JAMS vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

Fortra and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Fortra is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.8, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.7. Fortra holds a 1.8% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Fortra users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

JAMS

Read 34 JAMS reviews

1,859 Views
500 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Tidal by Redwood

Read 37 Tidal by Redwood reviews

2,921 Views
1,168 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

JAMS

Tidal by Redwood

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Tidal by Redwood and JAMS are strong contenders in the workload automation space, competing on features such as scheduling, automation, and job management. Tidal demonstrates strengths in centralized job management and flexibility with adapters, while JAMS offers intuitive automation and exception handling, which could give JAMS an edge with users seeking streamlined cross-platform integration.

Features: Tidal by Redwood provides a robust calendaring system, advanced job scheduling capabilities, and enhanced user permissions and segmentation. JAMS is noted for its extensive automation capabilities, custom job dependencies, and agent-based job execution, which simplifies cross-platform integration. Tidal stands out with its centralized job management and adaptability using various adapters.

Room for Improvement: Tidal users face challenges with its Transporter tool and report a steep learning curve for new users, alongside the need for enhanced monitoring and root-cause analysis. JAMS, while appreciated for its performance, can benefit from improved custom execution methods and search functionality, as well as better native integrations and collaboration features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Tidal and JAMS are mainly deployed on-premises with some hybrid and cloud use. Tidal's technical support has improved post-Cisco, offering video training and prompt responses. JAMS users find the support team responsive, knowledgeable, and note its simpler deployment driven by lower initial cost and robust support, which some find more flexible than Tidal's setup.

Pricing and ROI: Tidal is valued for its transparent, flexible licensing model and competitive pricing, yielding significant ROI through automation savings. JAMS is seen as cost-effective, particularly with its unlimited license model offering scalability without significant additional costs. Both provide substantial ROI, with JAMS recognized for its budget-friendly entry and Tidal for its cost-efficiency driven by integrated capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed JAMS vs. Tidal by Redwood Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

JAMS vs. Tidal by Redwood

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

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

Tidal by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

4th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

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 JAMS is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 3.0%, down from 4.4% 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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Steve Mikula

IT Scheduling Manager at Paychex, Inc.

Very reliable processing engine, and scheduling is flawless—crucial elements in our financial transaction processing

Because we've been on it for 20 years, it's pretty easy for us to automate jobs with Tidal at this point. It has become second nature. It's pretty simplistic to set up and get going, although there are different levels of complexity you can have within the product. It depends on how simple you want to keep it. If you just keep it: Job A, Job B, Job C, Job D, that becomes pretty simple. But when you start integrating some complex calendars that use sub-calendars—and you can go three, four, or five deep to set up schedules—it becomes more complicated. The beauty of it is you can go as deep as you need to. We can get really complex or we can keep it simple. We have some use cases for both scenarios. The thing that I like the most is the reliability of the engine. The actual scheduling part of the product is pretty much flawless, but the stability of the product is what I find to be reassuring. We are a financial company, we move billions of dollars a day, and if we don't have our transactions processed in a timely manner we can be penalized and our clients can be penalized. It can have a serious financial impact.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like how you can add new execution methods on the fly. It isn't overly complex to add Python script support to an execution method in the JAMS system. The scheduling is excellent. You can schedule a maintenance window and take that resource unit out of everything. It halts all of the jobs."

"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."

"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."

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

"The product is easy to use."

"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."

"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."

"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

"The best feature of Tidal Workload Automation Software is its ease of integration with other systems, including ERP, CRM, and BI tools."

"One of the most useful features is being able to set up a schedule and create dependencies. The calendar can kick off processes at certain times, based on dependencies that you specify, like time, or whether another process has finished. Dependencies are the most useful thing."

"The best feature is that it allows task scheduling based on particular occurrences, like the receipt of files, database updates, or system notifications."

"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."

