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IBM Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
6.6
Number of Reviews
43
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
Tidal by Redwood
Ranking in Workload Automation
19th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 3.0%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 4.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 4.1%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS3.0%
IBM Workload Automation4.4%
Tidal by Redwood4.1%
Other88.5%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
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.
JG
Batch Production Manager at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
Its versatility, ease of use, scalability, and cost-effectiveness make it a 10/10 and the best of the breed
The company is not really big. One of the areas that they are working on is improving the process of migrating jobs from the lower environment to the upper environment. They had used a tool called Transporter, which was a little difficult to use, but they've now released a new tool in August, which I've not yet used, to do that. It's probably called Repository or something like that, but it's a tool for migrating jobs from the lower environment to the upper environment. That's where they needed to improve, and it looks like they may have, but I haven't tried the tool yet. They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We can see all the batch execution status within the tool itself, which saves money, time, and cost, allowing us to handle everything in one single tool."
"This feature helps my team day-to-day by running hundreds and hundreds of jobs on JAMS in a timely fashion, which is extremely important and sensitive, providing a lot of reporting to the entire firm and beyond."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."
"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 most valuable feature of JAMS is its user-friendly interface, especially after upgrading from version six to seven."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"It's a very good scheduling product if you have a combination of mainframe and distributed environments that have batch operations and repetitive tasks running on them."
"No other IT infrastructure at our company has proven to be as stable as our TWS v8.5.1/8.6 network and all its components."
"The support from Cisco is very good."
"Automation capabilities with dependencies, long-term plan and modifying current plan, and ease of use are the product's most valuable features to me."
"It's very, very stable. The support is quite good."
"TWS enables consolidation of disparate workloads in a single database, removing the need for engineered interfaces between platforms and enabling simpler job to job dependencies and end to end management and monitoring of workloads."
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"Thinking of all the people involved in checking jobs on a daily basis, manually running jobs or auditing them through standalone tools, and trying to connect them, we have saved hundreds of hours weekly, which is substantial."
"With other tools, you do not have the ability to schedule jobs on their own. You need to create a group and then assign everything to that group. Only then will the job be able to execute. In Tidal, you can schedule a single job and there is no need to create a group. That's what I like the most."
"You will enjoy the features of it; it is a great tool."
"Tidal Automation is very efficient and can quickly automate most manual and repetitive tasks."
"We have to run about 12,000 jobs every day and the majority of them need to be launched from our ERP, JD Edwards. The native compatibility of the Tidal platform with JD Edwards dovetails with our greatest need. It's directly connected to the heart of our IT system. We couldn't work without it."
"Overall, it does what it's supposed to do."
"Our implementation has been super stable, and it really kind of ticks all of the boxes."
"Tidal Workload Automation Software provides the ability to quickly adapt to changing business requirements."
 

Cons

"For the most part, JAMS is very stable. Occasionally, if you leave multiple windows open over a period of time, it is necessary to end that task and restart."
"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."
"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"The only thing that they could improve on is the fact that they don't have a browser version of JAMS. It does come with a web client, but it's pretty clunky."
"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."
"The UI is completely unintuitive. We had to go and open up a support ticket with JAMS just to get something back."
"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."
"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."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs."
"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."
"A few things are missing but I can manage without them, such as a cross-reference report."
"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."
"I would like to be able to access the return value or result from one job, in the following job."
"A lot of the automation that we added to the product should come built into it, so that every customer doesn't have to reinvent the wheel."
"Some users have complained that the initial setup process is complicated and time-consuming, while others have suggested that the software could offer more freedom in customizing processes."
"My complaint about their pricing model is that every year, or every time technology changes or somebody has a new requirement, I need another adapter."
"The software's performance and scalability could be improved, particularly when dealing with large-scale workloads or complex business processes."
"The user interface is the place that needs the most work. It's a little sluggish at times and there are some bugs in it."
"It takes a lot of time to learn the product. I have admins and developers who are working on the products for the last three to four years and still don't know all the functionalities. Tidal has really great things about it, but people are focused on their day-to-day job and the solution is not intuitive."
"To better fit their unique needs, the solution should give more customization options."
"I'm still hoping with Explorer to be able to see end-to-end job streams. That's not really something that's easy to see today in the web client. However, I haven't worked with Explorer yet. One of the things that we have found frustrating is not being able to see an end-to-end job stream across multiple applications within Tidal. We use jobs for that right now, but I have high hopes that we'll be able to see that in Explorer."
"I know they are working on improving this already, but there needs to be better reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"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."
"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."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"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's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"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 is a little bit expensive."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"They work with you on licensing. So, it has been great. Everybody has different licensing, but I've had good luck with the licensing. They've been very accommodating. You basically need to buy a license for each physical server, but then you're allowed an unlimited number of virtual servers."
"I have had no issues with the licensing."
"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."
"Their pricing seems very fair. It is more than the other solutions, but the functionality and the support are very much there. You pay for the job scheduler, and then they have certain things that are built into it, such as the FTP processes. If you then want to do JD Edwards jobs, you need an adapter. If you want to do SQL jobs, there is another adapter. Similarly, if you want to do Oracle jobs, there is an adapter. It is like there is the base and then there are the adapters for the jobs that you want to do, but it seems that's also how they pay for each of those adapters and keep them up to date."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable. That seems to help a lot versus other companies. There are no other fees aside from the standard licensing fees. There are other products out there where you pay based on how many jobs you run and so on, and I know that's very frustrating for users."
"The solution enables admins and users to see the information relevant to them, but this is bundled as an add-on that we would have to pay for."
"Our licensing model for Tidal is on an annual basis. It is very good and works well for us. Tidal's licensing is very transparent and simple. It lets you know, for the amount you use, that's the price that you pay. So, we buy X number of licenses, and we know that this is where we are. I'm very happy with that. I saw the licensing modules on other platforms, and I didn't like them. Other companies and solutions would calculate the connections, adapters, and instances. I think that's the reason that BMC was pretty expensive: They just didn't understand what our needs are."
"BMC is really expensive. The other solutions are about the same price. I think Tidal is even cheaper than the others, such as CA, Stonebranch, and JAMS."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Performing Arts
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise38
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I believe the pricing and licensing were fair. I was not here when that process took place and do not know exactly, b...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
When it comes to improvements for JAMS, I think upgrading and migrating some of the current processes could benefit f...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
Our main use case for JAMS is to automate our data pump backups for our PeopleSoft Oracle system, as well as run a my...
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...
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Also Known As

No data available
IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Workload Automation vs. Tidal by Redwood and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,998 professionals have used our research since 2012.