HCL Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

HCLSoftware and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. HCLSoftware is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #11 with an average rating of 9.0. HCLSoftware holds a 2.2% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 4.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of HCLSoftware users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Tidal by Redwood and HCL Workload Automation compete in enterprise workload automation. Tidal by Redwood is noted for cost-effectiveness and strong customer service, while HCL Workload Automation is recognized for comprehensive features justifying its higher price.

Features: Tidal by Redwood offers robust scheduling and cloud capabilities, making it well-suited for hybrid environments. It excels in providing a user-friendly experience with seamless cloud integration. HCL Workload Automation delivers extensive job automation features, strong integration capabilities, and sophisticated event-driven processing, offering a more powerful automation suite for complex workflows.

Room for Improvement: Tidal by Redwood could enhance its advanced functionality and flexibility to compete with more sophisticated systems. It might also expand its feature set to handle more complex workflows. HCL Workload Automation exhibits a complex deployment process, suggesting a need for simplification. User training could be streamlined, and efforts to reduce initial complexity might improve accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tidal by Redwood is praised for straightforward deployment processes, minimizing downtime with responsive customer support. HCL Workload Automation, although comprehensive, has longer implementation times due to complexity, but is supported by in-depth technical assistance, giving Tidal an edge in service accessibility.

Pricing and ROI: Tidal by Redwood is recognized for lower upfront costs and quicker ROI, appealing to budget-conscious users. HCL Workload Automation requires a higher initial investment but offers significant ROI with extensive features and scalability, catering to enterprises with complex needs that prioritize long-term value over initial expense.

To learn more, read our detailed Workload Automation Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Workload Automation

December 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Workload Automation is 2.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 4.9%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
JAMS	2.3%
Tidal by Redwood	4.9%
HCL Workload Automation	2.2%
Other	90.6%

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Patrick Norton

Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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reviewer2783334

SME at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Automation has streamlined critical workloads and has reduced manual reporting efforts

In the future, I would like to see enhancements, particularly in the GUI console, the TDWC GUI console for the end user. We do not have many complaints, but I believe there is some slowness, which may be due to network connectivity. However, in some cases, we do experience lag in the TDWC console, which I think needs to be considered for improvement to speed up the end-user console. As of now, I do not have much clarity on any additional features that I would like to see included in HCL Workload Automation in the future or any functionality that requires enhancement at the moment.

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Jim Gillingham

Batch Production Manager at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Its versatility, ease of use, scalability, and cost-effectiveness make it a 10/10 and the best of the breed

The company is not really big. One of the areas that they are working on is improving the process of migrating jobs from the lower environment to the upper environment. They had used a tool called Transporter, which was a little difficult to use, but they've now released a new tool in August, which I've not yet used, to do that. It's probably called Repository or something like that, but it's a tool for migrating jobs from the lower environment to the upper environment. That's where they needed to improve, and it looks like they may have, but I haven't tried the tool yet. They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a full-featured job scheduling tool. The part that I liked the best was the support team. This tool was new, and we were all learning it and setting up the different jobs that were complex in nature. Their support team was very responsive in helping us out through the setup and resolving the issues. They have been incredibly awesome."

"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."

"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."

"The ability to sequence jobs is excellent; it means we don't have to schedule them individually, and if one fails, it doesn't unwind the entire workflow."

"We also use the solution’s Interactive Agents. If we need to push something to our dealer portal, we can just drop a file in a folder and it goes. Running interactive tasks helps me users focus on business processes since I don’t have to take care of running the jobs manually."

"The planning capabilities are most valuable."

"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."

"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."

More JAMS pros

"The scalability of HCL Workload Automation is essentially limitless, as I have worked with corporations running over a million flows per day without performance issues when scaling according to HCL's documentation."

"HCL Workload Automation is more stable and secure, helping to avoid incidents and meet SLAs, making it a dependable tool."

"We have good features, good utility, and excellent feedback from all our stakeholders and end users."

"Easy to set up, it doesn't require a lot."

"It has been super stable. There are no complaints on stability. We would not be using it if Tidal wasn't stable."

"Tidal Automation allows organizations to automate complex workflows and processes, reducing the need for manual intervention and improving operational efficiency."

"Tidal Automation’s most valuable feature is customization. It can work and connect with any app."

"By leveraging machine learning algorithms, Tidal Automation can use this data to optimize turbine settings and improve overall efficiency and performance."

"It is intended to enable large-scale automation environments, making it appropriate for companies with complicated processes and big data volumes."

"Tidal helps administrators and users to see the information that is relevant to them in that single pane of glass. They can see jobs running, they can see job history, and they can see job progression. If you look at alternatives like Airflow and clouds, you'd have to design your own UI to monitor the progress of the different jobs that you've created in Airflow. So Tidal is huge for us."

