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AutoSys Workload Automation vs BigFix comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (3rd)
AutoSys Workload Automation
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (4th)
BigFix
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (9th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (29th), Patch Management (8th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AutoSys Workload Automation7.0%
Control-M12.1%
Automic Automation5.8%
Other75.1%
Workload Automation
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BigFix1.6%
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7.0%
CrowdStrike Falcon6.2%
Other85.2%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
PK
Assistant VP at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Experience significant automation with robust integration and user-friendly interfaces
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancements in the R24 release. The web UI needs some improvement. Cloud integrations are limited to 25 or 30 configurable plugins and integrations to the cloud. They can improve in that area. They have separate tools, not AutoSys Workload Automation, such as Atomic and other SaaS-based solutions that can run inside the cloud. AutoSys Workload Automation can be configured in the cloud, but it requires a substantial number of VMs depending on the load. For on-premises deployment, it is a very good solution. They need to increase their footprint in the cloud and improve the web UI. They are making excellent progress in the R24 release.
Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Techsa Services
Long-term partnership improves customer satisfaction and delivers efficient endpoint management
BigFix supports something known as Patch Policies, which allows users to define that whenever critical patches are released, they should get evaluated against machines and automatically deploy them. Their software distribution is very efficient because they use a pull mechanism rather than a push mechanism, allowing each machine to download from the closest repository and install themselves. The same assessment mechanism applies for real-time vulnerability remediation, allowing identification, evaluation, and automatic remediation across machines. Compliance metrics typically measure the patch percentages deployed against the number of endpoints, which could be various device types including virtual machines and mobile devices. Measurements are taken against each device type, looking into compliance percentages for browsers such as Chrome and Edge based on their versions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's worth its weight in gold and we cannot get rid of it now."
"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."
"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."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"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."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly 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."
"The most valuable feature of AutoSys Workload Automation is user-friendliness. If someone has some knowledge of the tool they can use it."
"It's a dynamic product, it's been stable and we've never had a real outage with the product."
"The benefits I have seen from AutoSys Workload Automation are significant; I would say it is about ease of administration."
"The Inherit Dependencies feature reduces scheduling errors for holiday processing."
"The stability has been good in my experience."
"The solution has been stable."
"We have ended up using it as a Tier 1 application supporting other Tier 1 applications."
"We really like the product and its functions; it works, and we like its stability, scalability, and robustness."
"We are able to go from patching thousands of machines by twenty to thirty people to one person."
"The most valuable feature is patch management, a must have, even for Linux and iOS."
"It is for multiple use cases. A lot of people are looking at it just for security, and that's really endpoint security. The endpoint management part of it in terms of being able to constantly do patching for Windows, Unix, macOS, Cloud, Raspberry, VMware, and all Linux flavors is important, and they are very good at that. They have support for virtually every OS on the market."
"Patch management: We've gone from hideous to amazing."
"BigFix is a stable solution; you can deploy it and forget about it."
"It has plugins development options, which are great."
"One of the biggest benefits BigFix has had for our organization is the ease and efficiency to perform many different tasks, across pillars and platforms, all from one pane of glass."
"The older version of the tools that I use also included the connectivity aspect, and the fact that the tool now has it separate from the collection of usage data makes the deployment of these tools much easier."
 

Cons

"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."
"One thing that I know that the JAMS people said that they were working on that would be huge for us is a search capability so that you could search for tasks."
"For scalability, I would rate it as seven because when we have a huge volume, sometimes the tool is not so responsive."
"The solution is good, it's reliable. But sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used."
"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."
"If around 5,000 or more jobs run at a time, JAMS slows down, and we have to wait around five to 10 minutes or restart JAMS scheduler services."
"JAMS has built-in reporting. I've never really used it. I tried using it a few years ago and I couldn't figure it out. It was wonky. It could be improved upon."
"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."
"I've used this product for a long time, but the GUI to me feels outdated."
"Most AutoSys Workload Automation customers are moving because of cost; it is more cost intrusive."
"Needs better documentation with fully explained examples for some of the job types."
"Because this product only computes processing days, it is hard when things need to be scheduled according to non-processing days."
"They could do better supporting it. They have too many of the same type of products, so sometimes it doesn't get as much attention as it should."
"CA Workload Automation is not part of CA's strategic vision going forward."
"The most important thing is that duration is not displayed in the actual WCC GUI."
"Since Broadcom acquired it, the prices have increased. Many companies feel the same way and are looking for alternate solutions to replace AutoSys Workload Automation."
"IBM has not focused on the Web Reports capabilities."
"It can be improved speed-wise. They can make it a little bit light."
"Be careful. It's a super powerful tool. It can be unforgiving, i.e., if you do some of the things wrong, it can be a nightmare."
"I'm looking for them to make big web UI improvements."
"Dynamic messaging needs improvement because one of the things that we deal with a lot is the messaging when pushing releases out."
"Their technical support needs some improvement. We have had some cases where we didn't get enough support from the support team but I think it's improving now."
"The stability is generally pretty good. The one thing that we came across is the battle between load on endpoints and load on our servers and relays versus how quickly, effectively and reliably actions can be taken."
"There is no support for patch management on SLES on IBM pSeries (only the Intel platform is supported)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"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."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"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."
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."
"People need to pay attention to how they use their ESP agents on the distributed platform. That's where some of the cost comes in, based on how many you need or how many you use."
"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."
"Validate how many agents you need beforehand."
"I don't have information on the exact licensing cost of AutoSys Workload Automation because that's managed by the tools and financing teams. For agents, it's close to $4,00, but for the server setup, it's usually a one-time license initially, and it's AMC which is paid every year and comes close to $8,000 to $10,000."
"You are charged per server and per workstation when using BigFix. ManageEngine is a lot cheaper than BigFix. There are some additional costs, such as support."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"So, the pricing is slightly more expensive than the others. I have to keep buying licenses every time I add a new device."
"The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price."
"The tool's price continues to go up. The cost per endpoint can vary, ranging from approximately 30 to 80 dollars per year. Compared to other products, pricing is in the middle. You need to buy an additional database license, but most users already have it."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"It might be about $23 a client."
"The price is very fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
5%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise79
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise67
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I believe the pricing and licensing were fair. I was not here when that process took place and do not know exactly, b...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
When it comes to improvements for JAMS, I think upgrading and migrating some of the current processes could benefit f...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
Our main use case for JAMS is to automate our data pump backups for our PeopleSoft Oracle system, as well as run a my...
How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful b...
What needs improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation?
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancement...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
The pricing is pretty good and now follows a subscription model similar to other major software solutions, making it ...
What needs improvement with BigFix?
I have concerns about BigFix's pricing, which I find to be slightly on the higher side. While it may not be the most ...
What is your primary use case for BigFix?
I have been working at Tech Data for the last 12 plus years.
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: May 2026.
895,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.