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BMC AMI Ops vs VisualCron comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

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 Scheduler
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BMC AMI Ops
Ranking in Workload Automation
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Mainframe Management (1st)
VisualCron
Ranking in Workload Automation
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (20th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS Scheduler is 3.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC AMI Ops is 2.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 2.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS Scheduler3.4%
BMC AMI Ops2.3%
VisualCron2.2%
Other92.1%
Workload Automation
 

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.
Tharun K - PeerSpot reviewer
Software engineer at Bahwan cybertek
Monitoring has improved mainframe visibility and enables faster performance troubleshooting
BMC AMI Ops is useful for monitoring, but the interface can take some time for new users to understand. I would prefer to see a more modern and intuitive UI with simpler navigation. The product could also make troubleshooting easier by providing more consolidated information. Better dashboards and more customizable alerts would help the team focus on the most important issues without having to move to multiple screens. Improved documentation and more guided workflows for common troubleshooting scenarios would also be helpful for new users. Another important improvement would be making the product easier for new team members to learn. Some of the monitoring options and views take time to understand, especially when troubleshooting an unfamiliar issue. A more simplified dashboard, clearer navigation, and better guidance around alerts would make the day-to-day experience smoother. It would also be useful to have more flexibility in customization, so each team can focus on the metrics and alerts that are most relevant to their environment.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspect of JAMS is its robustness."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."
"The integration of IMS commands is very useful, because you do not have to switch to another tool to problem solve solutions."
"BMC AMI Ops has broader features, helps streamline our processes smoothly, and it has zero downtime while upgrading and better notification, which is really helpful for us."
"BMC AMI Ops has positively impacted my organization in multiple ways, especially in automation, as we do not have to manually run or search for or run scripts."
"BMC AMI Ops has improved outcomes for my team, and it has definitely improved outcomes for the clients that we serve."
"Overall, it has helped make our operations more stable and reduced the time spent on identifying the initial cause of some issues."
"BMC AMI Ops has impacted my organization very positively, primarily in terms of timing, with positive outcomes including reduced downtime and improved efficiency of our manpower."
"Batch smoothing our 4HRA and implementation of group capacity profiles has allowed us to run sub-capacity and lower our MLC."
"The automation capabilities have reduced the majority of the work that our team used to do manually, as manual processes consume a lot of time and are prone to human error, and when it comes to automation, we see the performance has been raised, clients are also satisfied with the performance, we do not have much downtime or any critical issues that are highlighted which impact the business, and automation has really changed and is a game changer for us."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."
"Using the Windows Task Scheduler means you have to do some coding while using VisualCron means the tool takes care of the coding from the backend; you're just using the visual interface of VisualCron, creating the logic, and telling the tool what actions need to be performed, so VisualCron would take care of everything on the backend for you, which helps you manage time better."
"Support is AAA+, fast, and very detailed."
"VisualCronv is currently handling so many different critical processes for our company, it's become a key factor in our livelihood and success."
"VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"It helped us reduce manual steps."
 

Cons

"The only thing that they could improve on is the fact that they don't have a browser version of JAMS. They've got all the bits and pieces there if you want to build your own web version of it. It does come with a web client, but it's pretty clunky. They could improve on that."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"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."
"I want JAMS to implement a global search function."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"Right now there's not much of an Azure integration with JAMS at the moment directly because we run separate pipelines."
"JAMS could be improved with a web client that is accessible and as fast as a normal website, eliminating the need to RDP to the servers to access the JAMS client."
"The JAMS automation code isn't so clean."
"BMC AMI Ops is useful for monitoring, but the interface can take some time for new users to understand."
"My experience with BMC AMI Ops was limited, but during this evaluation, I believe it could be improved by making some features easier for new users to understand, probably with better guidance or more practical examples."
"While BMC AMI Ops handles workloads effectively, it struggles under very high workloads, occasionally providing inaccurate information, suggesting that this is an area for improvement."
"Regarding needed improvements, by default, when we open a viewpoint, we don't see the jobs in a linear way."
"BMC AMI Ops can be improved by offering a more modern user interface and better dashboard customization."
"More visualisation and support for mobile devices would be good."
"I would like to see more AI in BMC AMI Ops, such as an AI feature that lets you keep track of storage in some way, perhaps some kind of automatic disk cleanup."
"The alerting system could be improved."
"The documentation is a bit weak."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler."
"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition."
"I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface."
"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"It's certainly a lot cheaper than Tivoli and Control-M. In comparison to them, you get a lot more bang for your buck. You get pretty much the whole functionality and more, in some cases, when compared to Control-M, but at a fraction of the price."
"The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"If you already use other products from BMC, you might be able to get a package deal from BMC's sales department."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"The price is a bit high."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"ROI is one month."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I was not really involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing at that level. I am more involved in the technica...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
In terms of improvements, I believe JAMS can enhance its user interface for better user experiences. I would like to ...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My primary use case for JAMS is enterprise workload automation and batch job orchestration. I use it to schedule and ...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all ...
What needs improvement with BMC AMI Ops?
It is really hard to say if there are any improvement areas or not, but every software has improvement areas that sho...
What is your primary use case for BMC AMI Ops?
We usually use BMC AMI Ops to automate tasks as described, and there are a couple of batch files running in the tool ...
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Also Known As

No data available
BMC MainView, BMC Automated Mainframe Intelligence, Ops Monitoring, Ops Automation for Batch ThruPut
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Dillard's
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI Ops vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.