We performed a comparison between Fortra's JAMS and IBM Workload Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortra's JAMS is praised for its efficient handling of job dependencies and its automation features such as File Watchers, notifications, and code-driven automation. IBM Workload Automation is highly regarded for its ability to incorporate additional features upon user request, trigger jobs in multiple nodes, and maintain stability in monitoring batch applications.
Fortra's JAMS could enhance their user interface, search functionality, exception management, and reporting features. IBM Workload Automation requires improved navigation, job dependencies, daily schedule updates, and reporting visibility.
Service and Support: Customers have expressed satisfaction with Fortra's JAMS customer service, describing it as responsive, knowledgeable, and always helpful. The support team promptly addresses concerns and provides solutions to different problems. IBM Workload Automation's support is also highly praised, especially for assisting with issues that are out of customers' control. Nonetheless, some difficulties may arise in pinpointing the cause of specific problems.
Ease of Deployment: Users find the initial setup for Fortra's JAMS to be uncomplicated and user-friendly, as they are able to easily follow instructions on the webpage and deploy tasks efficiently. The initial setup for IBM Workload Automation may pose difficulties for individuals unfamiliar with IBM tools; however, with guidance, it becomes relatively easy.
Pricing: Fortra's JAMS has an initial investment in the first year, along with a yearly upkeep fee. Users consider the pricing reasonable and budget-friendly and appreciate its flexibility to accommodate expansion. IBM Workload Automation's pricing structure is personalized to each customer's agreement, varying between five and a thousand licenses based on usage.
ROI: Fortra's JAMS has been commended for its impressive return on investment, offering time savings, enhanced productivity, and cost-effectiveness. IBM Workload Automation's ROI is more uncertain and necessitates thorough research and analysis to gain a clearer comprehension.
Comparison Results: Fortra's JAMS is the preferred choice over IBM Workload Automation. Users appreciate JAMS for its user-friendly setup process, efficient handling of job dependencies, automation features, interactive agents, code-driven automation, flexible scheduling options, and detailed logging for problem-solving.
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"JAMS has improved my organization by taking a myriad of manual processes and allowing us to automate them. It enables our folks to focus more on tasks that require their human intelligence and their creativity and less on just mundane tasks. It increases efficiency, accuracy, and consistency."
"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."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"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."
"The overall product is fantastic. I love it. It has been a fantastic, solid product. If I have one tiny bit of a problem with it, the support team gets in touch with me right away. I don't know if I've had another service that has been as fantastic as the JAMS support team."
"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."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"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."
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"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."
"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 knowledge was hard-won knowledge. It was difficult to come by, and if I should ever lose this developer, then I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods quite 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."
"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 search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"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."
"When looking at a folder in JAMS with many jobs, it would be good to have better information in the list display of what's inside those jobs. We get some information, but other important details are missing."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"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."
Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews while IBM Workload Automation is ranked 14th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews. Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0, while IBM Workload Automation is rated 8.2. 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 IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, Tidal by Redwood and VisualCron, whereas IBM Workload Automation is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Tidal by Redwood. See our Fortra's JAMS vs. IBM Workload Automation report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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