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Fortra's JAMS pros and cons

Vendor: Fortra

4.5 out of 5

33 reviews
96% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Centralized scheduling and management enhance efficiency by automating tasks across various groups. Improved alerting features ensure that the right people are informed of specific issues. Disaster recovery with seamless failover support guarantees continuous operation. Integration capabilities simplify workflows by incorporating automated tasks into business processes. Historical tracking enhances decision-making and operational awareness.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Centralized job management allows for effective tracking and automation of batch jobs, improving overall transparency and coordination.

Fortra's JAMS enhances workflow efficiency by automating manual processes, thus allowing employees to focus on more strategic tasks.

Built-in disaster recovery capabilities ensure seamless failover to DR sites, enhancing business continuity.

Advanced scheduling features enable automated execution of jobs, reducing the need for manual intervention and supporting operation scaling.

Customizable alerting and security settings provide targeted notifications and controlled access at a granular level.

CONS

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.

Fortra's JAMS lacks source control features. Job control language isn't available, and not all data migrates between versions.

Documentation is not super and could use improvement.

Fortra could do a better job of telling users what the problem is when they try to log in to the server.

Notifications about failed or halted jobs need to be improved, particularly for SQL-related issues.

Fortra's JAMS Pros review quotes

VP, Enterprise Systems at Capio

Nov 18, 2023

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.

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Sr. Vice President, Managed Services and Delivery at Powwr

May 23, 2022

It makes everything that we want to do so much easier. We have had a number of instances in the past where we have had developers who have been working on a project, and even though we have had JAMS for all these years, they will create some SQL Server Agent job, or something like that, to run a task. When it is in code review and development is complete, the question always comes around, "Can JAMS do this?" The answer has always been, "Yes." Pretty much anything we have ever developed could be run by JAMS.

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Network and Local Support Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Mar 27, 2023

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.

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BM

Brendan McMahon

IT Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Mar 23, 2023

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.

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YC

YvetteCarpenter

Technical Operations Manager at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 17, 2021

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.

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VK

Data Architect at San Francisco Public Works

Sep 7, 2021

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.

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IR

Database Administrator at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 26, 2021

The alerting in it is really targeted... you can set specific alerting so that if jobs in a given folder fail, certain people are alerted. You can also set security at the folder level, so that only people in those areas can go set them. That means that the alerting and security can be set at a very granular level.

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reviewer2270991

Director of IT Operations at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 5, 2023

The product is easy to use.

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DT

Dexter Tangonan

Database Administrator at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 24, 2023

The feature or capability to import a job is most valuable. We can import an existing job from different platforms, and all the configurations get migrated as well without modifying the code, job schedule, etc.

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reviewer1687347

DBA at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees

Oct 4, 2021

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.

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Fortra's JAMS Cons review quotes

VP, Enterprise Systems at Capio

Nov 18, 2023

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 knowledge was hard-won knowledge. It was difficult to come by, and if I should ever lose this developer, then I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods quite 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.

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Sr. Vice President, Managed Services and Delivery at Powwr

May 23, 2022

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.

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Network and Local Support Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Mar 27, 2023

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.

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Free Report: Fortra's JAMS Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Fortra's JAMS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.

816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

BM

Brendan McMahon

IT Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Mar 23, 2023

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

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YC

YvetteCarpenter

Technical Operations Manager at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 17, 2021

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.

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VK

Data Architect at San Francisco Public Works

Sep 7, 2021

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.

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IR

Database Administrator at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 26, 2021

The only thing that they could improve on is the fact that they don't have a browser version of JAMS. They've got all the bits and pieces there if you want to build your own web version of it. It does come with a web client, but it's pretty clunky. They could improve on that.

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reviewer2270991

Director of IT Operations at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 5, 2023

The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen.

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DT

Dexter Tangonan

Database Administrator at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 24, 2023

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.

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reviewer1687347

DBA at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees

Oct 4, 2021

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

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 33)

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IBM Workload Automation vs Fortra's JAMS

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