We performed a comparison between Fortra's JAMS and IBM Workload Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortra's JAMS is praised for its efficient handling of job dependencies and its automation features such as File Watchers, notifications, and code-driven automation. IBM Workload Automation is highly regarded for its ability to incorporate additional features upon user request, trigger jobs in multiple nodes, and maintain stability in monitoring batch applications.
Fortra's JAMS could enhance their user interface, search functionality, exception management, and reporting features. IBM Workload Automation requires improved navigation, job dependencies, daily schedule updates, and reporting visibility.
Service and Support: Customers have expressed satisfaction with Fortra's JAMS customer service, describing it as responsive, knowledgeable, and always helpful. The support team promptly addresses concerns and provides solutions to different problems. IBM Workload Automation's support is also highly praised, especially for assisting with issues that are out of customers' control. Nonetheless, some difficulties may arise in pinpointing the cause of specific problems.
Ease of Deployment: Users find the initial setup for Fortra's JAMS to be uncomplicated and user-friendly, as they are able to easily follow instructions on the webpage and deploy tasks efficiently. The initial setup for IBM Workload Automation may pose difficulties for individuals unfamiliar with IBM tools; however, with guidance, it becomes relatively easy.
Pricing: Fortra's JAMS has an initial investment in the first year, along with a yearly upkeep fee. Users consider the pricing reasonable and budget-friendly and appreciate its flexibility to accommodate expansion. IBM Workload Automation's pricing structure is personalized to each customer's agreement, varying between five and a thousand licenses based on usage.
ROI: Fortra's JAMS has been commended for its impressive return on investment, offering time savings, enhanced productivity, and cost-effectiveness. IBM Workload Automation's ROI is more uncertain and necessitates thorough research and analysis to gain a clearer comprehension.
Comparison Results: Fortra's JAMS is the preferred choice over IBM Workload Automation. Users appreciate JAMS for its user-friendly setup process, efficient handling of job dependencies, automation features, interactive agents, code-driven automation, flexible scheduling options, and detailed logging for problem-solving.
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."
"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."
"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."
"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 most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"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."
"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."
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"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."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"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."
"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."
"It does validations when you try to delete an object and if there are any dependencies in place, the deletion process will not proceed... there is no information provided as to what it was that caused the validation to fail... it's quite a tedious process to find which object is getting in the way."
"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."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"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."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools."
Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews while IBM Workload Automation is ranked 13th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews. Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0, while IBM Workload Automation is rated 8.2. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, Tidal by Redwood, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs and VisualCron, whereas IBM Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Tidal by Redwood. See our Fortra's JAMS vs. IBM Workload Automation report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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