"Tidal Workload Automation Software provides the ability to quickly adapt to changing business requirements."

"Thinking of all the people involved in checking jobs on a daily basis, manually running jobs or auditing them through standalone tools, and trying to connect them. We have saved hundreds of hours weekly, which is substantial."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

Cons

"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."

"If around 5,000 or more jobs run at a time, JAMS slows down, and we have to wait around five to 10 minutes or restart JAMS scheduler services."

"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."

"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 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."

"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."

"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."

"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."

More JAMS cons

"The interface needs some improvements."

"For increasing infrastructure or adding users, while the application is good, I do not think its current capability can handle the large volume of scripts at HDFC because critical applications require high performance when many scripts are running at night."

"In the future, I would like to see enhancements, particularly in the GUI console, the TDWC GUI console for the end user."

"To improve HCL Workload Automation, I recommend focusing more on testing new features before release, as the aggressive roadmap has resulted in some features not being properly tested and working as expected."

"The product’s UI is outdated. They should work on this particular area."

"The drill-down into details using the Graphical Views feature is a bit difficult and not that helpful. If you want to go into the details, you have to go to the Job Activity. Graphical Views is not that easy for getting that kind of information."

"Understanding and using Tidal Automation could be overwhelming for someone with minimal programming language."

"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."

"One of the weaknesses of the product is, when something happens, it's difficult to find out the root cause. There are a lot of logs you can take a look at in Tidal. Sometimes, they are useful, but other times, they're not. That is mostly relegated to the administrative team. Users for the most part don't see that and don't know anything about that. They just know they have a problem, then it's up to the administrative team to see what happened and figure out the problem."

"For the most part, the drill-down and the logging are really good. But if we take an Informatica job, for example: We have the ability, and the operators have the ability, to actually drill down and see, at a session level, where the failure is. There is, unfortunately, no way to extract that into an actual output email or failure email. It's not that that information is not available, but extracting it into an email would be a nice-to-have."

"There are several improvement points that our team has provided to the vendor."

"The software's performance and scalability could be improved, particularly when dealing with large-scale workloads or complex business processes."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."

"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."

"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."

"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."

"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."

"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."

"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."

"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."

More JAMS pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"This solution is a bit expensive in the current world where everybody is trying to cut down on certain things."

"Our licensing model for Tidal is on an annual basis. It is very good and works well for us. Tidal's licensing is very transparent and simple. It lets you know, for the amount you use, that's the price that you pay. So, we buy X number of licenses, and we know that this is where we are. I'm very happy with that. I saw the licensing modules on other platforms, and I didn't like them. Other companies and solutions would calculate the connections, adapters, and instances. I think that's the reason that BMC was pretty expensive: They just didn't understand what our needs are."

"Our annual maintenance cost is competitive for what we have and what they do."

"We pay maintenance annually through Blue House of about $9,000. That's for our two environments: production and test."

"Their pricing seems very fair. It is more than the other solutions, but the functionality and the support are very much there. You pay for the job scheduler, and then they have certain things that are built into it, such as the FTP processes. If you then want to do JD Edwards jobs, you need an adapter. If you want to do SQL jobs, there is another adapter. Similarly, if you want to do Oracle jobs, there is an adapter. It is like there is the base and then there are the adapters for the jobs that you want to do, but it seems that's also how they pay for each of those adapters and keep them up to date."

"The solution’s licensing model in terms of its flexibility and transparency regarding costs is pretty good. A person can buy the license, and if you decide to stop support, you can do that but still have the product. So, it's not like you're paying constantly to keep that license alive. Certainly, you want to keep support going too. Once you buy it, you own it. It's not like I have to keep paying somebody to keep using it."

"The solution enables admins and users to see the information relevant to them, but this is bundled as an add-on that we would have to pay for."

"BMC is really expensive. The other solutions are about the same price. I think Tidal is even cheaper than the others, such as CA, Stonebranch, and JAMS."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Insurance Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	18

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	38

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?

I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.

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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...

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What needs improvement with JAMS?

As far as we are using JAMS version 6, it looks good and there is nothing major to add about it. Everything is functi...

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What needs improvement with HCL Workload Automation?

In the future, I would like to see enhancements, particularly in the GUI console, the TDWC GUI console for the end us...

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What is your primary use case for HCL Workload Automation?

I use HCL Workload Automation for several use cases. In 2022, we had a migration where we needed to upgrade from 9.4 ...

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What advice do you have for others considering HCL Workload Automation?

Regarding the impact of using HCL Workload Automation on reducing human error in operations, there is a checkpoint fe...

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What do you like most about Tidal Automation?

Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.

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What advice do you have for others considering Tidal Automation?

