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JAMS vs VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 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
Ranking in Workload Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation Orch...
Ranking in Workload Automation
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Rob Grafrath - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Vishal Bhatia - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation tasks are streamlined with advanced templates and offers good support capabilities
Some students, especially beginners, may find the learning curve to be steep due to a lack of requisite knowledge in backend languages like YAML, Python, or JavaScript. I have been providing VMware training for over fifteen years. I deal with many other vendors, such as Cisco and Microsoft. I would rate VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator around eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"JAMS has improved our productivity immensely because everything flows. I don't think we could operate at our current staffing levels without it."
"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge. Before JAMS, every group was keeping track of their own batch jobs. Nobody really knew what the other jobs were. So, if jobs failed, other groups wouldn't necessarily know. With JAMS, everything is done through a single scheduler. You can choose who to notify."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The overall product is fantastic. I love it. It has been a fantastic, solid product. If I have one tiny bit of a problem with it, the support team gets in touch with me right away. I don't know if I've had another service that has been as fantastic as the JAMS support team."
"The product is easy to use."
"Primarily, customers are looking for workflows and day-to-day actions, as well as advanced templates."
"Primarily, customers are looking for workflows and day-to-day actions, as well as advanced templates."
 

Cons

"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."
"The error messages from JAMS often need clarification, hindering our ability to resolve issues swiftly."
"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."
"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."
"The ACL or access permission area needs to be improved. When it comes to defining and providing security permissions, it's a bit confusing if you are new to JAMS. JAMS needs to improve the features for security access or permissions."
"I would like a simple web interface that I could give to my team to go in and kill jobs or see why jobs died so that we don't have to drill down deeper into the application and know everything about it. It would be good to have a really clean web engine that would say here are the jobs running. We can then click to see the time running and whether any of them fails and other similar things. I know they have one, but it's not very simplistic."
"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"I would like to see improvements related to AI integration, which could make understanding from a language perspective easier."
"Some students, especially beginners, may find the learning curve to be steep due to a lack of requisite knowledge in backend languages like YAML, Python, or JavaScript."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is reasonable."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
Pricing is not a concern for us. We generally do not handle that side of the story.
What needs improvement with VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
I would like to see improvements related to AI integration, which could make understanding from a language perspective easier. Features like drag-and-drop, enabling code to be written automatically...
What is your primary use case for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
My company is a training company, so we deliver trainings for Aria Automation. I have been using VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator for about three years.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
1. VMware 2. Dell Technologies 3. Cisco Systems 4. IBM 5. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 6. Microsoft 7. Oracle 8. Amazon Web Services 9. Google Cloud 10. Intel 11. Accenture 12. Fujitsu 13. Hitachi Vantara 14. NetApp 15. Red Hat 16. SAP 17. Siemens 18. T-Systems 19. Verizon 20. AT&T 21. Vodafone 22. Orange 23. BT Group 24. Deutsche Telekom 25. Ericsson 26. Nokia 27. Samsung 28. Sony 29. Toshiba 30. Panasonic 31. LG Electronics 32. Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, Redwood Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: April 2025.
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