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IBM Workload Automation vs Redwood RunMyJobs comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redwood RunMyJobs
Ranking in Workload Automation
16th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.8%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 4.5%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redwood RunMyJobs is 7.0%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS2.8%
IBM Workload Automation4.5%
Redwood RunMyJobs7.0%
Other85.7%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2770605 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Has streamlined complex job scheduling across scripting languages while reducing manual effort
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. A functionality running on the JAMS server to continuously check the JAMS agents would ensure they are working properly. If an agent is not responding, a feature to restart the service from the job server machine would be beneficial. The upgrade process, particularly when switching from V6 to V7, could be clearer in terms of documentation, ideally with screenshots showing exactly what needs to be done on each screen.
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.
reviewer2138001 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Demantra consultant at Capgemini
Easy to organize, monitor, and control all jobs
The most valuable aspects of the solution are: 1. The ability to schedule tasks and jobs on multiple platforms (SAP and Non-SAP) and monitor the jobs. 2. Its ability to organize, monitor, control, and schedule all jobs and activities. 3. Redwood is a more powerful tool and provision to automate any tasks/jobs than any other tool in Batch scheduling (automatic and other tools). 4. It has advanced features like dashboards where users can see all statistics. 5. It has an alert mechanism feature; if any job fails, it triggers notifications. 6. Different security functionality for restricting users to certain functions (read/write). 7. Cost Reduction, complete automation, optimized resource usage, and full audit trail. 8. Vendor support. 9. Logging and statistics.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"We can see all the batch execution status within the tool itself, which saves money, time, and cost, allowing us to handle everything in one single tool."
"The product is easy to use."
"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."
"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."
"JAMS offers diverse scheduling capabilities for any kind of job, including Linux, PowerShell scripts, and SQL, enabling automation of jobs, which has proven beautiful after three years of usage."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge."
"I did not encounter any stability issues; it has been a very stable and reliable product."
"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."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"Alerting on ABENDS: When a job abnormally ends (ABENDS), the solution notifies us when the job did not complete successfully."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"Depending on that it may be interesting to use Tivoli because it is a good tool."
"It can centralize and support on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments seamlessly."
"This tool helps us to monitor the job related to SAP modules."
"There won't be a memory outage issue, as it uses its own server/ECC memory only."
"It has advanced features like dashboards where users can see all statistics."
"Redwood is more flexible and we can schedule the tasks based on different time zones."
"We can create and test micro-workflows to find defects sooner."
"The best feature I love about Redwood is the real-time event monitoring and alerting."
"It conjures simplicity from the depths of complexity, effortlessly shouldering burdensome workloads."
 

Cons

"Improvements could be made in the service desk's knowledge and communication skills among engineers to better address customer needs and ensure issues are fully resolved."
"The solution is good, it's reliable. But sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"For scalability, I would rate it as seven because when we have a huge volume, sometimes the tool is not so responsive."
"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."
"If there were a softcover book on how to really take advantage of all of JAMS' tools, I would buy it."
"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."
"JAMS has built-in reporting. I've never really used it. I tried using it a few years ago and I couldn't figure it out. It was wonky. It could be improved upon."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"A lot of the automation that we added to the product should come built into it, so that every customer doesn't have to reinvent the wheel."
"A few things are missing but I can manage without them, such as a cross-reference report."
"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."
"ROI seems very low and rate of realization is too slow for simple networks."
"8.5.1 is not stable, we've since moved to 8.6 but the front-end GUI was very slow."
"We are using an outdated version. We had issues with the file dependencies."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"The product can improve customer service."
"Enhancing the user interface would make it more appealing to new users with limited technical knowledge."
"They should be made more cost-effective in comparison to similar software services."
"Adding machine learning and AI capabilities would enable Redwood to automate more complex business processes and tasks."
"It has limited reporting features; some basic reporting features are missing."
"The reports are downloaded in .CAR file format, which makes it difficult to convert to an Excel file."
"The only issue at first was that we had to manually delete or raise the event in order to run some of the events and wait for jobs, even if the file was kept at the correct AL11 position."
"There is a lack of resources and product documentation which, if included, would help to gain more knowledge about the application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"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."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"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."
"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."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"It initially surprised me because we went from an application that was priced by connection to agents/the number of agents to an application that was priced based on the number of job executions. At that time, many of the products we looked at were also priced on job execution. That seems to be more common in the business or in the vendors that provide solutions out there, but that was probably our biggest difference."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?
I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
My thoughts on the pricing of JAMS are that I won't say it is cheap, but it is cost-efficient, and that should be acc...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
An area that has room for improvement is related to the AWS RDS and database part, where they said that is in progres...
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...
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Also Known As

No data available
IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition, Redwood Business Process Automation - Workload Edition, RunMyJobs, Redwood RunMyJobs
 

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
Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
AMD, American Home Shield, Avaya, Burberry, Centrica, City of Dallas, The Container Store, Core & Main, Daikin, Dart Containers, Deere, Energizer, Epson, Halliburton, Keen Foodware, National Gypsum, Rockport Group, Ryder, Technicolor, The University of Michigan, Virgin Money, Whitbread
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Workload Automation vs. Redwood RunMyJobs and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.