JAMS vs Tidal by Redwood comparison

Fortra and Tidal Software by Redwood are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. Fortra is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.6, while Tidal Software by Redwood is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.6. Fortra holds a 1.9% mindshare in WA, compared to Tidal Software by Redwood’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Fortra users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Tidal Software by Redwood users who would recommend it.

JAMS

Read 35 JAMS reviews

1,797 Views
494 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Tidal by Redwood

Read 37 Tidal by Redwood reviews

2,585 Views
1,090 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

JAMS

Tidal by Redwood

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Tidal by Redwood and JAMS are strong contenders in the workload automation space, competing on features such as scheduling, automation, and job management. Tidal demonstrates strengths in centralized job management and flexibility with adapters, while JAMS offers intuitive automation and exception handling, which could give JAMS an edge with users seeking streamlined cross-platform integration.

Features: Tidal by Redwood provides a robust calendaring system, advanced job scheduling capabilities, and enhanced user permissions and segmentation. JAMS is noted for its extensive automation capabilities, custom job dependencies, and agent-based job execution, which simplifies cross-platform integration. Tidal stands out with its centralized job management and adaptability using various adapters.

Room for Improvement: Tidal users face challenges with its Transporter tool and report a steep learning curve for new users, alongside the need for enhanced monitoring and root-cause analysis. JAMS, while appreciated for its performance, can benefit from improved custom execution methods and search functionality, as well as better native integrations and collaboration features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Tidal and JAMS are mainly deployed on-premises with some hybrid and cloud use. Tidal's technical support has improved post-Cisco, offering video training and prompt responses. JAMS users find the support team responsive, knowledgeable, and note its simpler deployment driven by lower initial cost and robust support, which some find more flexible than Tidal's setup.

Pricing and ROI: Tidal is valued for its transparent, flexible licensing model and competitive pricing, yielding significant ROI through automation savings. JAMS is seen as cost-effective, particularly with its unlimited license model offering scalability without significant additional costs. Both provide substantial ROI, with JAMS recognized for its budget-friendly entry and Tidal for its cost-efficiency driven by integrated capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed JAMS vs. Tidal by Redwood Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

JAMS vs. Tidal by Redwood

April 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

Ranking in Workload Automation

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tidal by Redwood

Ranking in Workload Automation

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 1.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tidal by Redwood is 3.9%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload Automation

Featured Reviews

Rob Grafrath

VP, Enterprise Systems at Capio

We can scale up our organization's scheduling and automation without having to add staff to the department

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 was hard-won knowledge. If I ever lose this developer, I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods 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. I really think that they could benefit greatly by being much more transparent about C# development, maybe by making a JAMS cookbook or a developer portal where they could throw ideas at each other. One of my complaints with the marketing around JAMS is that it says things like, "It integrates with Teams". They talk about integrating with a lot of things, but marketing doesn't tell you that they are talking about JAMS running PowerShell jobs. Since PowerShell can automate things like SharePoint and Teams, that is how marketing gets away with saying it has so many integrations. JAMS doesn't have as many built-in integrations as they advertise. I think they should build more of them, and improve on the ones they have built.

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Steve Mikula

IT Scheduling Manager at Paychex, Inc.

Very reliable processing engine, and scheduling is flawless—crucial elements in our financial transaction processing

Because we've been on it for 20 years, it's pretty easy for us to automate jobs with Tidal at this point. It has become second nature. It's pretty simplistic to set up and get going, although there are different levels of complexity you can have within the product. It depends on how simple you want to keep it. If you just keep it: Job A, Job B, Job C, Job D, that becomes pretty simple. But when you start integrating some complex calendars that use sub-calendars—and you can go three, four, or five deep to set up schedules—it becomes more complicated. The beauty of it is you can go as deep as you need to. We can get really complex or we can keep it simple. We have some use cases for both scenarios. The thing that I like the most is the reliability of the engine. The actual scheduling part of the product is pretty much flawless, but the stability of the product is what I find to be reassuring. We are a financial company, we move billions of dollars a day, and if we don't have our transactions processed in a timely manner we can be penalized and our clients can be penalized. It can have a serious financial impact.

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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

"We looked at other companies, like VisualCron, that were cheaper, but one of the main sticking points was the fact that they wouldn't have provided a central location for us to monitor across all servers. That was one of the biggest selling points of JAMS."

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

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

"JAMS has improved our productivity immensely because everything flows. I don't think we could operate at our current staffing levels without it."

"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."

"The code-driven automation for more complex scheduling requirements frees up time because it's really easy to use... It's almost like a stand-alone software that we can't live without."

"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 product is easy to use."

More JAMS pros

"Tidal integrates with other third-party systems, which makes it easy to connect and exchange data."

"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."

"The thing that I like the most is the reliability of the engine. The actual scheduling part of the product is pretty much flawless, but the stability of the product is what I find to be reassuring."

"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."

"With the varied features in the varied adapters provided, we use Tidal Enterprise Scheduler because we want everything to be scheduled in one place. Tidal provides that for us with its tools and varying platforms in our organization. Tidal provides all the connectors to the platforms. This is very useful because we don't want to look for another scheduler for scheduling certain jobs. We don't want to look at those schedules manually between platforms."

"The data management on offer was valuable."

