We performed a comparison between AutoSys 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: AutoSys Workload Automation is highly regarded for its scalability, user-friendly interface, fast performance, and reliable accessibility. Fortra's JAMS is recognized for its impressive capacity to manage job dependencies, advanced automation features, and comprehensive monitoring and control functionalities.
AutoSys Workload Automation should enhance its integration with cloud services, reporting and comparison of job performance, customization of reporting features and alerts, file transfer job handling, workflow management, and workload window management. Fortra's JAMS should focus on improving its client interface, search capability, training resources, exception handling, browser version compatibility, custom execution methods, integration with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, source control features, documentation, ACL or access permission area, connectivity issues, error notifications, and compliance with the open-source GPG program.
Service and Support: AutoSys is highly regarded for its standardized approach and mature product, while JAMS is known for its fast response time and abundance of documentation and training resources.
Ease of Deployment: Users find the initial setup process for AutoSys Workload Automation to be simple, quick, and uncomplicated, taking approximately 10 minutes or less. Fortra's JAMS setup is also straightforward and easy, with users able to quickly deploy tasks by following instructions on the webpage.
Pricing: AutoSys Workload Automation has a yearly subscription and an annual license. It requires an additional cost for agents, while the server setup has a one-time license and an annual maintenance cost. Fortra's JAMS has an initial license cost for the first year, along with an annual maintenance cost. Users consider JAMS to be reasonable and cost-effective when compared to similar products.
ROI: AutoSys Workload Automation and Fortra's JAMS both offer significant benefits in terms of time savings, increased productivity, and cost-effectiveness. AutoSys provides improved reliability, scalability, and enhanced visibility and control, while JAMS offers automation and improved process robustness.
Comparison Results: AutoSys Workload Automation is preferred over Fortra's JAMS. Users praise AutoSys for its scalability, ease of use, speed, and availability. They appreciate its user-friendly interface, robustness in triggering jobs, and ability to handle large volumes. They also like its simplicity, stability, and ability to connect different software processes.
"The initial setup is easy."
"It scales very well. We can add jobs and remove jobs. We do not have problems maintaining the product across multiple environments and multiple servers."
"The CA workload agent has gotten much better. For our organization it's important for us to communicate in a secure fashion between the host and the other platforms, and we are able to do that with our CA product"
"The capabilities of the product to schedule on multiple platforms, multiple operating systems."
"It has helped to simplify cross-dependency between MVS and Open systems jobs."
"It allows you to automate tasks, and reduce headcount, prevent errors, self-heal."
"We automate recurring processes, keeping track of IT processes controlled worldwide."
"We need to have things run in a very sequential order, so it is very useful that we can schedule the work flows."
"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."
"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."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"We also use the solution’s Interactive Agents. If we need to push something to our dealer portal, we can just drop a file in a folder and it goes. Running interactive tasks helps me users focus on business processes since I don’t have to take care of running the jobs manually."
"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."
"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."
"The product is easy to use."
"We have to escalate through channels to get to somebody who knows what's going on. It takes time that we do not necessarily have."
"In terms of what should be in the next release, I want integration and AI and so on. I'd like easy reporting where you can compare information, for example, "that job normally takes three minutes and last time it took six minutes or 10 minutes." Then you can get the information to the engineer of which job is taking more time than normal - understanding strange behavior compared to the baseline."
"We see improvement possibilities in the processing provision of predefined evaluations or individual objects, or in the Self Service portal, which can be used by any user to monitor objects or start objects."
"The solution could improve by having support for container environments."
"The visibility and control features are somewhat limited."
"I would like to see the Service Orchestrator, a B2B product, and maybe a process audit."
"There is a difference between a web interface and the thick client interface. We particularly like a thick client interface, and it has gone away."
"The graphical interface can be improved."
"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 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."
"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."
"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."
"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. It may be available in version 7 or in a future release of 7. I think that's on their roadmap. But right now, for us to do a search, we have to search through database queries."
"Improvements could be made in the service desk's knowledge and communication skills among engineers to better address customer needs and ensure issues are fully resolved."
"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."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
AutoSys Workload Automation is ranked 6th in Workload Automation with 79 reviews while Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews. AutoSys Workload Automation is rated 8.4, while Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of AutoSys Workload Automation writes "Helps us manage complex workloads, reduce our workload failure rates, and save us time". 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". AutoSys Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, IBM Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Stonebranch and Automic Workload Automation, whereas Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs and VisualCron. See our AutoSys Workload Automation vs. Fortra's JAMS report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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