It is more user-friendly and also includes failover and failback capabilities. While both systems offer high availability, Control-M's high availability is superior to AWS's."

"Technical support from IBM is very good."

"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 most valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is its holistic view, which helps me find technical solutions quickly. For instance, if a customer has an issue completing their workload within a specific time frame, the tool provides enough information to identify and resolve the issue. One of the main challenges is dealing with data infrastructure problems and pending updates. Workload Automation helps me leverage current AI capabilities to recommend architectural updates to avoid these issues. It also allows me to balance CPU usage effectively, ensuring service level agreements are met. The interface is user-friendly and facilitates this process smoothly."

"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."

"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."

More IBM Workload Automation pros

"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I appreciate JAMS for its readily available templates that allow me to create and deliver stand-up presentations within minutes quickly."

"It has definitely drastically improved our capabilities to scale our automation. Before JAMS, there were a lot of manual processes. We had a couple of operators who spent all day doing that. A lot of the time with human intervention and human processes, it is as good as the person who may be following a procedure and human error is a big problem."

"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."

"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."

More JAMS pros

Cons

"To improve IBM Workload Automation, I suggest enhancing automation features further, as more automation would be beneficial. The product is good enough for my current customers, but improving technical support and pricing would be welcome. We often need quicker responses and better solutions than we can manage manually. These improvements would make the product even better."

"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."

"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."

"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 is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."

"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."

"The solution should offer more free technical sessions to customers so that they can gain more experience or learn more about how to use it."

"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."

More IBM Workload Automation 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."

"I'm not sure if they have fixed it in a newer version, but there is no global search in the version I have. If I have multiple sub-folders that are named for business units, like HR or IT, and I have to search for a job, I cannot search from the top. I have to go to the HR folder to search for a particular job, or to the IT folder."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More JAMS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."

"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."

"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."

"The solution's pricing is affordable."

"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."

"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."

"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."

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

"This is a good product at a fair price."

"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."

"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 relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."

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

More JAMS pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

32%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Workload Automation?

The initial setup is easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?

IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach. For example, IBM still refers to machines as 'workstations,' whereas other systems, like Control-M, use m...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?

We use the solution for network automation.

See all answers

What do you like most about JAMS?

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

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 33% of the time

HCL Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 19% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 7% of the time

Stonebranch vs IBM Workload Automation

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Workload Automation Competitors

Control-M vs JAMS

Compared 24% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs JAMS

Compared 20% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs JAMS

Compared 14% of the time

Stonebranch vs JAMS

Compared 10% of the time

VisualCron vs JAMS

Compared 10% of the time

More JAMS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation

February 2025

Download IBM Workload Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

JAMS

March 2025

Download JAMS product report

Also Known As

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS

No data available

Overview

IBM Workload Automation helps companies manage operations, portfolio management, resource collection, and dependency scheduling. It facilitates transitions from legacy apps to web services, executing batch processing for tens of thousands of jobs daily with hundreds of users.

Teams rely on IBM Workload Automation to optimize backend workloads, maintain service levels, and offer support in remote environments. Its interface and job scheduler are appreciated for their value and effectiveness. Users benefit from batch automation, multiple node job triggering, stability, and batch app tracking. It provides a holistic view to resolve technical issues and leverage AI for updates. Its user-friendly interface simplifies workload management. Performance, monitoring, request features for adding functionalities, and workload management are key advantages.

What are the most important features?

Interface and Job Scheduler: Highly valued for managing processes efficiently.
Batch Automation: Facilitates the automation of batch processing tasks.
Multiple Node Job Triggering: Enables triggering jobs across multiple nodes.
Stability: Ensures a reliable and consistent performance.
Batch App Tracking: Allows tracking and monitoring of batch applications.
Holistic View: Helps in resolving technical issues and leveraging AI.

What are the benefits or ROI items to look for in reviews?

Performance: Enhanced system performance and monitoring capabilities.
Workload Management: Effective management of various workload types.
Request Feature: Ability to add new functionalities as needed.

IBM Workload Automation is implemented across several industries for diverse tasks. Companies executing high-volume batch processing, managing complex job dependencies, and transitioning from legacy systems find it valuable. Industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing utilize it to maintain operational efficiency, enhance system performance, and automate critical processes.

IBM

JAMS offers efficient automation and scheduling with strong capabilities in planning, dependency management, and multi-platform support. Its intuitive interface and robust tools assist in managing complex workflows for enhanced resource allocation.

JAMS stands out for its blend of automation and scheduling capabilities, making it suitable for handling complex workflows across platforms. Its features such as batch scheduling, natural language scheduling, and interactive agents promote seamless integration with other tools like PowerShell. The focus on metrics and notifications ensures users are informed about operational efficiency enhancements. While JAMS is effective in many areas, users report a need for improved simulation for termination processes and a more intuitive client setup. They see potential in enhanced search functions, better exception handling, and greater transparency in custom execution. The current setup challenges like disappearing options and mobile accessibility can affect user satisfaction. Including a fully web-based client and improving documentation could add value.

What are JAMS' key features?

Planning and Scheduling: Coordinates workflows efficiently with advanced scheduling techniques.
Dependency Management: Ensures seamless operation by managing inter-task dependencies.
Interactive Agents: Integrates with PowerShell and other tools to enhance automation.
Natural Language Scheduling: Simplifies job creation with intuitive language use.
Multi-Platform Flexibility: Operates across diverse environments ensuring robust performance.

What benefits should users consider?

Operational Efficiency: Reduction in manual oversight with robust scheduling and integration tools.
Resource Allocation: Efficient management of workflows across multiple timeframes and platforms.
User Satisfaction: Seamless user experience with intuitive interfaces and integration capabilities.
Visibility: Centralized management provides comprehensive oversight over tasks.

Organizations using JAMS for workflow and batch job automation leverage its capabilities for SSIS, SQL procedures, and Python scripts. JAMS supports file automation and managed file transfers across environments like AWS and Azure. Users employ JAMS for data management, reporting, and integration tasks, including handling holiday-aware scheduling for improved task coordination.

Fortra

Sample Customers

Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Workload Automation vs. JAMS

January 2025

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