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

"The versatility of being able to run on many different types of servers is valuable. There is also a versatility of different services that you could run jobs on. It's highly versatile. You can run a lot of different types of scripts on a lot of different types of servers. It interfaces with all of them."

More Tidal by Redwood pros

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."

"I'm not sure if they have fixed it in a newer version, but there is no global search in the version I have. If I have multiple sub-folders that are named for business units, like HR or IT, and I have to search for a job, I cannot search from the top. I have to go to the HR folder to search for a particular job, or to the IT folder."

"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."

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

"The error messages from JAMS often need clarification, hindering our ability to resolve issues swiftly."

"JAMS doesn't allow us to implement SOC controls. We are a company that trades stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, so all our transactions are audited. It has a feature that saves the file for only a month but doesn't segregate the data between finance and SOC-related compliance."

"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."

"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."

More JAMS cons

"The GUI, the graphical user interface, gets a little bit busy."

"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."

"The solution needs more advanced reporting and data visualization capabilities to enable deeper analysis of job performance and trends."

"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."

"One area for improvement is the command-line interface and the API to bulk-load jobs. It's a little bit kludgy, but we still manage without it. They're working on it and it's getting better all the time. In addition, the documentation for their API for creating jobs needs to be updated. It's a bit of a learning curve."

"The UI might have the potential to provide a more polished and user-centric encounter, promoting seamless engagements and simplifying the navigation process for individuals interacting with the software."

"Tidal's adaptability and user-friendliness could be increased by integrating it with additional programmes and platforms."

"Setting up the initial product was a little hard."

More Tidal by Redwood cons

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 pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."

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

"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."

"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."

"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."

More JAMS pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality."

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

"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 has no hidden costs. It helps me to plan forward into the future. I know that I can add another 100 or a thousand jobs, and that's how much it will cost me today."

"The pricing is pretty reasonable. That seems to help a lot versus other companies. There are no other fees aside from the standard licensing fees. There are other products out there where you pay based on how many jobs you run and so on, and I know that's very frustrating for users."

"Our yearly licensing costs are between $10,000 to $20,000. They have always been reasonable with us. I like that non-production licensing is about half the cost of production licensing. Licensing is by adapter typically. We have had scenarios where we have had to take an adapter from one environment to another, and they've allowed us to do that. They have made it a very reasonable process. There's definitely a feeling that they will work with you."

More Tidal by Redwood pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?

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

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?

Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra. Previously, both Help Systems and MVP offered more favorable pricing and licensing terms. However, Fo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with JAMS?

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 co...

See all answers

What do you like most about Tidal Automation?

Tidal Automation by Redwood is a user-friendly solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tidal Automation?

The price is reasonable in terms of the product’s functionality.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tidal Automation?

Initially, it is complicated to understand the functionalities as there is limited product documentation. The setup and configuration of the software is a bit complicated. Providing the training vi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Control-M vs JAMS

Compared 18% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs JAMS

Compared 15% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs JAMS

Compared 13% of the time

Stonebranch vs JAMS

Compared 9% of the time

VisualCron vs JAMS

Compared 9% of the time

More JAMS Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 44% of the time

Control-M vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 23% of the time

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 7% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Tidal by Redwood

Compared 5% of the time

More Tidal by Redwood Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

JAMS

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Tidal by Redwood

April 2025

Download Tidal by Redwood product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tidal Workload Automation, Cisco Workload Automation, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler

Overview

JAMS offers efficient automation and scheduling with strong capabilities in planning, dependency management, and multi-platform support. Its intuitive interface and robust tools assist in managing complex workflows for enhanced resource allocation.

JAMS stands out for its blend of automation and scheduling capabilities, making it suitable for handling complex workflows across platforms. Its features such as batch scheduling, natural language scheduling, and interactive agents promote seamless integration with other tools like PowerShell. The focus on metrics and notifications ensures users are informed about operational efficiency enhancements. While JAMS is effective in many areas, users report a need for improved simulation for termination processes and a more intuitive client setup. They see potential in enhanced search functions, better exception handling, and greater transparency in custom execution. The current setup challenges like disappearing options and mobile accessibility can affect user satisfaction. Including a fully web-based client and improving documentation could add value.

What are JAMS' key features?

Planning and Scheduling: Coordinates workflows efficiently with advanced scheduling techniques.
Dependency Management: Ensures seamless operation by managing inter-task dependencies.
Interactive Agents: Integrates with PowerShell and other tools to enhance automation.
Natural Language Scheduling: Simplifies job creation with intuitive language use.
Multi-Platform Flexibility: Operates across diverse environments ensuring robust performance.

What benefits should users consider?

Operational Efficiency: Reduction in manual oversight with robust scheduling and integration tools.
Resource Allocation: Efficient management of workflows across multiple timeframes and platforms.
User Satisfaction: Seamless user experience with intuitive interfaces and integration capabilities.
Visibility: Centralized management provides comprehensive oversight over tasks.

Organizations using JAMS for workflow and batch job automation leverage its capabilities for SSIS, SQL procedures, and Python scripts. JAMS supports file automation and managed file transfers across environments like AWS and Azure. Users employ JAMS for data management, reporting, and integration tasks, including handling holiday-aware scheduling for improved task coordination.

Fortra

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

Buyer's Guide

JAMS vs. Tidal by Redwood

April 2025

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