We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch Workload Automation 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: ActiveBatch Workload Automation offers a versatile and user-friendly experience with prebuilt jobs, real-time monitoring, scalability, and support for a wide range of platforms. Fortra's JAMS stands out for its strong job dependency tracking, automation capabilities, warnings, support, and emphasis on code-driven automation.
ActiveBatch could enhance its managed file transfer, user interface, trigger reliability, documentation, support services, software setup process, customization options, and pricing. Fortra's JAMS would benefit from improvements in client interface, search functionality, training resources, documentation, UI responsiveness, integration capabilities, source control features, and access permission management.
Service and Support: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has received positive feedback regarding its customer service, specifically highlighting the helpful and reliable technical support. However, there are concerns regarding the service model and availability of the hotline. Fortra's JAMS is highly praised for its responsive and knowledgeable support team, promptness of responses, and availability of documentation and training resources. Customers express overall satisfaction with JAMS' customer service.
Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for ActiveBatch Workload Automation was straightforward, with a minor need for additional documentation during file import. Configuring it on different operating systems like Windows and Linux proved to be slightly complex. Fortra's JAMS had a simple and easy setup procedure, with users easily following instructions on the webpage and swiftly deploying new tasks. Although some users encountered confusion or difficulties, they were able to seek assistance from JAMS support.
Pricing: Users find the setup cost for ActiveBatch Workload Automation to be quick and simple, with reasonable and competitive pricing. Users consider the pricing of JAMS to be fair and affordable.
ROI: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has been highly regarded for its positive impact on net revenue. Fortra's JAMS is admired for its cost-effectiveness, time-saving features, and improved productivity, all achieved without requiring additional staff.
Comparison Results: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is the preferred choice when compared to Fortra's JAMS. Users praise ActiveBatch for its versatility, easy-to-use interface, prebuilt jobs, and user-friendly configuration. It stands out in scheduling, monitoring, and providing valuable insights.
"The software offers real-time monitoring and reporting features that let IT teams keep tabs on the progress of their batch operations and workflows."
"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."
"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."
"Approximately ~20 hours of manual effort have been reduced to ~5 hours with the help of ActiveBatch."
"It is very useful in sending confidential files through FPP servers."
"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."
"It can connect to a number of third-party/legacy systems."
"The most valuable feature is its stability. We've only had very minor issues and generally they have happened because someone has applied a patch on a Windows operating system and it has caused some grief. We've actually been able to resolve those issues quite quickly with ActiveBatch. In all the time that I've had use of ActiveBatch, it hasn't failed completely once. Uptime is almost 100 percent."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"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."
"Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution."
"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 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 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."
"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 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."
"A nice thing to have would be the ability to comfortably pass variables from one job to another. That was one of the things that I found difficult."
"We have faced a couple of issues where we were supposed to log a defect with ActiveBatch. That said, the Active batch Vendor Support is very responsive and reliable."
"Some improvements can be made to the user interface."
"An area for improvement in ActiveBatch Workload Automation is its interface or GUI. It could be a little better. There isn't any additional feature I'd like to see in the tool, except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"The product should be improved by providing a customization option."
"They could provide an easier installation guide or technical support to the organizations during the installation process."
"A cloud option is not provided as a free feature, making it a costly solution for smaller organizations."
"Providing some detailed training materials could be very helpful for new users who have very limited technical information about the tool."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."
"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."
"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 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'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."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"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."
More ActiveBatch Workload Automation Pricing and Cost Advice →
ActiveBatch Workload Automation is ranked 3rd in Workload Automation with 24 reviews while Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 21 reviews. ActiveBatch Workload Automation is rated 9.2, while Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of ActiveBatch Workload Automation writes "Native API calls are very good and very easy, enabling us to tie in to a large range of solutions, including Tableau and ServiceNow". 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". ActiveBatch Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, Tidal Automation, AutoSys Workload Automation, AWS Transfer for SFTP and MOVEit, whereas Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal Automation, VisualCron and Dollar Universe Workload Automation. See our ActiveBatch Workload Automation vs. Fortra's JAMS report.
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