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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

"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."
"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."
"The built-in triggers are great."
"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."
"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge. Before JAMS, every group was keeping track of their own batch jobs. Nobody really knew what the other jobs were. So, if jobs failed, other groups wouldn't necessarily know. With JAMS, everything is done through a single scheduler. You can choose who to notify."
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"It makes everything that we want to do so much easier. We have had a number of instances in the past where we have had developers who have been working on a project, and even though we have had JAMS for all these years, they will create some SQL Server Agent job, or something like that, to run a task. When it is in code review and development is complete, the question always comes around, "Can JAMS do this?" The answer has always been, "Yes." Pretty much anything we have ever developed could be run by JAMS."
"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."
"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."
"IBM Workload Automation provides good performance and monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is its holistic view, which helps me find technical solutions quickly. For instance, if a customer has an issue completing their workload within a specific time frame, the tool provides enough information to identify and resolve the issue. One of the main challenges is dealing with data infrastructure problems and pending updates. Workload Automation helps me leverage current AI capabilities to recommend architectural updates to avoid these issues. It also allows me to balance CPU usage effectively, ensuring service level agreements are met. The interface is user-friendly and facilitates this process smoothly."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"The most important feature is the creation of folders. It's a really great feature because you can organize the process with naming conventions."
"Redwood manages all complex job workflow processes."
"It's a very powerful tool. It has a lot of flexibility for how you can define jobs and build them. There are different ways in which you can construct jobs depending on your specific needs and requirements."
"This tool helps us to monitor the job related to SAP modules."
"It is very easy and easy to use, and minimal supervision is required to run it."
"Redwood is of value to our organization due to of its ease of use and the ability to automate and orchestrate any platform that we utilize today."
"One of Redwood Software's features that I liked was its event-driven automation, which allows IT teams to respond to real-time events, alerts, and notifications from numerous systems."
"There are various ways in which you can construct jobs depending on your business needs and requirements."
"We can achieve anything that anything that we would like to do. In SAP, it's not generally possible with just with SAP. So we have solution manager as an option, but run by job."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like a simple web interface that I could give to my team to go in and kill jobs or see why jobs died so that we don't have to drill down deeper into the application and know everything about it. It would be good to have a really clean web engine that would say here are the jobs running. We can then click to see the time running and whether any of them fails and other similar things. I know they have one, but it's not very simplistic."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"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."
"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"JAMS handles exceptions fairly well but there are some areas where it might improve a little bit. It has to do with being able to automatically handle exceptions, out-of-the-box, rather than having to code them."
"IBM needs to move away from its native terminology and adopt a more cloud-centric approach."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"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."
"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."
"The user interface of Redwood can be improved a bit to make it more user-friendly and interesting."
"Having a graphical user interface for the dashboard would be great."
"Enhancing the user interface would make it more appealing to new users with limited technical knowledge."
"The reports are downloaded in .CAR file format, which makes it difficult to convert to an Excel file."
"Redwood Software has a high price tag, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that might not have the funds to engage in a complete automation system."
"The product could be better in terms of its monitoring and alert service."
"It lacks some of the common reporting features. I'm a bit surprised that there aren't some standard reports to be able to extract any data on usage. They've described to us that customers have different reporting needs, so they let them develop those, but reporting is a common need. It would be helpful to have it as part of the solution."
"Redwood automation software could be made more user-friendly and intuitive, making chores and automation processes easier for users to complete."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"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 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
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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 Business11
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.
884,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.