We performed a comparison between Control-M and Fortra's JAMS based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Control-M offers valuable features such as Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, Role-Based Administration, file transfer integration, and forecasting. Fortra's JAMS provides job dependency tracking, automation capabilities, warnings and notifications, PowerShell integration, ease of use, centralized management, auditing capability, and extensibility through custom execution methods.
Control-M can improve in areas such as enhancing microservices and API integration, addressing bugs in the web interface, developing a lighter web version, and integrating with third-party tools. Fortra's JAMS could use improvement in terms of intuitiveness, search capability, browser version, source control features, documentation, ACL clarity, connectivity issues, notifications, and compliance with the GPG program.
Service and Support: Control-M's customer service is divisive. Some customers have praised the support team for being prompt and knowledgeable. However, others have expressed their dissatisfaction with the slow response. Fortra's JAMS customer service has been consistently well-reviewed. Customers appreciate the team's responsiveness and expertise.
Ease of Deployment: Users found it easy to install the software for Control-M. Fortra's JAMS had a relatively quick and simple setup process, with users following instructions on the webpage. Some manual conversion of jobs and scripts was required for Control-M, however, once set up, it became the heart of operations. Upgrades and migrations for Control-M were smooth. Some users of Fortra's JAMS had minor challenges during setup but were able to seek assistance from JAMS support.
Pricing: Control-M is seen as having high setup costs due to additional expenses like infrastructure and salaries. Pricing and licensing can be confusing and are important factors for users to consider. In contrast, Fortra's JAMS is praised for its fair and reasonable pricing. It offers unlimited licensing and scalability options, making it a cheaper alternative compared to products like Tivoli and Control-M.
ROI: Control-M has proven to be more cost-effective and efficient, with reduced job duration and improved data management. It also offers centralized connection profiles and automation. Fortra's JAMS has saved time, increased productivity, and provided cost-effectiveness.
Comparison Results: Control-M is the favored choice when comparing it to Fortra's JAMS. Users appreciate Control-M for its user-friendly and efficient setup process, useful integrated guides and instructional videos, seamless agent upgrades with no downtime, and valuable features like Managed File Transfer and Role-Based Administration.
"It can do anything that I need. We do real-time jobs. We also do jobs that have to run at certain times. I have not been presented with a scheduling need that I was not able to do. It is very flexible and dynamic."
"The scheduling feature and scheduling tool are the most valuable features. I like the scheduling services that we have in Control-M, which are very beneficial to our organization because they are automating things. There is also less manual work. We can schedule a task without any manual interruptions."
"You can let users access the system and manage jobs: self-service."
"We can tie together all the workloads across the estate and make the whole process reactive to events."
"As soon as you have an issue, a ticket is created and the tech support is quite responsive."
"The most valuable features are the GUI console, stability, and workflow."
"Cross-platform support: A Linux job can be dependent on a Windows job, which can be dependent on many other flavours of hardware/software. Your batch is therefore managed by a single tool, allowing you to monitor your entire flow."
"The multiple scheduling options allow you to do anything you want, whenever you want, and however you want. You can easily be in control when things happen."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"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."
"JAMS is easier to use and cheaper than our previous solution. The installation is more straightforward, and JAMS has a graphical user interface, so it's more accessible."
"The reporting functionality needs a lot of work. We have faced problems with different versions where we run the right report, but it gives us blank entries. Then, when we run the same report again, it gives the correct data."
"The response time could be faster when you need a person to answer your questions. There are situations where availability becomes crucial."
"The MFT applications should have more functionality and flexibility within that tool. Having more flexibility with that tool for handling the one to many or many to one concept. Like being able to take data from one source and push it to many locations or pull data from many locations and bring it back into a single source. That's why we still use our TPS program for the file transfers just because we don't have some of those capabilities available to us within MFT."
"You need to pay for extra features if you need them."
"I've never been very successful when researching ways to utilize Batch Impact Manager. It's a tool to set up dummy jobs in your job flow and it's supposed to come back to you and say, 'Okay, for this job flow, you are 50 percent complete at a certain point in time'...I would like things like Batch Impact Manager to be a little more user-friendly, out-of-the-box."
"I think it's slightly expensive but at the same time it's a good product."
"A developer sandbox could be very helpful to try out new features or experience them."
"The report form and display function are weak; they are not very powerful."
"I'm not sure if they have fixed it in a newer version, but there is no global search in the version I have. If I have multiple sub-folders that are named for business units, like HR or IT, and I have to search for a job, I cannot search from the top. I have to go to the HR folder to search for a particular job, or to the IT folder."
"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 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 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."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see the ability to interface with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, but they're still in the research phase. They need to ensure everything's legit and safe. The report designer and dashboards could also be improved. We're running 7.3, so I don't know if they have updated the reporting in 7.5, but I think the reports and dashboards could be better."
"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."
Control-M is ranked 1st in Workload Automation with 110 reviews while Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews. Control-M is rated 8.8, while Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Control-M writes "We have seen quicker file transfers with more visibility and stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortra's JAMS writes "We can scale up our organization's scheduling and automation without having to add staff to the department". Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence and Automic Workload Automation, whereas Fortra's JAMS is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs and VisualCron. See our Control-M vs. Fortra's JAMS report.
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