Our latest evaluation compares Fortra's JAMS and Tidal by Redwood, two prominent Workload Automation Solutions, drawing insights from user reviews on PeerSpot.
Tidal offers robust workload management, scalable, event-driven scheduling, and graphical views regarding valuable features. Its integration capabilities with systems like ServiceNow and JD Edwards are particularly notable. JAMS is recognized for its effective tracking and visualization of job dependencies, user interface, and PowerShell capabilities.
However, both products have areas for improvement. Tidal could benefit from a more intuitive GUI, simplified licensing, AI and enhanced reporting capabilities. JAMS needs more precise documentation, especially for custom execution methods and better integration transparency. A global search feature and a fully web-based client are also suggested enhancements.
Looking at pricing and ROI, Tidal is praised for its predictable costs and value for functionality despite the complexity of licensing and adapters. JAMS is seen as reasonably priced with scalable licensing options, offering significant time and cost savings.
Ease of deployment is a highlight for both; Tidal is commended for its straightforward setup, involving minimal maintenance and a learning curve of just one to two hours, resulting in a three-week deployment timeframe. Similarly, JAMS is appreciated for its easy installation and configuration. Users could easily follow webpage instructions, with setup completed within hours and a native installation of SQL Express being a convenient feature.
Tidal users shared that customer service is responsive and knowledgeable. JAMS receives accolades for its quick, effective support and various communication channels.
In summary, both Tidal and JAMS are robust workload automation solutions with distinct strengths and minor areas for improvement. Their ease of deployment, feature sets, pricing, ROI, and customer service are well-regarded, making them competitive choices in their domain.
"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."
"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 interface is good, and it's very easy to define and create jobs. If a job is not running or there is an error, the solution will send an email. That's all very good and very useful."
"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."
"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 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."
"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."
"The scheduling and execution of jobs are the most valuable features. The scheduling is important because if there is a task we want to execute at 4:00 AM, there's no way we will have someone who can manually run the job. In addition, we execute 100 to 200 jobs per day, and manual intervention is not an option."
"The feature that I find to be valuable, as I'm working with other folks, is the ability to cross-schedule across platforms, and the flexibility that comes with that."
"Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution."
"We wouldn't be able to do many of the complex scheduling that we do today without it. For us, it is a mission-critical app. Because if it doesn't work or has a problem, then SAP doesn't function. It is that critical. So, it's an essential tool for us to manage and run SAP jobs."
"With other tools, you do not have the ability to schedule jobs on their own. You need to create a group and then assign everything to that group. Only then will the job be able to execute. In Tidal, you can schedule a single job and there is no need to create a group. That's what I like the most."
"We have to run about 12,000 jobs every day and the majority of them need to be launched from our ERP, JD Edwards. The native compatibility of the Tidal platform with JD Edwards dovetails with our greatest need. It's directly connected to the heart of our IT system. We couldn't work without it."
"The first, big thing that we got out of using Tidal Workload Automation was having a centralized view of the status of all of our batch processes across all these systems... We can look into the schedule at any given time and see if things are running on track or if they are falling behind. We can also see if something failed."
"It's easy to use and easy to administer, and it's very flexible."
"From a management standpoint, when using the solution for cross-platform, cross-application workloads, I've never had a problem with the application. It's very interactive, especially with the different security levels that they offer."
"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."
"We have had a lot of people working from home who can't always connect to the JAMS server. We use VPN, as most companies do, and we have it set up so that everybody can access the JAMS server. But many times, our people cannot access it... JAMS could do a better job of telling you what the problem is when you try to log in to the server."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"There could be a better simulation for banning the termination. You have to simulate every one of the processes in order to have an idea for better planning. This kind of simulation is broken and needs improvement."
"All my machines at work are Macs. JAMS client is a Windows-based thing. It is all built on .NET, which makes perfect sense. However, that means in order for me to access it, I need to connect to a VPN, then log onto one of our Azure VMs in order to access the JAMS client. This is fine, but if for some reason I am unable to do so, it would be nice to be able to have a web-based JAMS client that has all the exact same functionality in it. There are probably a whole bunch of disadvantages that you would get with that as well, but that is definitely something that would make life easier in a few cases."
"The UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"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."
"From an administrative point of view, I wouldn't give really high marks to the solution. I actually entertained getting the JAWS application at one point. One of the shortcomings with the scheduler is the reporting capabilities. At least at the time, JAWS was the best that they had for a third-party integration. I think they've got things in the pipeline to help alleviate that gap."
"My complaint about their pricing model is that every year or every time technology changes or somebody has a new requirement, it usually means that I can schedule that with Tidal, but I would need another adapter. So, every time there is a change, I need a different adapter that I don't have. That's why it is harder to plan for Tidal growth because you have to buy a new adapter every time."
"Setting up the initial product was a little hard."
"The product’s UI is outdated. They should work on this particular area."
"Tidal Automation could be further integrated with other systems used in the operation of tidal energy systems, such as weather forecasting tools, energy management systems, or asset management software."
"With the client, we have had certain issues. The user interface for Tidal is a little slow. A lot of people would love this tool if they had a faster user interface. The drill-down functionality should be much quicker than what it is pulling out now. If I fill out some data, then it takes awhile to get that data back onto the screen. It's not as fast as we were expecting."
"Understanding and using Tidal Automation could be overwhelming for someone with minimal programming language."
"Tidal's adaptability and user-friendliness could be increased by integrating it with additional programmes and platforms."
Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews while Tidal by Redwood is ranked 2nd in Workload Automation with 37 reviews. Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0, while Tidal by Redwood is rated 9.0. 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 Tidal by Redwood writes "Great visibility with a single pane of glass and a low learning curve". Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs and VisualCron, whereas Tidal by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs and OpCon. See our Fortra's JAMS vs. Tidal by Redwood report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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