Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AutoSys Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation vs JAMS comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of AutoSys Workload Automation is 10.2%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 6.2%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JAMS is 2.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JAMS2.0%
AutoSys Workload Automation10.2%
IBM Workload Automation6.2%
Other81.6%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Antony Askew - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us manage complex workloads, reduce our workload failure rates, and save us time
The visibility and control features are somewhat limited. This is a recognized weakness, but thee vendor is currently revamping the user interface to address it. While the current UI is a bit outdated, it's undergoing improvement. AutoSys Workload Automation has some areas for improvement, particularly in housekeeping and product maintenance. These tasks are currently quite manual and labor-intensive for our team. Additionally, the reporting and forecasting functionalities could be more robust. One area for improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation is that it comprises several distinct tools configured to work together. This necessitates familiarity with multiple tools for effective solution management. Consequently, it can sometimes lack a sense of cohesiveness as a unified solution.
Ilhami Arikan - PeerSpot reviewer
With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes
Sometimes we have issues with the solution's stability. So, stability can be improved. Reporting and visibility of the solution need improvement. These days, we need more visibility. We need to access the logs and databases easily. You need to keep track of the running number of logs, like which ones are executed, completed, etc. So if there would be a good reporting dashboard, then it would be good. There's room for improvement in the solution since it is a challenging thing when we want to use the solution's technology with our new technologies. For example, if we need to use TWS on our OpenShift platform, the solution's API is not capable enough. So the product itself needs to be aligned with new technologies.
Patrick Norton - PeerSpot reviewer
Support has been among the most helpful and knowledgeable we've ever worked with but performance monitoring needs improvement
The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me. I also need better tools to adopt version seven. Another area for improvement would be the addition of source control for jobs internally, as this feature would solve several problems for me. JAMS has some quirks. It has a bit of a learning curve. Some exceptions are not intuitive, such as when a job is terminated due to exceeding its defined runaway time limit. This generates a misleading exception message that is difficult for new users to understand and requires experience to interpret correctly. Stalled jobs present a unique challenge, particularly when pushing a system like JAMS version six to its limits. While rare, these instances occur when jobs become unresponsive despite appearing in API queries but not in the monitoring console. Although workarounds exist, they highlight the need for improved native monitoring capabilities within JAMS. Currently, the system assumes flawless operation, necessitating supplemental monitoring tools to detect issues like excessive pending or stalled jobs, ensuring timely intervention by our teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I prefer AutoSys over the other ones out there for ease of use, ease of understanding, and getting people to understand how the tool works."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It has helped to simplify cross-dependency between MVS and Open systems jobs."
"We use CA Workload Automation AE r11.3.6 to automate enterprise-wide scheduling and file transfers using an FTP plugin."
"The flexibility in solving job scheduling challenges allows us to successfully integrate an acquired business’ fiscal close with our own, even though there is a lot of variance as to when they run in the calendar month."
"It is very valuable for us when we are trying to arrange or orchestrate jobs into a system. It is helpful for triggering jobs for a scheduled task."
"It has allowed us to automate many of the functions of our operations staff. For instance, we had production control staff spending two hours a day entering date parms into our daily business processes. And now, CA Workload Automation does it for us."
"We use technical support all the time. We would be lost without them. They're fantastic. Really good job. We're able to reach the right person to help us out right away."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"IBM Workload Automation provides good performance and monitoring."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is its holistic view, which helps me find technical solutions quickly. For instance, if a customer has an issue completing their workload within a specific time frame, the tool provides enough information to identify and resolve the issue. One of the main challenges is dealing with data infrastructure problems and pending updates. Workload Automation helps me leverage current AI capabilities to recommend architectural updates to avoid these issues. It also allows me to balance CPU usage effectively, ensuring service level agreements are met. The interface is user-friendly and facilitates this process smoothly."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years"
"The DWC, when configured correctly, is a great GUI tool to provide Self-Service Scheduling capabilities to the user community."
"JAMS has improved my organization by taking a myriad of manual processes and allowing us to automate them. It enables our folks to focus more on tasks that require their human intelligence and their creativity and less on just mundane tasks. It increases efficiency, accuracy, and consistency."
"The user-friendly and adaptable scheduler allows us to manage various scheduling scenarios."
"The product is easy to use."
"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 most valuable aspect of JAMS is its robustness."
"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 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."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
 

Cons

"Quick search feature and job analysis could be improved."
"I would like to see two-factor authentication, since you see a lot of companies in the news for security breaches. That is a really big thing for us."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having support for container environments."
"The WCC could be improved."
"Because this product only computes processing days, it is hard when things need to be scheduled according to non-processing days."
"The reporting system, currently, could be better."
"An area for improvement in AutoSys Workload Automation is that it lacks advanced features or advanced built-in functionalities found in competitors, for example, an advanced workflow feature. Even the handling or notification from AutoSys Workload Automation isn't the best in the industry. Other products have very good workflow-related functionalities such as ActiveBatch that's missing in AutoSys Workload Automation, so I wish the tool had those features."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"The solution should offer more free technical sessions to customers so that they can gain more experience or learn more about how to use it."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"Slow down on the releases a bit. I fully understand that IWA functionality is increasing at an amazing rate, but trying to keep up with the upgrades is rough."
"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"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 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."
"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"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 JAMS automation code isn't so clean."
"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."
"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."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is overpriced."
"CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."
"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."
"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."
"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."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"All licensing models are a little overpriced, but JAMS offers a good value, especially given their support response times and ability to handle unforeseen issues like the SFTP transfers. I hope to find more use cases to get a better bang for our buck."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"Take advantage of its scalability. You can start small. The initial cost is very reasonable. Once you have started picking up the tool and adopting it, then you can scale up from there and buy more agents."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
46%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise77
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about AutoSys Workload Automation?
The most valuable aspects of AutoSys Workload Automation are its performance, scalability, and ease of getting starte...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AutoSys Workload Automation?
The solution is costly. The pricing is based on the number of users, which for me, translates to approximately $120,0...
What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?
IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly,...
What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?
We use IBM Workload Automation ( /products/ibm-workload-automation-reviews ) as a scheduler. We install agents on the...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Workload Automation?
I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product. However, the cost is a concern. Th...
What do you like most about JAMS?
I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased. The price is fair considering the functionalit...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
A major improvement would be the integration of AI to help us accomplish various tasks. AI could assist in simplifyin...
 

Also Known As

CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.