"The versatility of being able to run on many different types of servers is valuable. There is also a versatility of different services that you could run jobs on. It's highly versatile. You can run a lot of different types of scripts on a lot of different types of servers. It interfaces with all of them."

"We had a number of different schedulers in this organization and we've been porting everything that was running out of these other, unrelated schedulers into this scheduler. That has afforded us the ability to set up direct dependencies between processes that couldn't talk to one another before. Over the 15 years, we've definitely gained a lot from that. What had been manual controls have become automated controls..."

"The most valuable feature is the job scheduler, where you can schedule thousands of jobs to execute at specific times."

"It's easy to use and easy to administer, and it's very flexible."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."

"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."

"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."

"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 documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."

"The error messages from JAMS often need clarification, hindering our ability to resolve issues swiftly."

"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."

"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."

More JAMS cons

"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."

"One area for improvement is the command-line interface and the API to bulk-load jobs. It's a little bit kludgy, but we still manage without it. They're working on it and it's getting better all the time. In addition, the documentation for their API for creating jobs needs to be updated. It's a bit of a learning curve."

"One of the weaknesses of the product is, when something happens, it's difficult to find out the root cause. There are a lot of logs you can take a look at in Tidal. Sometimes, they are useful, but other times, they're not. That is mostly relegated to the administrative team. Users for the most part don't see that and don't know anything about that. They just know they have a problem, then it's up to the administrative team to see what happened and figure out the problem."

"They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting."

"Understanding and using Tidal Automation could be overwhelming for someone with minimal programming language."

"The solution needs more advanced reporting and data visualization capabilities to enable deeper analysis of job performance and trends."

"The user interface is the place that needs the most work. If and when we find issues with the product, they are usually in that area. If I had to choose, that's where I'd want issues, as opposed to in the engine. But the UI is average. It's a little sluggish at times and there are some bugs in it."

"With the client, we have had certain issues. The user interface for Tidal is a little slow. A lot of people would love this tool if they had a faster user interface. The drill-down functionality should be much quicker than what it is pulling out now. If I fill out some data, then it takes awhile to get that data back onto the screen. It's not as fast as we were expecting."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."

"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."

"The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."

"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."

"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."

More JAMS pricing and cost advice

"The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality."

"We are satisfied with the pricing of Tidal. It's in the moderate range and it feels very achievable for us."

"Tidal is a low-cost tool and not expensive in comparison to other tools."

"We think the pricing is very fair. We have been happy with the pricing compared to some of the other solutions in the space."

"We pay maintenance annually through Blue House of about $9,000. That's for our two environments: production and test."

"Our annual maintenance cost is competitive for what we have and what they do."

"The solution’s licensing model in terms of its flexibility and transparency regarding costs is pretty good. A person can buy the license, and if you decide to stop support, you can do that but still have the product. So, it's not like you're paying constantly to keep that license alive. Certainly, you want to keep support going too. Once you buy it, you own it. It's not like I have to keep paying somebody to keep using it."

"...it is a pretty affordable scheduler tool that lets us do a lot. You get a lot of bang for the buck... The licensing model is hugely flexible."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

17%

Computer Software 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.

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

What do you like most about Tidal Automation?

Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?

The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tidal Automation?

Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation. The setup and configuration of the software is a bit complicated. Providing the training vi...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 46% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

JAMS

March 2025

Download JAMS product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

February 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Overview

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

Tidal Software is a leading provider of enterprise workload automation solutions that orchestrate the execution of complex workflows across systems, applications and IT environments. With a comprehensive portfolio of products and services, Tidal optimizes mission-critical business processes, increases IT cost efficiencies and satisfies legal and regulatory compliance requirements. Hundreds of customers around the world count on Tidal for modernizing their workload automation and driving their digital transformation. Tidal Software is headquartered in Chicago with offices in Houston, London, Minsk, Belarus and Chennai, India. For more information, visit tidalsoftware.com.

Tidal Software by Redwood

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

JAMS vs. Tidal by Redwood

January 2025

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