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IBM Workload Automation vs OpCon comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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

JAMS
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpCon
Ranking in Workload Automation
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 4.9%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpCon is 1.8%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JAMS2.6%
OpCon1.8%
IBM Workload Automation4.9%
Other90.7%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Patrick Norton - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Support has been among the most helpful and knowledgeable we've ever worked with but performance monitoring needs improvement
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 control for jobs internally, as this feature would solve several problems for me. JAMS has some quirks. It has a bit of a learning curve. Some exceptions are not intuitive, such as when a job is terminated due to exceeding its defined runaway time limit. This generates a misleading exception message that is difficult for new users to understand and requires experience to interpret correctly. Stalled jobs present a unique challenge, particularly when pushing a system like JAMS version six to its limits. While rare, these instances occur when jobs become unresponsive despite appearing in API queries but not in the monitoring console. Although workarounds exist, they highlight the need for improved native monitoring capabilities within JAMS. Currently, the system assumes flawless operation, necessitating supplemental monitoring tools to detect issues like excessive pending or stalled jobs, ensuring timely intervention by our teams.
reviewer2701716 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Dynamic workload balancing facilitates efficient job scheduling and ensures continuity with a master-slave setup
One valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is the ability to combine different applications and platforms to organize jobs together, creating dependencies. It's akin to an orchestra. Another feature is dynamic workload balancing, which I find enhances efficiency by automating job setup to run daily. Moreover, having a backup setup allows for immediate recovery if the master setup fails.
Jose Rivera Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior VP of Technology at Triangle Credit Union
Helps automate all kinds of jobs and it's worth the price because it saves a lot of time and money
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has failed, and they restart it on their end, so now, we have the job restarting twice. There were times when we came into the office in the morning, and we had two files because the job ran twice. I do not know if the system can prevent a job from running the second time. If a job has run successfully, or it is running, it should not run again.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate JAMS for its readily available templates that allow me to create and deliver stand-up presentations within minutes quickly."
"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."
"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."
"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 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 built-in triggers are great."
"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 whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"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 technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"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."
"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."
"IBM Workload Automation provides good performance and monitoring."
"I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product."
"Previously, we would receive a file from a vendor, then we would have to go through and make changes to individual accounts in our core system. There are probably between 10 to 20 accounts any given week. It probably took around five minutes for it to run through the report and make all the changes, and that was if there was nothing complicated with all very straightforward changes. Now, that is done in 30 seconds."
"The most valuable feature of OpCon is its scheduling capability, particularly for automating file transfers with vendors."
"Last year, we added a second environment and the OpCon Deploy product. This has allowed us to build a testing environment. This has been a great addition for us as we can work through our workflows without disrupting our production environment."
"The most valuable feature is the self-service because it has made it possible to provide simple and quick solutions in the handling of certain tasks."
"The biggest example in which OpCon has improved my organization is that we have to download and process files from the federal reserve several times a day. If we don't do it in a certain timeframe, we can be penalized. It's the fact that we can download these files, process them, get our accounting teams the information they need to work the exceptions that is one of the most important roles."
"The most valuable feature is the automation in general."
"We recently did a branch acquisition of another bank, though not a full bank. With that, we had to convert all of their ACH transactions. It was a very complicated product that we received from our core provider, Fiserv, for some translation programs. It was very cumbersome to run through the process, convert it out, get output files, etc. Without anyone touching it, I was able to automate the full process from pulling in the files from this other bank, converting everything needed, and posting it to our customer's account 24-hours throughout the day."
"Manual processing has been automated 99 percent by OpCon. With new processes, we give it at least two weeks manual so we can write down the details of how to do the steps, then we automate it. Within a month, it has been automated, then it's no longer a manual process."
 

Cons

"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."
"It does validations when you try to delete an object and if there are any dependencies in place, the deletion process will not proceed... there is no information provided as to what it was that caused the validation to fail... it's quite a tedious process to find which object is getting in the way."
"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."
"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."
"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 search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"JAMS has built-in reporting. I've never really used it. I tried using it a few years ago and I couldn't figure it out. It was wonky. It could be improved upon."
"We have had a lot of people working from home who can't always connect to the JAMS server. We use VPN, as most companies do, and we have it set up so that everybody can access the JAMS server. But many times, our people cannot access it... JAMS could do a better job of telling you what the problem is when you try to log in to the server."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly, and a lower cost would be beneficial."
"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."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has failed, and they restart it on their end, so now, we have the job restarting twice. There were times when we came into the office in the morning, and we had two files because the job ran twice."
"We are still in the early stages of our implementation, so at this point, I cannot see any needed improvements or features."
"It's not something you can just quickly grab, try, run, and play with. You have to get the knowledge and train yourself. It was easy for me, but I also took the time to throw myself into it. There is a learning curve to a certain extent. You have to learn the rules."
"The products are extremely powerful and capable. Anytime you have such capability, the programming/configuration that goes into making it work can be complicated."
"We have not explored the possibility, but one of the areas for improvement would be more integration into Active Directory, to where it could do the creation of user accounts and the additional work to integrate third-party systems into payroll systems."
"There is one feature that has been a difficult problem, and right now, OpCon can't do it. I'm not sure if it should be expected to, but we have tried to get it to where it could start a process on an external database."
"I would like to see them improve the Solution Manager for the web application. It's the future for us. Our customers need a lot of functionality, but there isn't that functionality within Solution Manager. So they have to develop and improve it."
"I believe there's room for improvement, and while I think it's something they are considering, I would welcome seeing OpCon integrate with a broader range of systems and third-party products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"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."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"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."
"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"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."
"It was substantially less expensive than ASG-Zeke... I would suggest that someone who is only looking at price when evaluating workload automation tools take a very hard look at OpCon because it is well-priced."
"It used to be per machine, so we had X number of devices licensed. Now it's not. If we had a lot of machines, the new license might've decreased the cost. Unfortunately, we didn't see the same gains."
"The cost is based on the number of jobs. You pay for what you use. For us, the support cost is between €20,000 and €30,000 per year. It's too expensive."
"It's definitely worth the cost."
"Our annual maintenance costs are $45,000. The initial cost is separate."
"Operating OpCon comes with a cost."
"I believe our cost is about $150,000 annually."
"OpCon cost us $80,000 in 2017 money, and that included everything: support, installation, onsite assistance during the conversion, etc. It's been a worthwhile investment by far."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
42%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Performing Arts
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise19
 

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?
They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased. The price is fair considering the functionalit...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
As far as we are using JAMS version 6, it looks good and there is nothing major to add about it. Everything is functi...
What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?
IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly,...
What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?
We use IBM Workload Automation ( /products/ibm-workload-automation-reviews ) as a scheduler. We install agents on the...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Workload Automation?
I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product. However, the cost is a concern. Th...
What do you like most about OpCon?
My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and pro...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpCon?
I am the one who signs the contract. In the beginning, when I started working here, it seemed very expensive, but aft...
What needs improvement with OpCon?
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
LOHR, Carnival Cruise Lines, Herbalife, Digital Federal Credit Union, Synergent, Frandsen Bank & Trust
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Workload Automation vs. OpCon and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
879,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.