I would recommend Tidal Automation by Redwood as the first priority for users looking for any automation tool. Overal...

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Comparisons

Control-M vs JAMS

Compared 19% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs JAMS

Compared 11% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs JAMS

Compared 9% of the time

Stonebranch vs JAMS

Compared 8% of the time

UiPath Orchestrator vs JAMS

Compared 4% of the time

More JAMS Competitors

IBM Workload Automation vs HCL Workload Automation

Compared 41% of the time

Control-M vs HCL Workload Automation

Compared 31% of the time

Automic Automation vs HCL Workload Automation

Compared 11% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs HCL Workload Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Stonebranch vs HCL Workload Automation

Compared 4% of the time

More HCL Workload Automation Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 25% of the time

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 14% of the time

Automic Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 9% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 8% of the time

AWS Step Functions vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 2% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

JAMS

December 2025

Download JAMS product report

Buyer's Guide

HCL Workload Automation

December 2025

Download HCL Workload Automation product report

Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

December 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Interactive Demo

JAMS Software

Demo not available

HCLSoftware

Demo not available

Tidal Software by Redwood

Overview

JAMS is an automation and job scheduling solution designed for workflow optimization, catering to businesses large and small with flexible licensing and integration options.

Offering both Core and Advanced packages, JAMS supports a range of environments from small teams to large-scale operations. Its standout features include integration with platforms like PowerShell, SQL, and SAP, coupled with capabilities such as dependency management and natural language scheduling. JAMS simplifies job management, centralizes workflows, and boosts productivity with its robust automation features. Customizable workflows and insightful logging make it adaptable for diverse needs, supported by responsive customer service ensuring seamless operations.

What are JAMS's key features?

Automation & Scheduling: Flexible automation helps manage complex job schedules efficiently.
Integration: Connects seamlessly with platforms like SQL Server, SAP, and Python for diverse applications.
Centralized Job Management: A unified interface for handling thousands of jobs daily.
Dependency Management: Supports complex workflows with efficient dependency tracking.
Insightful Logging: Provides detailed logs and notifications for precise task execution.

What benefits should users look for in JAMS reviews?

Enhanced Productivity: Automates repetitive tasks, freeing up resources for strategic initiatives.
Scalability: Flexible licensing models grow with business size and needs.
Efficient Workflow Automation: Streamlines job orchestration across environments.
Responsive Support: Helps ensure smooth operations with quick troubleshooting.

In industries, JAMS is employed for automating workflows and managing batch jobs. Organizations utilize it for SSIS, SQL Server tasks, file transfers, and integrating with vendor systems, achieving efficient file automation and data management. Scheduler enables precise execution of thousands of tasks daily, enhancing operational efficiency.

JAMS Software

HCL Workload Automation orchestrates complex processes, streamlining tasks across systems, improving efficiency for demanding environments.

Designed for robust workload automation, HCL Workload Automation integrates seamlessly into existing infrastructures, enabling precise control and management of workflows. Its scalability and adaptability suit enterprises seeking operational excellence, aligning processes with strategic goals. Users experience enhanced productivity through efficient job scheduling and workload execution, catering to enterprise demands.

What are the most important features?

Integrated Control: Provides a centralized platform to manage jobs across diverse platforms.
Dynamic Workload Management: Adjusts to fluctuating workloads with dynamic resources.
Cloud Capability: Extends automation capabilities to cloud environments, enhancing scalability.
Script Customization: Offers scripting flexibility for tailored job executions.
Predictive Analytics: Utilizes predictive tools to anticipate workload needs and optimize resources.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines task execution, saving time and resources.
Cost Reduction: Reduces operational costs by automating repetitive tasks.
Scalability: Supports growth without significant infrastructure changes.
Enhanced Reliability: Minimizes errors through automated job scheduling.
Improved Strategic Alignment: Aligns IT processes with business objectives.

In healthcare, HCL Workload Automation efficiently manages patient data by integrating disparate systems, essential for timely treatment. In finance, it automates transaction processes securely, ensuring compliance with industry standards. In manufacturing, it optimizes supply chain operations by automating inventory management and production scheduling.

HCLSoftware

Tidal Software is a leading provider of enterprise workload automation solutions that orchestrate the execution of complex workflows across systems, applications and IT environments. With a comprehensive portfolio of products and services, Tidal optimizes mission-critical business processes, increases IT cost efficiencies and satisfies legal and regulatory compliance requirements. Hundreds of customers around the world count on Tidal for modernizing their workload automation and driving their digital transformation. Tidal Software is headquartered in Chicago with offices in Houston, London, Minsk, Belarus and Chennai, India. For more information, visit tidalsoftware.com.

Tidal Software by Redwood

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital

Information Not Available

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