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CA Workload Automation iDash [EOL] vs IBM Workload Automation 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 Scheduler
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (3rd)
CA Workload Automation iDas...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Workload Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (13th)
 

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.
NR
Head Of Service Management at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
An easy initial setup with scalability capabilities and good stability
The solution should give commands in a mainly English perspective so that it's easier to configure in the future. The technical support could be improved by removing delays in response times. They should be able to get back to clients faster. If they offered automated migration in the future, that would be great.
reviewer2701716 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Dynamic workload balancing facilitates efficient job scheduling and ensures continuity with a master-slave setup
One valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is the ability to combine different applications and platforms to organize jobs together, creating dependencies. It's akin to an orchestra. Another feature is dynamic workload balancing, which I find enhances efficiency by automating job setup to run daily. Moreover, having a backup setup allows for immediate recovery if the master setup fails.

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 feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"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."
"By using JAMS, my company has seen benefits such as getting to know about Google products and the latest features that are newly launched by Google, and they help me in building my projects portfolio and engaging with knowledge."
"In summary, this product is top class."
"JAMS is easier to use and cheaper than our previous solution. The installation is more straightforward, and JAMS has a graphical user interface, so it's more accessible."
"The user-friendly and adaptable scheduler allows us to manage various scheduling scenarios."
"I didn't know about JAMS because I don't have a person with any challenges with the purchase administration. The feature or the user interface is user-friendly because of the readable icons or very descriptive icons. Though I'm a beginning user of JAMS, I had no issues using it."
"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."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't experienced any bugs or glitches and we haven't had any crashes that I can recall."
"The solution is easy to manipulate and has good performance."
"The solution is really perfect for a big enterprise using more than 100 or 200 applications."
"Alerting on ABENDS: When a job abnormally ends (ABENDS), the solution notifies us when the job did not complete successfully."
"Real-time database updating is less time consuming because you do not have to upload and download changes or turn the job on, as you can simply leave it off the schedule until it is needed and give it a first-run date."
"As an enterprise scheduler, I have more control over most of the enterprise applications to which it is connected."
"The solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis."
"No other IT infrastructure at our company has proven to be as stable as our TWS v8.5.1/8.6 network and all its components."
"It's very, very stable. The support is quite good."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"Automation capabilities with dependencies, long-term plan and modifying current plan, and ease of use are the product's most valuable features to me."
 

Cons

"The UI is completely unintuitive. We had to go and open up a support ticket with JAMS just to get something back."
"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."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"I want JAMS to implement a global search function."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"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."
"To improve JAMS, it should resolve the issues with the JD Edwards application and the need for the SSH agent in the current version, which has been a problem for a while."
"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"The technical support could be improved by removing delays in response times. They should be able to get back to clients faster."
"We have difficulties manipulating the agent for Windows."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"It is complex to use Lacks scalability It is difficult to set up jobs to run"
"I think that is a good and modern development, but the first v9.x releases (and maybe also the latest, I don’t know) lacked the event-driver WLA functionality that was already available for years in older on-prem versions of the product."
"IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly, and a lower cost would be beneficial."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs."
"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"I’ve not had such a good experience with the technical support. At times, I have seen long delays in getting answers/responses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"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."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"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."
"The pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
Information not available
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
21%
Performing Arts
11%
Construction Company
6%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise23
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise30
 

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 ...
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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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
COTA
Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: August 2026.
912,930 professionals have used our research since 2012.